Category: Travel

  • Hospitality Design

    There are several patterns of payment for design fees, and I would outline these, with their advantages and disadvantages, below. I would caution all designers to get a written instruction before proceeding with any work, and caution all hotel groups to control line managers so that they do not dishonestly appoint designers to do work…

  • Happy Chappies

    I have fallen in love with Africa. Whether it is the foodie delights of Cape Town, the wines of the fabulous vineyards, the tranquillity of the West Coast or the wildlife attractions, the Namibian Deserts or the astonishing beauty of the birdlife I have never ceased to be delighted and amazed.

  • Hotel Design Revisited:Cube/HotelMy Tyrol

    Hotel Design Revisited:Cube/HotelMy Tyrol

    The changes made to the operation have enhanced its attractiveness, especially the addition of the pool to the front of the building. The design changes are evolutionary and reflective of the operator standards. In some ways, the design concept is diluted but the fact this is now operated by someone other than the original suggests…

  • Long and Winding Road

    “Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out It doesn’t matter much to me” (Strawberry Field Forever- the Beatles) Funny how on this long and winding road, life goes along. Just three years ago I was running a successful on-line magazine, travelling,…

  • The Wrong Shoes, eh Gromit?

    The Wrong Shoes, eh Gromit?

    It stands erect, ringed in red and white. The dark wilderness of its base set aside from the billowing white up swelling of the chalk cliffs behind it. Thrusting upwards in public warning, its tip glazed and different to its shaft, it stands out by day attracting the attention of thousands who come to gaze…

  • An African Gem: Bushmans Kloof

    I have been to many places had many adventures, few compare to the delights of Bushmans Kloof. Asked to sum up my visits by a friend, I said “Simple, this is a little piece of heaven come to earth”.

  • Design: Towards a new English vernacular?

    Defining and recognising an English vernacular style, all part of a resurgence in English national awareness as Scots want to go home. Examples from Interior design, including France and Germany

  • Cyprus Notes

    Cyprus Notes

    The holiday makers lie broiling in the Mediterranean sun. Bronzed bald headed muscle men stride past mounds of bright reddening flabby granddads; slender brown bikini clad beauties strut their flat stomachs past roly-poly grandmas sunbathing topless like obscene beached whales

  • Sardinia Seaside Success

    Sardinia Seaside Success

    …downtime on the beach and a few visits to towns, including a cruise around the islands northern tip where France meets Italy, Corsica meeting Sardinia. I certainly recommend taking your glasses off before diving over the side of your boat …

  • Diamonds not wardrobes

    Diamonds not wardrobes

    I lay on the beach in the hot African autumn sunshine a century later. Further north the brutal isolation of the Skeleton Coast starts, but here on St. Helena’s Bay the sand was warm and the waves lay their spume, gently, barely feet away as the sea spends its energy. The South Atlantic here is…

  • Life with the Lions

    Life with the Lions

    African communities have to live with wildlife, not slaughter it. It is distressing to see images of stupid hunters who think it is glorious to kill the shrinking numbers of beasts in the ever decreasing wilderness area. Much better trophies are the images ‘hunted’ in a camera, demanding the same physical skills often as those…

  • Softly Susurrating Sands in the Sossusvlei

    Softly Susurrating Sands in the Sossusvlei

    Like the views of the Seven Sisters, the giant sand dunes in the Namibian sand sea have been snapped by hundreds of amateur and professional photographers. The fascination with landscape and the scale of our selves against it are common factors in much of todays imagery.