July 2026

Seven years after my first visit, I returned to discover what Oxford keeps behind its gates Had apparition been allowed inside Hogwarts, I could have travelled directly from the Gloucester Cathedral cloister where Mrs Norris was found petrified to the hospital wing in Oxford’s Divinity School. Unfortunately, it was not. So I had to take a train.

I arrived by ferry, walked through the Old Town at minus eighteen and discovered that a medieval capital could not compete with an excellent dinner and a warm spa. Tallinn’s medieval walls, edited to reflect how that minus-eighteen morning actually felt. Tallinn was not the main destination of this journey. It was one carefully chosen overnight s

Scotland’s Oldest University, Medieval Ruins and the Town Where William Met Kate I had begun the morning at Dunnottar Castle. By the time I returned to Aberdeen, travelled south to Dundee and checked into another hotel, the sensible interpretation was that I had already done enough for one day. Sensible interpretations have rarely exercised much

A cliffside stay, a traditional seaside town and the fine art of apologising without acting London was not the destination. It was the large and inconvenient interchange between a flight landing at Stansted and a train leaving for the British seaside. After landing, I took the Stansted Express to Liverpool Street, one of London’s many mainline ra

The late Queen Elizabeth II kept Balmoral fiercely private — King Charles III now admits just twelve visitors per tour, at £110–£175 a head. Paying between £110 and £175 to enter Balmoral in a group of twelve is not exactly sneaking in. Still, the experience comes surprisingly close to being allowed into someone’s house while the owner is away. I

Some countries remain in memory through landscapes, meals or people. San Marino survived in mine mainly because it was a country. I remember a mountain, pale stone, crowds, too many shops, a guard in a glass booth and a hazy view over the surrounding hills. They are fragments rather than a coherent memory of a place. What happened afterwards in a

An alpine cheese that took over my car, a Design Hotel that kept drawing me back, and one deeply regrettable sip. A few ribbons of morning mist above the Gastein Valley, seen from the balcony at the cōmodo. Early in the morning, a few low ribbons of mist still clung to the mountainside. The air on the balcony was cool and fresh, and the valley be

How Vivaldi, an extraordinary countertenor and a convenient flight became the beginning of my first proper journey through Poland Three hundred years before Instagram, Antonio Vivaldi wrote an aria about longing and the quiet certainty of seeing someone beloved again. “Vedrò con mio diletto” belongs to Giustino, an opera first performed in Rome i

Martinis, Millionaires and One Very Drunk Brit at Breakfast At midnight, fireworks opened above the palm trees of Monte Carlo. I was standing on the balcony of the Casino de Monte-Carlo with a drink in my hand. Behind me, people were gambling sums that could have financed my entire trip. In front of me, flashes of colour reflected from the surrou

One perfect reflection, two mountain transport systems and a ridiculously expensive day above Zermatt. There is a photograph of the Matterhorn on the wall of my office. The mountain rises almost perfectly above Riffelsee, while its reflection points downward into water so still that Switzerland appears to have arranged itself specifically for my

A cheap flight from Nice, a newly reopened Marriott, free public transport and a freezing first encounter with Europe’s most understated capital Some journeys begin with one destination. This one began with a sequence. My New Year trip had started in Nice and would continue through Luxembourg, Brussels, Bordeaux and Paris. New Year’s Eve itself w

Two hotels, two stages and one unapologetically expensive escape Technically, this story is about forty hours in Paris. Spiritually, it began with a brioche in Strasbourg. I had flown into Paris the previous day, only to leave it almost immediately by train. I had never visited Strasbourg, and late November seemed like a reasonable time to correc