On the trail of Steve Jobs in California

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:05:00 GMT

He was the ultimate tastemaker, but Apple co-founder Steve Jobs lived in surprising suburban ordinariness in Silicon Valley. Jonathan Margolis follows his trail

• Click here to see an interactive map showing Jonathan's tour of the valley

The bestselling biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is most notable for revealing that the innovator and aesthete genius behind Apple – the world's most successful company – was in many ways a giant, semi-autistic toddler. With his boundless egomania, temper tantrums and quirks like refusing to wash, Jobs does not come out as your everyday hero. Yet Steve was my hero. His wacky idea of making computers easy appealed to me as a technology writer. That, along with his maverick unpredictability, made him the Brian Clough of electronics – Clough being my other hero.

The second most remarkable thing about Steve, though, was that for someone who changed the world so fundamentally – it's because of him that we all have computers – he seemed to have been brought up, worked and died within a small radius of his childhood home near Palo Alto, California. Somehow I always imagined Steve – barefoot Buddhist, design guru, tastemaker – not as a hometown boy, but someone more metropolitan or bohemian, or who would seek out a remote "spiritual" place to live.

His background also sounded surprisingly suburban. I've always been intrigued by the incongruity of extraordinary people coming from ordinary backgrounds. And when I peered on Google Street View, the addresses Isaacson lists in Palo Alto – where everyone from Apple to Google has their HQ – looked as mundane as Esher or Altrincham. So I had the idea of taking a couple of days out of an upcoming US trip to visit the key spots in Steve's life. I also thought it would be kind of cool – OK, not cool, but amusingly geeky – to be photographed with my iPad at each location. To call what I proposed a "pilgrimage" would be too strong, a "curiosity" too tepid, while to say it was "to seek insight" would be too earnest. It's the same reason I'd love to visit John Lennon's childhood home – a case of informed interest in someone of my generation, who was not only a million times more successful, but who I also wouldn't actually have minded being.

First stop on my personal Via Dolorosa was 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos. The modest bungalow where the Jobses came to live in 1967 and the garage in which Steve started Apple with his friend Steve Wozniak is as suburban as America gets. What happened here was immense, but there were no signs or tour buses, and someone seemed to live there, so I was emboldened to knock on the door. What a coup if, at my first Station of the Cross, I could get a picture of me, with my iPad, in the founding garage.

An elderly lady answered the door. I apologised and said she must get bothered a lot. No, she said, a couple of hundred a week take photos, but none had knocked until me. Slightly miffed that I wasn't even close to being the first Steve tourist, I was nonetheless relieved that it clearly wasn't that eccentric a thing to be doing.

"I'm Marilyn Jobs," she said. "I married Steve's dad, Paul, after his mom died." This I hadn't bargained for, but she was so friendly I began to think I stood a chance of getting into the holy garage. It turned out Marilyn loved England, especially Harrogate in North Yorkshire. So we spoke at some length about Bettys Tea Rooms there, and I may have agreed to send her some teacakes in the post.

So, how about a peep in the garage? "No," said Mrs Jobs, "there's really nothing in there, just a washing machine and a car. There wouldn't even be room to take a photo." As I was setting up a tripod for an exterior photo of the house, a young guy in a small rental car pulled up. He was from Tooting, wouldn't you know it, and between job interviews was doing the same Steve tour. No, he wouldn't give his name – he didn't want to appear a sad geek – but was happy to take my photo, while two more drive-by tourists slowed down for a shot. "It's so normal you forget that everyone here is living ahead of the curve," said Tooting man. "There are people here who know what the iPhone 6 is going to be like, let alone the 5."

My next stop was 2101 Waverley Street, Palo Alto, the current Jobs home and another surprise. Not only was it quite twee, but it was also relatively modest – and remarkably exposed for a "celebrity" home. One of Steve's trademark grey Mercedes sports cars was parked outside, looking a bit forlorn and splashed with bird poo. I wouldn't have dreamed of disturbing the family, but in case I had any ideas, Donald from Apple security leapt out of a black van to introduce himself. I explained that I just wanted to see where Steve lived and take a photo, and he kindly took it for me.

"We log about 100 to 150 tourists a day," Donald said. "People expect he would have lived in a fortress or a castle, not right here." Donald revealed that although he hadn't been inside the house, "it's apparently in the style of an English cottage". The great taste Nazi and minimalist, living in a Country Living interior? I was shocked. Donald also revealed something else quite bizarre – he's not really called Donald, he's Steve. "So you can't be called Steve if you work for Apple?" Steve/Donald said nothing, but smiled.

Next, the Whole Foods Market on Emerson Street. (It was in the store's small car park just before the iMac was launched in 1998 – a signal event in Apple's history that started the company's rise – where the detail-obsessed Steve was spotted sitting in his car screaming into his phone: "Not. Fucking. Blue. Enough!") Then Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (Parc) at 3333 Coyote Hill Road, where, in 1979, Steve saw a prototype computer mouse and graphical computer screen with icons and "borrowed" the idea for Apple.

On the way to Jobs's favourite lunch restaurant, Jin Sho, on S California Avenue, it occurred to me that Steve had been wise to maintain a modest, normal lifestyle in a suburban house with a front lawn rather than the celebrity life he could have led. The fact that, as a zillionaire whose company and counsel presidents sought, he could pad around the (organic) equivalent of Sainsbury's unmolested because he'd, well, always been around and was just Steve must have been a secret delight to him.

"Funny, Steve hasn't been in for a long time," my Jin Sho server, Noriko, said. The present tense was unnerving. Should I tell her? Maybe not. "Would you like to sit where Steve has lunch, or where he goes with his family in the evenings?" she asked. I went for his spot on the lunch bar, where she volunteered to take the now standard goofy photo with my iPad. The $16 special was delicious, but had to be one of the smallest lunches ever served in the US.

At Apple's huge but still oddly underwhelming HQ on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, where I expected security to be all over me, I was wholly ignored. The computer store, the Byte Shop at 1063 West El Camino Real, where Jobs and Wozniak sold their first Apple machine in 1976, turned out to be a sex shop in a dodgy part of town. The woman running the place said she had been there 30 years without knowing the store's connection with the world's most successful company.

My last stop was the cheekiest. I wanted to be photographed with my iPad on the stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an hour from Palo Alto, on Mission Street, San Francisco. This was where Steve publicly launched the iPad and many other Apple products. To my amazement, I was allowed in and permitted to go on to the stage, and one of their staff even took the photo. There was only one proviso: that I didn't show the set of the classical play currently on the stage. So with a soupçon of clumsily applied Photoshop, I turned the set black. Just like it always was when Steve strutted the same stage.

Being Steve Jobs, I concluded, standing up there, thinking what it would have been like to have your words and ideas beamed round the world live to breathless geeks like, er, me, must have been, as he would say, kinda cool.

Essentials

Travelbag (0871 703 4701, travelbag.co.uk) offers direct flights to San Francisco with United Airlines from £694

Panama: a hot holiday destination?

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:08 GMT

It tops lists of hot destinations for 2012 and is sold as the ideal introduction to Latin America, but does it live up to the hype?

Chickens and scruffy children on bikes cross our path as we stroll along a sandy road past candy-coloured buildings beside a turquoise Caribbean sea. "Hey my friend!" Jim, our guide, stops to slap a Rasta man on the back. "How you been? You got your guitar today?"

"No man," says Calypso Joe, shaking his head, " … but I can go get it. You buy me a beer, and I play some guitar."

Ten minutes later we're on a rickety wooden platform above gentle waves, behind a shack of a cafe, beers in hand. Joe, in his 50s and wearing a palm tree-patterned shirt, strums calypso rhythms, the kind introduced to these islands by the African-Caribbean workers brought in by the banana plantation companies.

Islands in the Sun follows some Beatles, but then he whips out the good stuff, his own material: "If your mother and your wife was drownin' well, which one would you be savin'? You can always find another wife, never get another mother in your life!"

Caribbean calypso culture is not what one might expect to find in Panama, but then what is? Aside from hats, a big canal, and the "canoe man" couple behind the fake-death insurance scam, most of us know very little about the end of the Central American isthmus. Without the Mayan ruins and markets of Guatemala or the famous surf resorts and hotels of Costa Rica, its attractions are little-known.

Yet Central America is the place backpackers currently want to boast about having been to. Tom Hall of Lonely Planet has called "Nic-Pan" (Nicaragua and Panama) one of the fastest growing backpacking destinations in the world. Conde Nast Traveller and the New York Times named Panama one of the hottest destinations of 2012, and several UK tour operators are pushing it this year as a perfect "first time to Latin America" destination.

The redevelopment of Panama City's Casco Antiguo, a huge project to restore the attractive colonial district, is a major factor – it has brought in bohemian bars, stylish restaurants, craft stores, and boutique hotels such as the new Casa Del Horno, a revamped townhouse with designer suites and black and white photography.

But it is Panama's wild nature that is increasingly drawing in tourists, and the most popular destination now is Bocas del Toro, a group of 68 Caribbean islands 32km from the Costa Rican border, where primary rainforest meets the sea. Beautiful beaches, surf breaks and a backpacker scene attracts independent travellers to Bocas Del Toro town on Isla Colon, while nature-fanatics head to several ecolodges on the nearby islands and promontories, which have opened in the last few years.

One of the most special is Tranquilo Bay ecolodge on Isla Bastimentos. I travel there via a 25-minute motorboat ride from Bocas town across a calm bay slung with low-lying, thickly forested islands. Despite its popularity, Bocas feels like a sleepy backwater. Porpoise and flying fish leap from the sea, sloths sit high in the trees, and crabs scuttle ahead as we follow a wooden walkway above a mangrove from a private jetty to the lodge. I try to put the "day beds and rum cocktails" image of what a Caribbean island should be out of my mind. Here, the jungle is too thick to cross on foot, so the white sand beaches and island town of Old Bank, where Calypso Joe plays his tunes, are only accessible by boat.

Once my mum (yep, I'm putting the Ma in Panama) and I have settled into our cabin in the gardens, we polish off a breakfast of eggs, beans, pineapple and guanabana juice, while watching hummingbirds flit around the veranda.

Iguanas, capuchin monkeys, sloths, anteaters, boa constrictors, armadillos and zillions of rare birds live here. This region is more biodiverse than almost anywhere else on earth. Panama has 125 endemic animal species, 218 mammal species, 226 reptile and 950 bird. Bocas is particularly special because three ecosystems meet: mangrove, reef and rainforest. "Wherever there's edge, species thrive," says Jim, one of the American owners of Tranquilo. "There are different species on different islands here. Toucans on some, but not the next, as they won't fly more than a kilometre over water."

Within minutes of walking out of the lodge, we see a double-toothed kite, black-checked woodpecker, warblers, blue-headed Amazons, a white hawk, a pale-billed woodpecker. I'm no twitcher but the way Jim suddenly halts and hisses, "Ssshhhh! Look! Wow! You are so lucky! These are so rare! We hardly ever see these!" is infectious.

For five years Jim and Jay, the other owner, lived in the jungle under a tarpaulin, building their dream lodge. When they arrived in 2000, there were only 10 expats in Bocas. They convinced their wives to move down and started families, and now Jim and Rene are home-schooling their kids, while Jay's family lives across the bay in Bocas. Jungle living is tough, and we wonder if the reality lives up to the dream; the way they talk non-stop to their guests and make every meal communal suggests they might be a bit lonely. They are very knowledgeable, but we feel we'd rather learn about Panama from Panamanians than Texans. So the next day we visit Popa Island to meet the Ngobe-Bugle, the largest of Panama's seven indigenous groups. They own farm land, live well and have a high degree of political autonomy. We buy beaded bracelets in one of their palapa huts, see crops of yuca, coconut and noni fruit, but are ignored by everyone except our guide, who takes us on another jungle walk. As tourism experiences go, it isn't mindblowing, but the lack of interaction feels less exploitative.

Other days we kayak and snorkel above tropical fish, football-sized sea urchins and luminous jellyfish, and spend an afternoon on Isla Colon, shopping for toucan-patterned bags and lying on Bluff Beach. Then we're off on our whirlwind tour of Panama to the coffee town of Boquete, a few hours away in Chiriquí state. The drive passes the Continental Divide, jungly hills and nature reserves, ending at the pretty hill town, full of flowers and coffee shops selling world-class, locally grown brands.

We visit 90-year-old Cafe Ruiz's plantations and factories, learning that we should always drink high quality, freshly ground beans because instant coffee is usually made from "floaters", the empty husks of coffee beans ("We call Nescafe 'no es cafe'!" laughs our guide, Carlos), and that coffee tasters are as discerning as wine-makers.

There are lovely walks here, around (or up) Panama's highest mountain, Volcan Barú, and along the Quetzal Trail, named after a spectacular local bird. We relax in the gorgeous gardens of our hilltop B&B, Los Establos, eat corvina fish cerviche and chicharrón pork belly at luxurious Panamonte Inn & Spa, and cheap, tasty rice dishes in local workers' cafes, such as Sabrosado.

It's lovely, but slightly downbeat, despite all the caffeine. Depressingly, developers have bought many of the fine coffee plantations to turn them into gated communities for American retirees, and the local government plans to paint the town's colourful buildings a matching light brown. Boquete's charm seems at risk, but for now, it's a pretty spot.

Whether it's charming enough to justify Panama's hype as a hot new destination, I'm not convinced. To be fair, it was rainy season, but these "highlights" felt like somewhere you'd go on your way to somewhere else. There is a lack of vibrant culture found in other Latin American destinations, and yet, there are gems. With more time we'd visit Chiriquí's hotsprings and pre-Hispanic ruins, the colourful city of David, the amazing-sounding San Blas islands, autonomously run by the Kuna Indians in the Caribbean, and pristine Isla Coiba, in a marine reserve in the Pacific. And I wouldn't have missed Calypso Joe, and all that incredible nature.

• Rainbow Tours (020-7666 1260, rainbowtours.co.uk) provided the trip. A week's B&B, including the De Ville hotel and Casa del Horno in Panama City, Tranquilo Bay (tranquilobay.com), Los Establos (losestablos.net), return flights from London, domestic flights and transfers, costs from £2,255pp. Holiday Extras provided a night at a Heathrow hotel, from £55 (holidayextras.co.uk)

The Museum of Celebrity Leftovers

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:02 GMT

A piece of bread and butter pudding left by Prince Charles, a bit of cheese toastie abandoned by Pete Doherty … this small example of British eccentricity needs a new home, discovers Emma Kennedy. Time, readers, to step up to the plate

Michael Bennett is, I suspect, great fun to know. For nine and a half years he's run The Old Boat Store cafe in Kingsand, Cornwall with his wife Francesca.

They're artists and had never run a cafe before and one day, David Bailey, the photographer, popped in. He had a cheese and tomato sandwich but he left a bit. So thrilled were the Bennetts that Bailey had stopped by that they wanted to commemorate the moment and somehow, "I can't remember whose idea it was", they came up with the notion of preserving Bailey's leftover for posterity.

"We kept it wrapped in a paper bag for quite a while," Michael tells me, but then Paul Heiney, the TV presenter, came in. "And he left a butter wrapper. And then, about a week later, in came Hugh Dennis. He had an egg sandwich. He didn't leave any leftovers so I had to pick the eggshell out of the bin. And that's when we decided to get the mineral specimen jars."

The Museum of Celebrity Leftovers was born. To look at, it's nothing more than a small decorative shelf covered with petite domes, all of which contain a morsel of food or wrappings. "I wanted to give it an end-of-the-pier feel," Michael tells me. "It's a bit of seaside fun. I'm pretty sure it's the world's smallest museum. I tried to get it verified by the Guinness Book of Records but for some reason they wouldn't allow it."

I can tell that this snub by Guinness is a cause of regret. And quite right too. One of his exhibits is, according to Michael, "surely the smallest museum exhibit in the world. That's got to be something worth celebrating, right?"

He's referring to a speck of croissant left by the actor John Woodvine. "He was in An American Werewolf in London," Michael tells me, proudly. It's a good job these leftovers are in airtight jars, I think. One gust of wind and John Woodvine's crumb would be gone.

The museum has become a worldwide phenomenon. From America to Pakistan, everyone loves their celebrity leftovers. "People are probably most impressed by Prince Charles's leftover piece of bread and butter pudding," Michael explains.

That dome has a cardboard golden crown on its top. It's appropriately regal.

The exhibits are strangely hypnotic. So here they are, although, small as they are, we don't have room to list the whole collection of 26 leftovers.

Prince of Wales, heir to the throne – tiny piece of bread and butter pudding, no mould

Pete Doherty, musician – piece of cheese and pesto toastie, a little brittle, no mould

David Bailey, photographer – crust from cheese and tomato sandwich made from Cornish speckle bread, no mould

Hugh Dennis, comedian – fragment of egg shell from egg used in his egg sandwich, retrieved from bin, slightly battered, no mould

John Woodvine, actor – flake speck from a croissant; smallest exhibit in the museum, no mould

Jan Leeming, ex-newsreader – crystallised ginger from Cornish ginger ice-cream, no mould

Michael Winner, film director and restaurant critic – piece of lemon drizzle cake, no mould

Paul Heiney, TV presenter and journalist – Anchor butter wrapper, contents used on toast with scrambled egg, scrunched

Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, first sea lord from 2006 to 2009 – raisin from fruit cake, no mould

Steve Swindells and Jerry Richards, from UK rock group Hawkwind – coffee grounds and crumbs from shared chocolate brownie, no mould

William Tyler, musician from the US band Lambchop – baked bean from cooked breakfast, deteriorated, black and some mould

Stephanie Creek, former member of cafe staff who came fourth on The Weakest Link – chickpea from a mixed salad enjoyed during her lunch break, desiccated

There's something joyous about this small, rather intense collection so it fills me with sadness that it's no longer on public display because Michael and Francesca decided to sell The Old Boat Store cafe. They want to concentrate on their art. Francesca paints in oils, while Michael's work is mostly collages and pop art. For some inexplicable reason, the new owners of the cafe didn't want to keep on the museum and now it sits, unviewed, in a spare bedroom.

So if anyone would like to take on the Museum of Celebrity Leftovers, it's up for grabs. They don't want any money for it, just a good home. So come on Guardian readers. Step up to the plate. It's a small piece of glorious eccentricity. Surely it needs to be preserved for the nation?

• If you'd like to take on the museum, then contact Emma on Twitter @EmmaK67 and she can put you in touch with Michael

Can cook, won't cook: self-catering the easy way

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:44:01 GMT

Want the privacy and space of self-catering but don't want to lift a finger in the kitchen? Then this cottage in Devon offers the solution: using local gourmet food deliveries and services

• For more self-catering properties with meals laid on, click here

The arrival of small people in our household also signalled the regrettable departure of the boutique hotel from my life. To be fair, a self-catering cottage ticks far more boxes for our family holidays; monumental meltdowns at dinner time don't have to become a spectator sport and pre-dawn renditions of Baa Baa Black Sheep can be enjoyed by us alone.

The downside? The "self" element of self-catering. When you feel like you are running a cafe in your own kitchen, the thought of having to do the same thing on holiday just doesn't appeal. So what are the alternatives if you don't want to have takeaway every night? Lots, as it turns out …

For my kitchen-free break we head for the charms of Devon's South Hams; all bucolic farm scenes and undulating hills, pregnant with great produce. Our cottage is one of six natural stone properties at the heavenly West Charleton Grange, hidden in a valley between Dartmouth and Salcombe.

On arrival, it's clear that the days of self-catering being the inferior option to hotels have passed. Heaps of fresh flowers, crisp white sheets and drench showers; it's a scene of calm and relaxation – until my kids, Maisy, six, and Mack, three, discover the wendy house in the garden. A glance at the granite worktops brings on a fleeting moment of regret that I won't be using the posh kitchen this holiday. But sense is quickly restored when I spot the gigantic homemade fish pie in the fridge. It's part of my First 24 Hours Hamper, assembled by Sam MacKenzie who helps run the place and also happens to be a professional cook. She will come to cook a meal in the cottage should I so wish, but for now I'm grateful enough for a pie to warm in the oven. There is nothing to do but head down to the heated pool and relax. Not a state I'm used to at 5pm.

Next morning's breakfast of local bread and jam is sorted from the hamper. Luckily the novelty of "what's in the basket?" overrides "where are my sugar-saturated cereals?" The sun is out, so the beach gets the vote. We are spoilt for choice on this coastline. There are family friendly sheltered coves, surf spots and long stretches for post blow-out walks. We choose pretty Blackpool Sands, its five-yard walk from the car park eases my stagger with the picnic basket. It's laden with goodies which have been delivered to our cottage from local company Red Earth Kitchen (01548 854550, kitchensuppers.co.uk, picnic baskets made to order, main courses from £3.50, free local delivery on orders over £30). Owner, cordon bleu chef Linda Burgess, does a roaring trade delivering her gourmet meals to holiday cottages. Oozing with accolades and those foodie-friendly buzzwords "local" and "seasonal", her offerings redefine the image of ready meals. She'll fill your holiday freezer with tagines and crumbles or deliver a freshly cooked dinner to your door for reheating. Which is how I came to be stuffing myself again by suppertime with chicken casserole and sausage dumplings.

With no concessions for it being Sunday morning, I'm woken at 6.30 by my two children requesting breakfast. Their shock is palpable as I pack them in the car with empty bellies for a "surprise". Breakfast on the Picnic Boat at Dartmouth is magical (07968 752625, thepicnicboat.co.uk, adults £30, children over four, £15). In fact it's my holiday highlight. With the morning sun sparkling on the water, we tuck into homemade granola and local honey yoghurt and buck's fizz as we sail from Dartmouth to the riverside village of Dittisham, catching a glimpse of Greenway, Agatha Christie's former home (now owned by the National Trust) on our way. This part of the River Dart is an aquatic playground, crisscrossed by paddle boarders, rowers, ferries and fishing boats.

Our hosts, Kevin and Rayne, pass on their infectious enthusiasm for the area and its food producers. It's less than 12 months since they spotted the business for sale while on holiday here, and chucked in their London lives to live the dream. From seafood feasts to lantern-lit dinner cruises, the boat is hugely popular with locals as well as tourists. The children try their best to catch a crab when we stop at a pontoon upriver, while I continue to scoff and watch the watery world go by. Rayne hands me a fluffy blanket and a hot-water bottle. I never want to get off.

On dry land Maisy and Mack are nagging to get back to the Grange. Given the choice, they wouldn't leave their "best ever holiday house". It's certainly possible with all the meal delivery options available. The Local Food Company (01752 895533, thelocalfoodcompany.co.uk, holiday boxes from £20, local delivery £5), based up the road in Ivybridge, can deliver all my groceries – nearly all produced in Devon, including a great range of ready meals created in their farm shop kitchen. Riverford Organic Farm (01803 762059, riverford.co.uk, seasonal veg boxes from £10.35, delivery free) is based nearby, and there's even a company that will send a chef to barbecue a meal on the beach for me (07748 305250, encompasstravel.co.uk, a three-course meal on the beach for four costs £140).

It's our last evening, and I've still managed to give the stove a wide berth. The kids are in bed, and our special treat has just been delivered to the door. It's a delectable haul of fresh handpicked seafood: crab, scallops and oysters from Salcombe's Finest (07881 525846, salcombefinest.co.uk, 1lb white crabmeat serves four as main course £23.95, delivery £7.50). It's washed down with a zesty bottle of Estate Selection from the nearby Sharpham vineyard (01803 732203, sharpham.com, Estate Selection £10.95 a bottle).

OK, it's not the cheapest way to do self-catering and I could have just ordered a bunch of factory-prepared ready meals from the supermarket, or takeaways. But, I don't eat them at home so why do it on holiday when sampling local food is such a great part of travelling? I've had all the benefits of a self-catering cottage, with a level of luxury that matches a great hotel, and I've eaten some seriously good food. I feel like I've had a proper holiday.

• The accommodation and most of the food was provided by the companies listed. Colby Cottage (01548 531779, westcharletongrange.com) sleeps four from £845 a week, the First 24 Hours Hamper includes afternoon tea, a choice of evening meal and breakfast, and costs from £42.50 for two or £69.50 for four

The Tree House, Forton, Lancashire – review

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:01 GMT

Me Tarzan, you city softie with a yearning for a taste of nature … this stylish and luxurious holiday home on stilts near Lancaster is a memorable bolthole

The first thing to point out is that the Tree House is not a treehouse. Certainly not in the classic Boy's Own sense. One of four individual self-catering properties at a fly-fishing lake, Cleveley Mere, near Lancaster, it sits amid a tight knot of trees (there is even one growing through the roof), but it has been built on stilts, rather than in the stout boughs of some enormous gnarled oak.

Nonetheless, this Scandinavian-style lodge is a memorable bolthole. The owners, the Burnsides, previously had an interior design company, and it shows. Personally, I found certain features (L-shaped white leather sofa; an Opti-myst "flame effect" fire, inset below a large flatscreen TV) a little blingy, but, taken overall, from small details such as the tree-stump bedside tables, to the handsome Miele kitchen, this is a genuine, Grand Designs-style "vision", brought to life in wood and glass.

Midwinter, despite its glass frontage, the Tree House was seriously toasty, and the bed (handmade mattress with a down topper) is arguably worth the trip alone. Fittingly, I slept like a log. Guests receive complimentary wine, chocolates and free-range eggs, laid by hens, Ken and Tucky, and, for minimum hassle, you can also pre-order a well-stocked, good-quality breakfast hamper (£45, products from Booths, the Waitrose of the north).

On a cold day, you may be tempted to simply hunker down indoors, with the Wii and the Tree House's collection of DVDs and old school games (KerPlunk!). But, particularly in summer, Cleveley Mere offers much to see and do.

You may be minutes from the M6, but there are deer, peacocks and otters to spot around the 34‑acre site, and numerous pedalos, canoes, mountain bikes and ziplines that guests can use. There is also a games den (pool, table football, etc), a secluded summer house and a small riverside beach. The Tree House itself is connected by a rope bridge to a lakeside "sunset deck", and has its own barbecue, separate fire pit, rowing boat and sun loungers. There are also activities you can pay extra for, such as fishing lessons and clay-pigeon shooting.

That action-adventure aspect of Cleveley Mere won't suit everyone, of course. In bad weather, it can be slippy and boggy underfoot. I nearly went for a Burton stepping down from the games den, and with its rope-bridge and tight internal spiral staircase, the Tree House is no place for elderly, infirm relatives. There are other minor caveats, too. Bear in mind that, while the Tree House sleeps four, two of those are in single beds on a mezzanine above the lounge. That's fine for a family, less so, perhaps, for four adults. Two months after it opened, I also came across a couple of teething problems (a loose banister; a blind falling down while I was showering).

All in all though, the Tree House is a gem. No, it's not cheap, but you could easily waste that money on nothing, elsewhere. Whereas this really is something special.

• For more information on Lancashire, head to visitlancashire.com

Viewfinder competition: win a £150 hotel voucher

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:05:57 GMT

Name the place and win a £150 voucher from Hotels.com, letting you stay at thousands of hotels worldwide

Skiing in Scotland, bluebell walks and sunshine on a budget

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:05:29 GMT

A late snow flurry in the Cairngorms, blue skies and bluebells and a cheap week away in June – with everything

Take me there: Cairngorm, Scotland

To say that the Cairngorm (cairngormmountain.org) in Scotland has had an unusual season would be an understatement. Warm weather meant there were no snowsports in March – unheard of in previous years – then from out of nowhere, in mid-April and throughout May there has been increasing snowfall, meaning that winter sports fans have been heading for the mountains every weekend this spring. The late snow has been popular with snowboarders and freestylers, for whom the Cairngorm has been laying on special features in its Quiksilver Roxy Freestyle Park, such as a new 9m ledge rail, with an MC encouraging everyone to have a go by offering prizes for an attempt.

Travel clinic: sunshine on a budget

The dilemma I would like to go somewhere sunny for a week with my partner in late June/early July. We'd like to stay in or near an interesting old town, and not far from a beach. Ideally we'd stay in a rustic but beautiful villa, apartment or small hotel with space for sunbathing. Our budget is quite tight, but we'd prefer somewhere other than eastern Europe. Debbie, Whitstable, Kent

Sicily claims the highest average daily rate of sunshine in Europe, with June temperatures registering in the high 20s. Taormina, a historic town perched loftily above the sea and which Goethe called "a patch of paradise", has an amphitheatre that hosts the Taormina Arte (taormina-arte.com) – a summer-long festival of concerts, theatre, dance and film starting in July – and is within sniffing distance of Etna, birthplace of the granita. But stay at the more down-to-earth fishing village of Letojanni, 5km down the coast, which has some lovely beachside restaurants. Owners Direct offers Villa Jasmine (sleeps two to four, from €560 for a week, ownersdirect.co.uk/italy/it341.htm), which has a spectacular sea view and a terrace with garden and is only two minutes' walk from the beach. EasyJet flies into Catania from £76.49 one way in June.

Three of the best: bluebell walks

There may be precious little blue in the sky right now, but we're not struggling at ground level - the damp conditions have given rise to some of the best bluebell carpets in recent memory

Ashdown Forest, Sussex Home to the heritage Bluebell Railway – climb aboard the steam engines to see swathes of the flowers along the tracks (bluebell-railway.co.uk)

Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire You'll see patches of bluebells on an inspiring walk that includes strolling through woods and meadows and over a bridge (tinyurl.com/bmy7ahz)

Vicarage Meadows, near Abergwesyn A nationally important wildflower meadow with an amazing display of bluebells in May and early June (tinyurl.com/cmqsvs3)

Following the footsteps of Steve Jobs in California

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:05:00 GMT

Steve Jobs was the ultimate tastemaster, but the Apple co-founder lived in surprising suburban ordinariness in Silicon Valley. Follow Jonathan Margolis on our interactive map as he follows Jobs's trail

Restaurant review: Mari Vanna, London | Jay Rayner

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:04:22 GMT

Mari Vanna, a wildly over-the-top take on Russian cooking, is a delicious carb-fest not to be taken lightly

116 Knightsbridge, London SW1 (020 7225 3122). Meal for two, including vodka and service £150

Spare a thought for the poor soul tasked with dusting the tchotchkes that cram the shelves of Mari Vanna in Knightsbridge. It's a Forth Road Bridge painting job, that. The place is crammed with knick-knacks and crockery, with white-painted farmhouse dressers and chandeliers. There are vintage photographs of the Russian family you never knew you had and partitions of artfully distressed wood in the loos, as if you're going for a slash in the outhouse of a tumbledown dacha you never knew you owned. It is over the top, shameless and curiously effective. Mari Vanna, the branch of a small chain with outposts in Moscow, St Petersburg and New York, bellows "I'm charming" at you until you surrender. Which, assuming you can swallow the prices, is what you do.

By the time I went it had been running for more than seven weeks, but still claimed to be on a soft opening, possibly the longest in London restaurant history. And if these are the soft opening prices, God help us if they crank it up. Humble starters are near a tenner or more, mains double that. On the menu it said: "We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work towards perfecting our menu, service and atmosphere," which feels like getting an apology in first. Not that there's much to apologise for. Mari Vanna, named after a fictional hostess, is what it is: a kitsch and loving take on the culinary traditions of Russia.

These, it should be said, are an acquired taste. It is, depending on your point of view, either the very essence of homely, cupboard-love cooking, or a combination of death-by-carbs and leftovers. The cult of the Russian salad has always baffled me. How cold cooked vegetables, here with the addition of cubes of sausage, all bound in mayo has managed to attain the status of classic is beyond me. Russian salad is what happens when it's late, the fridge is almost empty and you are very, very drunk. Here, it's done about as well as it can be done, the ingredients still having bite rather than disintegrating unto slurry.

Far better is a layered salad of salted herring, beetroot and potatoes. We order a bowl of pickles, which are big chunks of vinegar-cured crunchy things, and a couple of their pirogi, the classic bronze-burnished filled pastries. The minced beef and pork is the sort of thing that will see you through a snowed-in month. The more delicate sea-bass version will merely get you through a weekend.

For the main courses we stick to the classics. We have a dish of pelmeni. The silky little meat-stuffed dumplings come with a cooling bowl of soured cream and are completely compelling. We have golubtzi, the cabbage leaves stuffed with a big, butch mix of pork, veal and rice. At Mari Vanna everything is stuffed, including the diners. There may be friendly young Russian waiters who look like they work out a lot, but really you're being fed by a grandmother who doesn't understand the words "enough already". At Mari Vanna it doesn't matter what month it is. Winter is coming. Winter is always coming. So eat.

And drink, of course. There are many vodkas, sold by the 5cl shot at outrageous prices. So we slug Russian Standard vodka and chilli vodka and feel gravity take hold.

It says much for the food that it is the fabulous pastries, made of cream, sponge, cream, pastry and cream which bring lightness to the meal. The Napoleon is layers of puff pastry with heavily whipped cream, crusted with toasted almonds. The honey cake is a dozen thin layers of dark sponge with more cream and a slick of honeycomb. At which point your pancreas nails an "I quit" note to your small intestine, and curls up to die. Mari Vanna is completely bonkers, but in a sweet way. It really is charming. Now please do excuse me. I need to go for a lie down.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place

From the Observer archive, 24 May 1964: Mods v Rockers: Britain's summer of discontent

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:03:26 GMT

Originally published in the Observer on 24 May 1964

The Mod and Rocker season will probably last in its present form until August Bank Holiday. It will feature renewed forays to the south coast and possibly to Southend. Last Monday's fighting at Brighton and Margate, followed by skirmishes throughout the week in London, is then expected to enter its final phase. That, in any event, was the opinion of a Mod who stood outside the Scene, the rhythm and blues club off Great Windmill Street, early yesterday. It was raining and dark and he wore sunglasses.

He was a smallish boy who came from Liverpool to find work and had got a job loading crates in a London milk depot. The languid Merseyside tone underplayed the alternating exhilaration and disappointments of his life – the T-shirt he got by "chatting up a Yank"; the purple heart pills he could buy at 18s 6d for 20; the singlehanded fight he almost had in Paddington with three Rockers; and the battle of Margate. "We just charged up the beach. There were 800 of us and 100 Rockers. I didn't see what was going on because I was at the back with my tart."

Last week's fighting in London isolated both factions even further from the public, which welcomed the hearty talk about "hooligans... rats... and miserable specimens" from the seaside magistrates' bench. The heavy sentences handed down last week have led to some ominous threats of retaliation. "If anyone fined me £75," a Mod said, "I'd go back and do some real damage; put a few windows through with a hammer."

Mods and Rockers have co-existed comparatively well for a year or so – the Mods, neatly dressed and on scooters, the Rockers in studded leather jackets and on motorbikes. The Rockers may have jeered at the Mods' fancier ways (sublimating sex, as one Mod's father put it, to the problems of motorbike clutchplates) but they had been slowly copying the Mods' form of dress. When, for example, the Mods' high-heel boots went out of fashion, the Rockers started wearing them.

Mods are losing interest in their scooters but they do care about changing fashions and spend £4 or £5 a week to keep up to date. The latest trend is towards American crew-cuts, T-shirts with big letters, Y for Yale, H for Harvard.

Seventy-five per cent of the Scene's members are reckoned to be middle class and can usually afford to follow the trends; the rest tend to say that fashion is no longer so important.

Four of the Mods outside the Scene at 2am yesterday – two still carrying their Margate war wounds – said they stayed out all night because they wanted to enjoy themselves while they still had time. One said: "My old lady raised hell the first few times. I'm not going home tonight. I might go in for a wash-up tomorrow but I'll be out again all tomorrow night."

This is an edited extract

Thomson holiday airline seat confusion left us beside ourselves

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:59:02 GMT

For health reasons you wanted specific seats on a flight but while the Thomson agency said 'yes' its website said 'no'

My wife and I booked a package holiday in Egypt at our local Thomson agency in February. We paid £34 to book flight seats in advance. We always reserve one seat next to the aisle and the middle of the three so we can get up to exercise during the flight without disturbing anyone.

After booking I looked at Thomson's website and discovered that reserving seats in these positions was prohibited. There was no advance indication of this restriction on the website, nor had we been warned when we booked in the branch. Had I booked the holiday online, I would not have gone ahead once I realised I could not reserve the seats I wanted – but I had already paid the local agency. When I asked for my £34 back I was told there would be a £50 administration fee. My complaint is more about the principle than the £34. RD, Maidenhead, Berkshire

It turns out that your £34 does not book you the precise seats you want, it ensures only that you can sit together. Having paid for this you can then for no charge "select a seat" to ask for exactly the seats you want but, if Thomson can't or won't let you have them, there is no refund because it cost nothing. Apparently it is normal practice not to allow passengers to book the middle and aisle seats because, assuming most people did, that would leave lots of single window seats which Thomson can't allocate to the people who have paid to sit together.

Thomson overlooked the whole point of your complaint, which is that the branch did not explain this. It has now agreed to refund the £34 as a gesture of goodwill "for any mis-communication".

You can email Margaret Dibben at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Margaret Dibben, Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include a phone number

This week's new events

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:05:00 GMT

British Tarantula Society Annual Exhibition, Bilston

If you thought tarantulas came in only one variety – hairy and horrific – think again. Categories in this eight-legged expo range from "cuddly" Brachypelmas to tree-creeping Asian Arboreals, and even scorpions get a stab at netting the prestigious Best in Show prize. As well as gawping at tanks of leggy lovelies, arachnophiles can browse books and paraphernalia, enter an art contest, and catch a talk on the sustainability of Cambodia's street-food trade in spiders.

The Coseley School, Henne Drive, Sun

Colette Bernhardt

Bath Fringe

There are over 170 events taking place on Bath's fringe this year, taking in burlesque, Afro-funk and even a comic play about wrestling giants Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Things kick off on Friday with the Bedlam Fair at Green Park Station, and continue next weekend at Green Park Market and Kingsmead. Look out for the Spiegeltent on The Rec, which hosts acts daily from 1 Jun (including The Destroyers & The Carney Villains), with several daytime shows aimed at children.

Various venues, Fri to 10 Jun

Iain Aitch

Kapow! London

You only have to check the guestlist to realise that two-year-old Kapow! has already established a rep as the UK comics con. Comic-book royalty in attendance includes Frank Quitely, the artist behind what's considered to be the 21st century's definitive Superman, plus Warren Ellis, co-creator of early-noughties game-changer The Authority, a superhero team that included a bio-engineered gay Apollo and a drug-addled shaman. Guest-of-honour is Marvel head honcho, chief creative officer Joe Quesada. British comedians swell the ranks too including Jonathan Ross, who recently penned his first comic, Turf, plus Frankie Boyle, Jimmy Carr and Nick Frost. There'll also be the Stan Lee Awards, plenty of cosplay, plus – of course – stand after stand of all things comics-related.

Business Design Centre, N1, Sat, Sun

Skye Sherwin

Out & about

Protest, Power, Struggle and Strife ¡No Pasarán! London, Sat

A political marketplace and forum, taking in screenings, exhibitions, workshops and more.

Rich Mix, E1

Olympic Torch Relay, Nationwide, Sat to 27 Jul

The Olympic flame's 70-day jaunt begins at Land's End, meandering via Plymouth, Exeter and Bristol, before fetching up in Cardiff on Friday.

Various venues

Crimefest, Bristol, Thu to 27 May

Crime fiction celebration with PD James, Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth.

Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel

Arts Festival, Dumfries & Galloway, Fri to 5 Jun

Jazz and classical music kick off two weeks of music, theatre, art, comedy and more.

Various venues

Charleston Festival, Firle, Fri to 3 Jun

Joanna Lumley kicks off proceedings on Friday, with Annie Leibovitz, Marcel Theroux, Bonnie Greer and Andrew Motion later in the festival.

Charleston, Lewes

What are the best storage options out there?

Fri, 18 May 2012 22:02:15 GMT

A reader wonders where to put their belongings while they go travelling

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday's paper.

This week's question:

I'm planning to downsize on retirement and intend to put most of my stuff into storage while I travel. What are readers' experiences of storage options? How much should I pay? What are the pitfalls? And can I avoid my most loved items getting damp?

What are your thoughts?

Restaurant: Mari Vanna, London SW1

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:59:31 GMT

When is a soft opening not a soft opening? When the restaurant in question is charging full whack. It's just as well, then, that this new Russian in Knightsbridge is already well up to speed

Our starter today is a minor ethical dilemma. On arriving at Mari Vanna, a new Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge, the waiter handed us a menu and said, "This is a soft opening, so please excuse us if there is a wait for dishes or things go wrong." The menu repeats the words "soft opening". The convention is that you don't review restaurants during a soft opening, the launch period during which friends, family and random passers-by try out the kitchen and service to check things are working.

So why am I reviewing it anyway? Because the convention is also that, during a soft opening, restaurants don't charge full price. But Mari Vanna seemed fully open for business: the website says nothing about soft openings, it wasn't mentioned when I booked and the prices seem to be full whack – at least, I hope they are: the mains lurk around £20, and your bill for dinner is certain to be some distance north of £100 for two. With respect, therefore, I don't think this is a soft opening, so I'm reviewing it as if it's fully open.

I'd say that Mari Vanna is up and running to very good effect. The service, often the weak point in new ventures, is super-friendly and super-efficient. This isn't really a surprise, because Mari Vanna is part of a small chain of theme restaurants, focusing on the idea of Russian nostalgia, and on this evidence they are wonderful. The room is like no other restaurant I've been in. That's because of the decor – there's just so much of it. No surface is undecorated. There are tchotchkes, trinkets, pictures, candles, jars, lights, and decoupages of old magazines literally everywhere. It is the busiest, cosiest, homeliest, least restaurant-like restaurant imaginable. The very obvious idea is to target well-off nostalgic former citizens of the old country.

The food is wonderful, too, in its way – its very, very Russian way. There's a full page of chopped salads, made with great care and considerable visual impact: mine featured beetroot, egg, salted herring and mayonnaise, and it was a superbly balanced dish of textures and flavours. I'm not sure I've got the point of Russian salad before. Courgette pancakes were light and soft – not crisp – and came with unsmoked salted salmon and soured cream – simple but well-executed. The pierogi (dumplings) were a surprise: they were more like tiny brioche loaves with a filling inside (a choice of three, sea bass, beef and pork, cabbage and egg). A bit heavy, I thought, but a table of Russians was tucking into them with enthusiasm, so maybe this is how they rock their pierogi back in the old country.

The mains look less interesting than the starters – if I went back, I think I might stick to the earlier pages of the menu. I had calf's liver, as recommended by the waitress. It was a sort of liver stroganoff, cooked quickly and finished in a cream sauce, that came with herby mashed potatoes. The liver looked overcooked, but wasn't; a satisfying and hearty dish, but by this point I was starting to reflect on the fact that of all the adjectives applied to Russian cooking, the word "light" isn't one that tends to crop up. Borscht was great, much less beetrooty than expected, with a generous dollop of beef to cut the vegetable's sweetness, and paprika to enliven it – a grown-up soup well on the way to being a stew.

My pudding was superb, red berries with a "Russian cream" that was whipped and enriched with egg yolk. I didn't, indeed couldn't, finish it. I can't remember the last time I ate a meal that featured cream in all three courses. I'm writing this at lunchtime the next day, and it's unclear at this moment whether I'm ever going to feel hungry again.

Be warned, though, that Mari Vanna seems to appeal to the fashion-forward, who are always keen to adopt ideas that reject current notions of restrained good taste. I think that's why the German woman at the next table was talking about "bio-cleansing" and loudly claiming that her very silly beaded cap was "channelling a little Stalin".

Uphill struggle to get Travel FX to return my cash

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:58:02 GMT

Travel FX has seized £1,600 after its systems flagged up my currency exchange transaction as 'suspicious'

In October last year I went to Nepal to climb the mountain Ama Dablam. I needed $2,500 in cash in order to pay the sherpas, so I searched on Google for companies that would give a better exchange rate than I would get at the airport.

The best rate was offered by Travel FX, so I transferred my money to them from my Nationwide account. I currently live in Spain and the cheapest flight I could find to Kathmandu was from Heathrow, so I decided to fly to England a day early to visit my parents and asked for the money to be delivered to their address.

The money did not arrive and when I contacted Travel FX I was told the payment had been flagged as suspicious by their money-laundering procedures and would not be released until I had proved I was a real person and that the money had been transferred from a real bank account. I had to borrow money from my parents. While I was away my wife gathered the necessary information, which she sent to Travel FX.

On my return from Nepal in November I requested that Travel FX return the money to my account as I no longer required the cash. Travel FX informed me that I would have to request the £1,600 be returned through my bank.

I asked Nationwide to request the return of the money, and it has made numerous requests with no response. I have told Travel FX that my bank is requesting the money and asked if there was any reason it could not be returned. They replied that their internal procedures mean that they cannot supply me with any information on the matter. I have asked Nationwide to write directly to Travel FX but they have not received any reply either.

There seems to be an impasse as Travel FX will not communicate with anyone regarding the return of the money. Do you have any advice as to how I should proceed? GH, Spain

When we took up your complaint we thought this would be simple to resolve, as these things usually are the result of an administrative error. However, this has been a nightmare and like you, we have found Travel FX to be one of least helpful companies we have dealt with this year.

As you say, it refused the transaction on the grounds that it contravened its rules. That's fair enough, as your transaction was unusual, but then to do nothing to return your money – and to refuse to get involved – is worrying, given that you have provided your passport and other ID evidence.

Throughout our extensive discussions, company director Graham Tennant has argued that to have repaid you your money would have contravened the money-laundering rules. Instead, he and his firm has insisted that you ask your bank, Nationwide, to recall the payment. "This is a method approved by HM Revenue & Customs to whom we are responsible," he says.

Nationwide has repeatedly asked for the money to be sent, but it hasn't happened. We asked Nationwide to look at this and it says it has requested the money again, but nothing has appeared. It can't compel Travel FX's bank, Lloyds, to return the money. Throughout, Travel FX has blamed the delay on the banks, and argued that its hands are tied.

To see whether this "nothing to do with us stance" adopted by Travel FX holds water, we contacted Kevin Robinson, a partner and expert on money laundering at solicitors Irwin Mitchell. He expressed surprise at Travel FX's actions and said he could see no reason why the original transaction couldn't have gone ahead. The company could have filed a suspicious transaction report with the authorities, he said, and proceeded with that in place.

He says that to halt a transaction, financial institutions have to have prima facie evidence that the money has come from the proceeds of crime. He certainly saw no reason why your money couldn't be returned to your account, and suggested that faced with this stance, he would go to the police to report the money as missing – something you my have to do.

Tennant disagrees and says that "banking theft and money laundering are growing crimes and we want to be active in identifying and preventing them. We choose to err on the side of caution."

A look on the web shows this company has plenty of happy customers – it offers some of the best rates around – but also others who have experienced problems following failed transactions. Whether other readers will want to use this company to save a few pounds on currency costs is up to them.

Finally as Money went to press, some good new arrived. Following pressure from us and Nationwide, Travel FX appears to have finally told its bank Lloyds to send Nationwide a cheque. It will now be able to reimburse you your £1,600.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@guardian.co.uk or write to Bachelor & Brignall, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number

Surf and turf: Central America holiday ideas

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:06 GMT

Central America has something for everyone, from surfing down a volcano to surfing in the Pacific, and from rainforest lodges to pensiones in colonial cities

Central America is gaining in popularity for adventure travel. Earlier this year, Latina Marketing, which promotes the region in Europe, announced a 7% increase in British travellers there in 2011 compared with 2010 – there were around 85,000 between January and October. There had been a 6% increase in foreign visitors, to more than 9.5 million.

Here are some of the region's highlights, to explain why it's on the hot list.

Belize

Tiny, English-speaking Belize is great for an action-packed holiday: snorkelling or diving on the second biggest barrier reef in the world, spotting jaguars in the Cockscomb Basin wildlife sanctuary, kayaking down jungle rivers or just relaxing on the Caribbean beaches. Don't miss Belize City, Mayan archaeological sites (such as Lamanai or Caracol) and the fantastic islands of Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker.

Go it alone Check out travelbelize.org for unusual activities including cave tubing, plus ideas of where to stay.

Book a trip Journey Latin America (020-3432 1514, journeylatinamerica.co.uk) has a 12-day trip from £1,976pp, staying in luxury countryside and beach lodges, excluding flights.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is paradise for watersports fans, with white-water rafting at Turrialba, surfing on the Nicoya peninsula and calm seas for swimming along the Caribbean coast. Land-based attractions aren't in short supply either, with volcanoes in Rincón de la Vieja national park and cloud forests around Monteverde. Tortuguero national park is a great place to see leatherback and green turtles. La Kukula Lodge is a new small hotel in the jungle, a few hundred metres from the white-sand beaches (lakukulalodge.com, doubles $80).

Go it alone Visitcostarica.com has information about destinations, accommodation and events, plus bus timetables and a list of car rental companies for independent travellers. It also has a large section on sustainable tourism, with details of ecohotels and activities, such as zip lines in the rainforest. Go to turismo-sostenible.co.cr/en for more on sustainable travel in Costa Rica.

Book a trip Responsible Travel (responsibletravel.com) has a two-week multisport holiday from £1,099, excluding flights but including rafting, hiking and biking, and optional kayaking, waterfall rappelling, ziplining and surfing.

Guatemala

Guatemala is home to one of the finest colonial cities in Central America, Antigua. The craft markets in the highland villages are renowned, especially Chichicastenango. and natural highlights include Lago Atitlán, a highland lake encircled by volcanoes, Semuc Champey, a series of limestone pools, and the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes mountain range. The lost city of Tikal is one of the largest Mayan archaeological sites, and American archaeologists have just discovered the oldest Mayan calendar ever found (1,200 years old) on the walls of Xultun in the north. You could stay in that region at film director Francis Ford Coppola's La Lancha coppolaresorts.com/lalancha, casitas sleeping two from $101) resort.

Go it alone The official tourist information site, visitguatemala.com, is very basic. A better starting point is the Wikitravel page, wikitravel.org/en/Guatemala, which has useful information on travelling by "chicken bus" and getting off the beaten track.

Book a trip Explore (0845 013 1537, explore.co.uk) has a 15-day family trip, Active Guatemala, from £1,275 (adults), £805 (children), excluding flights.

El Salvador

Another tiny but hugely scenic country, El Salvador boasts great mountain landscapes along La Ruta de las Flores, tropical forests in the El Imposible national park and surfing beaches on the Pacific coast – El Sunzal is the best. The Akwamar Adventure Club based there offers surfing and paragliding packages (akwamarsunzal.com). Cobbled Suchitoto is a lovely colonial town with an arty feel, and Joya de Cerén is unmissable: a pre-Hispanic village that was engulfed by a volcano and preserved under a layer of ash, like Pompeii.

Go it alone Elsalvador.travel has six suggested routes through the country, depending on your interests: coffee, culture, beaches, archaeology ... It also has a handy distance guide so you can work out if your planned trek/cycle ride is actually feasible. Or travel along the Peace Trail, through an area in the north-east that suffered most in the civil war (1980-92). It is a beautiful region of rivers and waterfalls, ideal for hiking and mountain biking, where tourism really benefits the local community (see elsalvadordestinos.com).

Book a trip Responsible Travel (responsibletravel.com) has a four-day La Ruta de las Flores tour from £521 excluding flights, or Journey Latin America (020-3432 1514, journeylatinamerica.co.uk) has a 10‑day Highlights of El Salvador trip from £1,322, excluding flights.

Nicaragua

Unspoilt Nicaragua is famed for lakes and volcanoes, some covered by rainforest and suitable for hiking, some home to coffee plantations. You can walk to the top of the active Masaya volcano (usually – in recent weeks it has been a little too active for comfort); find petroglyphs on the volcanic island of Ometepe; visit the far-flung Corn Islands; or even surf down the side of the Cerro Negro volcano. The country's best-preserved colonial cities include Granada and Léon – the capital Managua is less appealing. Nicaragua is also a cheaper alternative to Costa Rica for surfers – for a budget break on the Pacific coast, try El Coco Loco, a surf and yoga resort (elcocolocoresort.com, cabins for four from around $65pp/pn, including meals and beer).

Go it alone Vianica.com is a comprehensive resource, covering everything from sea turtle nesting sites to homestays where you can learn about coffee cultivation and Nicaraguan cooking.

Book a trip Exodus (0845 004 7089, exodus.co.uk) has a 16-day cycle tour of Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica from £2,499 including flights.

Honduras

Honduras is ideal for island-hopping: the Bay Islands have white sandy beaches and the main island, Roatán, has good accommodation. The fishing villages around Tela on the northern coast are the place to experience authentic Garifuna food and culture. Wildlife lovers should head to the Pico Bonito national park to observe native armadillos, or to Lago de Yojoa, with its hundreds of bird species. The ruined city of Copán is an impressive site.

Go it alone Roatanisland.net focuses on the largest island, including where to find a secluded beach. Letsgohonduras.com has a directory of hotels across Honduras plus details of La Ruta Lenca, a trail through towns that still keep the traditions of the ancient Lenca, predecessors of the Mayans.

Book a trip On The Go Tours (020-7371 1113, onthegotours.com) has a 15-day tour of Honduras and Nicaragua from £990, excluding flights, staying in simple hotels and guesthouses.

Self-catering holidays made easy

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:04 GMT

If you don't want to have to cook on holiday, we have found UK self-catering properties which also offer meals

• For a self-catering cottage in Devon with meals laid on, click here

Chatsworth holiday cottages, Derbyshire

For that lord of the manor feel, hire the Hunting Tower on the Chatsworth Estate. This 16th-century landmark is thought to have been a banqueting house as well as a place for ladies to relax while watching the hunt. For your own banquet you can hire the chefs from Chatsworth House (from £55 a head). For a cheaper option, pop down to the Chatsworth Farm shop and pick up their ready meals made using estate produce.
• 01246 565379, chatsworth.org. The Hunting Tower sleeps four from £1,064 a week

Bluebell Croft, Argyll

The food options at the self-sufficient Bluebell Croft in the village of Strontian, on the north shores of Loch Sunart in the Scottish Highlands are endless. Self-catering guests can order suppers of comforting casseroles made with croft produce (from £7.50pp) prepared by owner and award-winning chef, Sukie. Her husband, Bill, offers tuition in the art of smoking food and runs foraging courses so you can feast on berries from the hedgerows instead of standing by a stove. That said, you probably won't mind cooking when abundant fresh produce and meat from the croft can be delivered daily to your door. There is a hot tub with stunning views of the mountains.
• 01967 402226, bluebellcroft.co.uk. Rose Cottage sleeps four from £600 a week

Hell Barn Cottages, Dorset

Incongruously named for a happy holiday retreat perhaps, but the catering options at these rural Dorset cottages in the village of Chideock, near Bridport, are an even more unlikely fusion. Owner Shigeaki Takezoe is a Japanese chef and will produce authentic Japanese menus for guests (from £12pp). Local company Manna Kitchen (01305 851551, mannakitchen.co.uk) also delivers meals, with mains from £3.65pp, plus £10 delivery on orders under £45.
• 01297 489589, hellbarn.co.uk. From £200 a week for a studio for two

Blaenglanhanog Holiday Cottage, Powys

Sample the good life 1,000ft up in Wales's Cambrian mountains. Blaenglanhanog is a 250-year-old drover's cottage near the village of Carno, owned by Liz and Jeremy, who run a small-holding next door. Buy the veggies and freshly baked bread, cakes and jams produced by Liz on her log-fuelled range or try her coveted elderberry salad dressing, harvested from local hedgerows and neighbours' gardens. If dressing your own salad gets too much then you can take advantage of their Eat with Us option: a two-course meal of home-produced food served in the dining hall of their home costs £15pp.
• 01686 420712, carnocottage.co.uk. Sleeps six from £270 a week

Barsham Barns, Norfolk

Tired from that bracing walk on the Norfolk beaches? Then you might appreciate the services of local chef Kelby Light who will deliver classy dinners for reheating (from £16.50pp) or cook in your luxury barn near Walsingham while you wind down in the steam room. He'll cater for children's parties, make paellas for groups or sort your picnic hampers.
• 01328 821744, barshambarns.co.uk. Little Barsham sleeps four from £730 a week

Natural Retreats, nationwide

Luxury eco-chic property specialist Natural Retreats has an on-site concierge who will pander to your every whim, including booking restaurants, chefs and food deliveries when you don't have the energy or inclination to do things for yourself. Its complimentary food hampers are generously packed with local gourmet goodies too. It has properties in six UK locations, including Cornwall, the Yorkshire Dales and John o'Groats.
• 0844 384 3166, naturalretreats.com. A three-bedroom property sleeping six near Richmond in the Yorkshire Dales costs from £658 a week

Walking in Albania's 'Accursed Mountains'

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:03 GMT

On a new trek in the Accursed Mountains of Albania, our writer discovers an unspoilt landscape that doesn't live up to its name

Like many minor roads in Albania, the route from the northern city of Shkodër to the nearby mountains is not tarmacked, and as our van bumps along, it contributes to the clouds of white dust that settle on everything in sight. We pass countless old Mercedes, several horses and carts, and bicycling old men wearing brimmed hats and shades. Many of the roadside buildings are half-built or crumbling, but scruffy cafes and petrol stations are doing good business, alongside houses smartly painted in bright colours: lime green, peach, lavender and aquamarine.

Then we reach a handful of low-lying concrete domes. During the communist regime, which collapsed in 1990, it's estimated that more than 500,000 of these machine gun bunkers were constructed in Albania. "Our dictator built them so that people would always have the feeling that other states are going to attack us, and not think about the problems in this country," says our guide, Aleks.

That era of extreme isolation has gone, but Albania remains a closed book to many: until very recently Albanians needed visas to travel to most of Europe, and the country has had relatively few foreign visitors. The group squeezed into the 10-seater minibus includes a retired banker, a TV executive and a supply teacher, and our ages vary by more than 40 years. What unites us is a desire to learn more about this country.

I could also say it was a love of hiking (we're here on a trekking tour – a new itinerary from Walks Worldwide), although my interest in mountain walking has hitherto been purely theoretical. I'm relying on raw enthusiasm to see me through five full days on rubble-strewn paths under a hot September sun.

Glowing red in the evening haze from the castle in Shkodër the previous night, the "Accursed Mountains" (part of the Dinaric Alps) seemed almost lunar. During our walking we find much to justify their name. Blasted tree skeletons and flailing roots attest to the violence of winter storms. We scrabble and slip over bleached white rocks, brush past sun-scorched ferns, and even witness a small forest fire. But, above all, the mountains are tranquil. Crickets croak in hidden meadows, lizards skit beneath stones, and butterflies dance between rosehips and blackberry bushes. We refill our water bottles from cold springs, and take a shivery swim in a waterfall's blue plunge pool. The silence of a shady beech canopy is broken only by the crunch and clatter of our steps and sticks.

We start on the first day with a steep descent and the intensity rarely lets up. From below, the mountains look impossible to climb, and ascending their zigzag paths requires a determined, sustained effort. I breathe heavily, and when I pause, blood thumps in my neck. But as we near the summits (the highest peak in the Dinaric Alps is at 2,694m) and breezes cool our sweaty faces, it's exhilarating to be so high up.

We walk through villages, valleys and high passes, stopping at guesthouses to rest tired feet and eat dinner outside in the cool evening air. Our diet is simple and often repetitive: every day, our lunch features a tomato, a cucumber and a strong, feta-like cheese that can be almost unpalatably pungent. But baked wild trout, a natural yoghurt drink, and plum raki are a different matter. Clean streams run straight off the mountainside, keeping beer cans cold.

At the village of Thethi we see a "blood feud" tower, where the targets of clan rivalries could take refuge. It hasn't been used for about 200 years, but many communities still live and work in the mountains. On one occasion we meet a man pushing a wheelbarrow in which is a trussed pig, headed for slaughter. He grins proudly as we take photos of the quivering animal.

Aleks tells a story about how the Accursed Mountains got their name. Two brothers went hunting and found a beautiful fairy. Asked which one she preferred, she answered: one for his bravery, the other for his good looks. The brave brother killed the handsome one and took the fairy home to their mother, who was so angry she cursed the fairy and the mountains for ever.

In Albania, not everything runs smoothly: you're more likely to encounter a mountain fairy than a reliable bus timetable, and in just one night in the capital, Tirana, we experienced several brief powercuts. But it is partly because of this that it leaves its mark. Before going I wasn't sure if I could hike, nor whether I would enjoy it, or get on with people who did. By the end, all of those concerns had evaporated into the mountain air.

• Walks Worldwide (0845 301 4737, walksworldwide.com) provided the trip. Its eight-day Accursed Mountains tour costs from £565pp, including seven nights' accommodation, most meals, a guide and baggage transfers, but not international flights. The next trip with availability departs on 14 July. Montenegro Airlines (montenegroairlines.com) provided flights from Heathrow to Podgorica in Montenegro, from where buses connect to Shkodër. Return flights cost from £256

Water world: from Lake Nicaragua to the Rio San Juan

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:44:02 GMT

Kevin Rushby visits an artists' colony on the vast Lake Nicaragua then heads down the San Juan river in search of caimans and a lizard with divine powers

View a slideshow of the trip here

'You know about Jesus Christ?" asks Don Pedro in a whisper, the beam of his headtorch strafing the riverbank.

I nod. It's a filthy black night. It's raining. We are on a big fast river, the Rio San Juan, in the middle of the Nicaraguan jungle, surrounded by the noise of water and, no doubt, poisonous creatures carrying unspeakable diseases. In such situations people say all kinds of things.

"You know," he insists, "Jesus Christ – the lizard."

I shake my head.

"Both of them can walk on water." The faint torchlight dips as the bows of the canoe go under some overhanging branches. There, poised on one of them, is a huge black and grey kingfisher, its eyes closed in sleep. We creep closer, but it does not move. I could reach out and stroke its perfect plumage.

Pedro has other creatures on his mind. He is, after all, a former crocodile and caiman hunter, a man who likes his wildlife cold-blooded. "Maybe I catch one Jesus Christ lizard for you."

And then, almost as if it was planted there for our benefit, there is a long green reptile stretched out on a branch minding its own business. The hand of Pedro drifts over its head, then sweeps down with lightning speed. There follows a brief wrestling match that Pedro wins.

I shuffle up the canoe to inspect it: a gorgeous blaze of emerald scales as long as my arm with a scarlet mouth gaping and two fearful beady eyes.

"Now," says Pedro. "I put him on the water and he will walk on it – like Jesus Christ."

He does so. The lizard sinks like a stone. Pedro smiles, his faith in the Jesus lizard clearly unshaken.

"Sometimes he don't like to do the walk."

The river journey had begun a couple of days earlier with something of a realisation for me. I was standing next to a handful of old Spanish cannons that pointed out across the Rio San Juan in the southern Nicaraguan town of San Carlos. Away to the right the river was emerging from the vast expanse of Lake Nicaragua, or Cocibolca, all 3,000 square miles of it, then muscling under the eyes of these blackened cannons towards the Caribbean, 120 miles away to the east.

"Were these put here to fight the Costa Ricans?" I asked my guide, Henry, who was chatting to two young women from Managua, our companions on the river journey to come. The Costa Rican thing was a bit of a jest really, but the border was only a few miles away to the south.

Henry laughed. "No, they were to fight you English."

Maria, one of the women, took up the subject. "He's not joking, you know. Before the Panama Canal, the San Juan was the easiest route to sail across Central America." She gestured towards the lake. "The far side of Cocibolca is only 18km from the Pacific. So the Spanish used the river to transport treasure down to the Caribbean – and that brought the English pirates. You could say that the San Juan was once the most important river in the world."

I leaned over the parapet and watched the waterfront. San Carlos had the atmosphere of a frontier settlement: everyone lazing around watching the river go by while they waited for something to happen. A few soldiers leaned on a wall. The telephone wires were festooned with orchids that had flowered and faded, but still hung there like some leftover bunting from a botanical festival. Almost four centuries after the golden age of piracy, it was still quite easy to imagine Henry Morgan or William Dampier appearing from around the last bend in the river.

Once our boat had been found and loaded, we headed back into the lake as the plan was to spend the first night on an island there. Floating pads of vegetation drifted by, some lorded over by a solitary heron. I once read that Cocibolca (meaning freshwater sea in indigenous Aztec) is the only expanse of freshwater in the world where you can be eaten by a shark, but Henry shook his head. "Very unlikely. We never see them: too many were fished out."

Conservation is in its infancy here, but it is vitally important: Nicaragua has the same land area as England but vastly more species of animals and plants. In the lake, the sharks and large-toothed sawfish were almost fished out in the 70s and a subsequent ban has not led to any recovery.

Approaching the Solentiname Islands, a group of 36 low forested outcrops, we spotted flashes of orange bursting from the thick canopy of trees.

"Orioles!" shouted the boatman, "They come here in winter."

We landed at dusk on Mancarrón, one of the four larger islands, where there is the small Hotel Mancarrón. Maria and her friend Lucia appeared to have come prepared for something rather grander, each dragging a vast wheelie bag of outfits for all occasions. Travelling hand-luggage-only is great until something unexpected crops up on the social front. Here I was on a remote jungle island and my companions were dressed for dinner in immaculately pressed outfits. I wore my wrinkles and kept out of the lamplight. Fortunately a couple of locals came in and chatted as we ate. The talk soon turned to their daily struggle to survive, which they do by augmenting meagre incomes with paintings and carvings to sell to visitors.

Back in 1966 a Catholic priest named Ernesto Cardenal came here and encouraged some of the people to paint naive pictures of their lives. Cardenal was a liberation theologian, a revolutionary, and also an acclaimed poet. He organised a community of artists and went on to become Nicaraguan culture minister when the Sandinistas took power in 1979 – a political career that provoked the displeasure of Pope John Paul II.

Despite the artistic cottage industry that Cardenal helped bring to Solentiname, the islands are tranquil and slow-moving. The people go by boat to a mainland forest to collect balsa wood and bring it back to carve. Next day we visited several houses where family teams were busily engaged in producing carvings, mostly on themes of nature or religion – toucans and hummingbirds among angels and saints, and all of them painted in bright colours. The tranquillity and beauty are what bring visitors here, but there are too few of them to bring much prosperity.

We took our boat across to the neighbouring island where painting, rather than carving, is the main occupation. Solentiname people frequently win major art competitions held in Managua. At each house we called out, "Anyone home? Do you want to show us your work?" Everyone did. I liked the big canvases but settled for a small, and more portable, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Rodolfo Arellano, one of the best-known of the island's artists. His Eden, I noted, looked a lot like Solentiname.

Back in the boat we headed towards the beginning of the Rio San Juan, passing San Carlos again, then headed downstream into the jungle. The river was a muscular brown flood, powering eastwards. In the trees howler and spider monkeys watched us pass while gangs of swallows spun around the boat snatching flies from the air. Henry and I were stopping for every bird: ospreys, crested caracara (a superbly regal falcon), and peregrine falcons. Maria and Lucia dozed: their sole aim was to get to Castillo, a village some hours downstream, and do a night-time caiman-spotting expedition. This seemed a very unlikely objective for them, but they admitted it was like a dare: they wanted to hold a caiman and have their photo taken.

At La Esperanza we stopped to view the last settlement connected to the rest of the country by road. It was late afternoon and everyone was out strolling or else lazing in hammocks on verandahs.

By the time we reboarded the boat it was sunset and now a bizarre natural phenomenon occurred: millions of flying insects emerged. The river was covered in a bronze cloud of them several metres thick and we all had to hunker down in the boat to avoid being splattered. Darkness came but we pressed on finally reaching our destination, a few lights on the south bank, the village of Castillo.

Castillo's original raison d'être was to guard the river from the English. The Spanish built a small fort on a hill overlooking some rapids on a bend in the river. It was the last place on earth that a Spanish soldier might want to be posted. Death rates were extraordinary, mainly from fevers, but the pirates came too and later, in 1780, an ambitious young English naval captain who was looking to make a name for himself by cutting the Spanish American Empire in two. In a daring raid, the English sailors rowed in from the Caribbean, trekked through the jungle to fool the Spanish, then attacked Castillo from the landward side. The sickly garrison capitulated without much trouble, but the English soon found that disease was the real enemy. Only 10 of the original 200 survived, among them their leader, Horatio Nelson, who brashly informed the admiralty that, "I was the main cause of victory."

These days Castillo is still only accessible by river, and still surrounded by thick jungle. The fort, containing an excellent little museum, stands on a hill named after Nelson.

Leaving our boat, we walked from the quayside along the main town path – there are no roads or cars – admiring the handsome wooden verandahs of the houses, many of which lean on stilts over the water. At the end of town we reached the Hotel Victoria, whose balconies look out over the rapids. It was here too that we found Don Pedro, a crocodile and caiman hunter turned – via the work of a local conservation NGO – into a wildlife guide.

"How do you actually catch the caimans?"

He held up his hands, grinning. There was a large scar on one of them.

Thirty minutes later we were watching that Jesus Christ lizard make his underwater getaway. Cruising slowly onward down the river, keeping tight as we could to the bank, we searched for the caimans, a type of small alligator that grows to a maximum of 2.5 metres. It was totally dark except for Pedro's headlight, but we could see narrow inlets, patches of darkness under trees. We scraped through. Birds sleeping above us blinked but did not move. Finally Pedro waved excitedly to his colleague and we turned into a small bay. Pedro now began calling, a low honking noise and from the darkness came answering grunts and splashes. "Mama caiman," hissed Pedro. "I give her the distress call of a baby caiman and she answers."

We moved in. I saw two unblinking red eyes, peering out from the water. But when they disappeared gently below the surface we kept drifting forward. There was a second animal in the grass on the bank. Pedro shifted into position. His technique, he had explained, was simple. Grab it round the neck and haul it out fast, trying your very best to avoid the slashing tail.

Then suddenly he pounced. There was an almighty splash and then the flash of white belly writhing and straining. Pedro fell back into the canoe. The caiman fought in sudden desperate spasms, then quite abruptly, surrendered. A rope was thrown around its jaws. Now Maria came forward and sat with the animal on her knee, but no amount of persuading could get Lucia to do it. Pedro waited, explaining all he could about the life of the caiman, about how they were caring parents, gentle and secretive, easygoing, good with children – caiman children that is. Lucia just could not do it. Pedro shrugged. He had tried. Pulling the rope off its jaws, he flung the animal unceremoniously overboard.

It had felt to me like we had held on to that caiman for too long; besides the fact that the capture was clearly stressful. But the truth is that men like Pedro have been brought in from the world of hunting and the caiman population has increased. The reptile's future is secure – as long as tourists come and employ Pedro.

Back at the Hotel Victoria later that night I lay in bed listening to the rain hammer down on the tin roof. Each time it seemed the downpour could not increase it did. I got up and went down the corridor on to the balcony and looked out over the roofs of Castillo. Drainpipes were coughing and gulping as torrents of water came down. Next to me was a potted plant. Something moved in it. I peered closer. Sheltering from the violence of the storm under a leaf was a tiny hummingbird, its body no bigger than the end of my thumb, a tiny brilliant part of this country's staggering biodiversity. We both sat there for a long time watching the rain. Then, when it finally eased off, the bird's wings thrummed into life and it sped away.

• US operator Solentiname Tours (+1 505 8852 3380, solentinametours.com) provided the five-day Rio San Juan Nicaragua Tour. The tour costs from $1,000pp, including four nights' accommodation (two at Managua's Hotel Los Robles), domestic flights, private car and boat, guide and meals. Iberia (0870 609 0500, iberia.com) provided flights from London to Managua via Madrid, including a regional connection with TACA (taca.com). Flights start at £827 return. York to London rail travel provided by East Coast Trains (08457 225225, eastcoast.co.uk). Holiday Extras (holidayextras.co.uk) provided transfers, parking and airport hotels. For further information see: visitcentroamerica.com, riosanjuan.com.ni, visitanicaragua.com

Stagecoach's California dreams move closer to reality

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:50:19 GMT

Owning depots in Texas and California will keep down Stagecoach's costs and allow greater control over Megabus network

Some dream of cruising the Californian highways in an open top Cabriolet. But there will now be a British alternative: road trips from LA to San Francisco in a Stagecoach Megabus.

The Perthshire-based transport operator run by Brian Souter announced it had acquired businesses worth $134m from Coach America, including operations in Sacramento and Anaheim with depots that Stagecoach will use to expand its Megabus network of budget intercity coaches.

The deal is for contracts and operations employing 1,500 people across eight states, and 800 vehicles. Coach America is a major US operator of bus and coach services that has been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since January.

Souter, chief executive of Stagecoach, said: "Our North American division is the fastest growing part of the group and this transaction will allow us to acquire selected businesses and vehicles at attractive prices in markets and regions we know well. These businesses will benefit from both our management expertise and ability to invest for growth.

"We see significant potential to roll out megabus.com's successful package of low fares and high quality service to new locations in the US. The acquisitions in Texas and California in particular will give us an extended geographic footprint to accelerate our growth strategy for the brand, which already covers around 80 key locations in North America."

Owning depots in Texas and California will keep down Stagecoach's costs and allow it greater control in how it expands its Megabus network.

Overall, Stagecoach operates around 1,900 buses and coaches in the US and Canada, including commuter and transit services as well as tours and some school bus services.

Separately, Stagecoach will be operating the first hybrid tram-trains in Britain, the Department for Transport announced on Friday.

A £58m pilot scheme will test the tram-trains on both rail and tram networks in Sheffield, where they run on both tramways and train tracks from the city centre to suburbs out to Rotherham.

The new tram-train vehicles will operate from 2015 on Sheffield's Supertram network, run by Stagecoach, and on part of the national rail network adapted to allow a seamless transition.

Wales coast path: inspiring landscapes and big ideas in Cardigan - audio slideshow

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:50:00 GMT

David Hieatt, founder of clothing company Howies, and James Lynch, of Fforest farm, talk about the big ideas coming out of the west coast of Wales

Michelin starred lunch prices visualised: can you spot a bargain?

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:58:22 GMT

Using data published here at the Datablog, designers at thetrainline.com have produced a pastel shade visualisation of lunch prices at Michelin starred restaurants across the British Isles. Click the image below to view the full size version.
• Who made this graphic? Designers from thetrainline.com
• Where can I find it? here

Establishments are ranked in order of the cost of a set lunch, grouped according to the number of courses included and colour-coded by region. The most affordable venue is the Hand and Flowers in Marlow, where two courses will set you back £15.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the larger image you will find the Fat Duck - Heston Blumenthal's flagship - where the set lunch consists of a whopping 14 courses and comes at an appropriately pricey £180!

20 restaurants are not included in the graphic since they either do not serve lunch or offer only an a la carte lunch menu. These establishments are listed at the very bottom of the full size image.

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Stop the Caravan Tax say Tory and Labour MPs

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:35:00 GMT

Two political rivals in east Yorkshire join forces to condemn the proposed VAT on static caravans. Their part of the north has thousands of jobs at stake

Among the issues causing controversy following the Budget on 21 March is the Chancellor's proposal to levy 20% VAT on static caravans from October.

This policy, produced without any prior warning or publicity, would have a disproportionate impact on the Hull and east Yorkshire area, where some 90% of the UK's caravan manufacturing industry is located.

The Government is introducing this VAT measure to iron out a perceived anomaly within the tax system, albeit not one that many people outside the Treasury have ever expressed any concern about. The merits of the proposed change are highly dubious – it was rejected when VAT was first introduced in the UK in 1973 – and efforts to deal with these issues often simply give rise to further anomalies.

Our main contention is one of priorities. How can a change of such trivial importance be justified without any consideration of the wider economic effects of the measure? The Treasury's own Budget impact assessment shows that VAT on static caravans would cut demand in the industry by 30%. There have been some even more worrying estimates from within the industry.

In turn this would lead to job losses, mainly in and around east Yorkshire, from local caravan firms and their supply chain running to several thousand. The UK holiday industry has estimated that the Caravan Tax would then have a knock-on effect that would lead to thousands more jobs going, especially in seaside towns and rural communities.

The job losses caused by the Caravan Tax would lead to more redundancy costs, increased welfare payments, and a loss of income tax and National Insurance revenues that would certainly mean that the tax would be a net loser of revenue. Indeed, the Treasury's own figures show the Caravan Tax losing revenue overall. It would raise £40m, but we estimate will cost £45m.

On the Caravan Tax, the Government has got itself a position of defending a measure that contradicts so many of its stated policy goals and the arguments ministers frequently use to support them. One of the justifications for the controversial decision to cut the 50p tax rate next year was that it does not raise enough. The Caravan Tax only raises £15m in its first year and would lose the Treasury revenue overall!

A Government that cuts Corporation Tax to boost jobs and growth should not be introducing a tax that would harm jobs and growth.

A Government that is concerned about rural areas and coastal towns should not pursue a measure that hits these areas, so dependent on the wider UK caravan holiday industry, so severely.

Neither is it wise or fair to impose such a huge further loss of private sector jobs on a hard-pressed city such as Hull where so many job-seekers already chase each job vacancy. The scale of job losses that the Caravan Tax would impose on East Yorkshire would be several times greater than those threatened at the local BAE Systems site in Brough.

The Caravan Tax also fails by any measure of fairness. While proposing to make static caravans less affordable for so many, there is no Budget tax proposal to target the second homes of the wealthiest.

In the debate about how to achieve sustained economic growth there is much upon which we disagree. The dangerous proposal to put VAT on static caravans is, however, an issue that unites us across the party divide. The Caravan Tax must be stopped now, before it can cause huge damage to an important private sector industry that has been working hard to recover from the global downturn of 2008/09.

It would be perverse for any Government keen on creating the conditions for growth, and especially one which speaks so often about the importance of 'rebalancing the economy' towards the north, manufacturing exports and private sector jobs , to do such damage to all these objectives. All for the sake of a tax adjustment of no real importance.

With Parliamentary petitions, debates and an Early Day Motion we are doing all that we can as local MPs to raise this urgent issue and persuade the Government to think again. The Government has helpfully extended its consultation period.

Now we need ministers to listen to the groundswell of opinion and withdraw this tax. We're not asking for a state subsidy for the caravan industry - just for the Government not to harm an industry for no good reason.

Diana Johnson is Labour MP for Hull North. Andrew Percy is Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole

Shock of beauty on a windswept moor

Thu, 17 May 2012 20:00:02 GMT

South Uist: Though small, tormentil has great character with something infinitely cheering about its buttercup brightness in the most inhospitable of places

The rock's pale surface is patched and patterned with lichen in shades of grey and soft sage green. At its foot are straggly hard-stemmed heather plants, still winter brown. From among them rise pinnate fronds of polypody. Bright green and fresh, delicate-looking and glossy, they make a perfect visual accent and a striking textural contrast with the rock behind. In the short turf between the heather is a scatter of wild flowers; the tallest are pale, slender-stemmed violets, sheltering where turf rises to meet rock.

Milkwort, dwarfed by the conditions at this exposed spot, lies low to the ground. Seen in close-up, it is exquisite, its tiny flowers an intense and holy blue. Curiously, the petals are barely to be seen. The glorious colour comes from two of the flower's five sepals which, grown large and brightly blue, enclose the petals almost totally. Only at the flower's tip can they be seen where the largest of them ends in a fringe of white plain to see against the blue. Close by, also growing low to the ground, are the yellow flowers of tormentil, the shape and arrangement of its petals reminiscent of the inner four petals of a Tudor rose. Though small, it has great character with something infinitely cheering about its buttercup brightness and something resolute about its ability to grow in the most inhospitable of places, even on the dampest of acid moorland soils.

And if the attractiveness of milkwort and tormentil was not enough in itself, both have medicinal and domestic uses. Milkwort's name records its use taken as a decoction to stimulate the flow of a nursing mother's milk, while preparations of tormentil were used to relieve ailments as diverse as toothache and gripings of the stomach. One of its folk names‚ "bloodroot", recalls its use as the source of a red dye, and from those same roots came an astringent substance sometimes used in tanning.

Lloyds bankers relax at luxury spa

Thu, 17 May 2012 19:38:17 GMT

Bailed-out bank sent dozen to Champneys to learn how to be more effective 'hunter-gatherers in the corporate jungle'

It's a tough job working for a bailed-out bank that owes the taxpayer about £20bn – so exhausting, indeed, that Lloyds Banking Group dispatched a dozen top bosses on a luxury spa break at Champneys designed to teach them to eat like an executive and learn how to be more effective "hunter-gatherers in the corporate jungle".

The celebrity spa resort created a "bespoke programme" to prevent the executives from "bail out, burn out or being booted out". The bank is just under 40% owned by the UK taxpayer.

Champneys, well known for hosting Premier League footballers and celebrities and the odd Metropolitan police chief, tutored Lloyds bosses in the "little-known, but highly effective methods of the UK's leading physique and corporate longevity specialists".

Tim Bean, the celebrity trainer who designed Lloyds' personally tailored programme, said the two-day trip last November was designed to teach the bankers "how to manage their chaotic lives". Bean, who promotes himself with the nickname "The Merciless Mr Bean", said he created a personal workout programme for each of the 12 bankers and tutored them on "executive nutrition".

Bean said one seminar, called Hunter-Gatherers in the Corporate Jungle, was designed to "re-equip them with the skills of alpha males and females".

The executives were also given advice on the latest developments in "physique management" and even "anti-ageing".

A spokesman for Lloyds said: "It is important to stress that this was a free one-off event that a small group attended last year at the request of a customer who wanted feedback on a new programme they planned to launch. It was arranged by a senior executive who no longer works for the group."

However, the chief executive of Champneys, Stephen Purdew, said: "Of course they bloody paid for it." He declined to state how much the event cost, but similar stays start at £995 per person.

According to the event programme, available on the Guardian website here, the bankers arrived at Champneys' Tring resort, set in 170 acres of Hertfordshire parkland, on 3 November – the day after Lloyds' chief executive, António Horta-Osório, took a month's sick leave owing to fatigue.

The next day they rose at 6am for a "dawn-breaker exercise class", and after breakfast attended a "build before you burn" class encouraging them not to rush into heavy workouts.

After a gruelling day's exercise they were invited to "de-stress or detox in our top-rated spa" where they could pick from "over 100 relaxing, energising and rejuvenating spa treatments".

Lloyds, Champneys and Bean declined to identify any of the employees on the trip, but Bean described them as an "executive team from Lloyds". He added: "I'm not sure how much more I can tell you. We offer our clients a pretty comprehensive NDA [non disclosure agreement] – it's about half an inch thick." Champneys has attracted attention for offering high-profile figures freebies at the resort. Sir Paul Stephenson resigned as commissioner of the Met after it was revealed that he had accepted £12,000 of free hospitality from the spa, which was then using Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World arrested in connection with the phone-hacking scandal, for public relations work.

Purdew is also a close friend of Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the NoW and chief executive of News International. Brooks was a guest at Purdew's wedding at Claridges in 2009, along with Liam Gallagher, Piers Morgan, the EastEnders actor Samantha Janus, the late Stephen Gately from Boyzone, several ex-Arsenal footballers, Frank Bruno and Jimmy Savile.

Greek holiday prices tumble amid debt crisis and euro fears

Thu, 17 May 2012 18:52:02 GMT

Hoteliers forced to slash their prices by up to 50% and restaurants, bars and taxis all said to be getting cheaper

Thirty years ago this month the first Rough Guide to Greece was published, its opening line: "Greece is no longer a really cheap country; inflation's been hitting it hard since 1980." With this in mind, it recommended a daily budget of £3-£4 "if you camp rough, buy some of your own food and hitch lifts". It added: "For £6-£8 you can live quite well."

Today £6 will get you a couple of beers – not even that if you're holidaying on Corfu, where, according to the Post Office's annual holiday costs barometer, a bottle of lager in a bar will set you back £3.91, compared with £3.20 in Brighton.

However, as Greece lurches from economic crisis to catastrophe and the world braces itself for its potential exit from the euro, there's a growing feeling that the days when tourists could live like a king on a fistful of drachma could be about to return.

"Our agents in resort are saying that prices are already coming down … restaurant, taxis, bars are all cheaper," said Photis Lambrianides, commercial director of Olympic Holidays, which sends 300,000 British tourists to Greece each year.

In February the Greek tourist industry was cautiously optimistic about holiday bookings, with the independent market research company BDRC Continental reporting a slight increase in the number of people planning to visit this year. Three months on, after scenes of riots and talk of economic meltdown, the outlook is inevitably less positive, and hoteliers have been forced to slash their prices by up to 50%.

"The hoteliers don't just rely on the UK market. The German market has been affected since before Christmas, and so the Greeks are looking to the UK to help," Lambrianides said. "We are definitely seeing more offers from hotels than normal, especially on the bigger islands where they have more rooms to fill."

Olympic's current deals include a week at Yakinthos Apartments, a three-star family-run complex, with pool, on the island of Zante for £165, a saving of £211, departing from Gatwick on 7 June. Or seven nights at the two-star Elenitsa Studios in Corfu for £239, a saving of £185, leaving from Birmingham in June.

Stephen Dunk, managing director for Europe of Travelzoo, an online portal for holiday offers, said there were also deals on higher-end resorts. "In theory the increase in fuel costs and taxes should have pushed the price of holidays up," Dunk said, "but there is so much pressure in the market hotels are having to fight much harder to attract business. Basically you are getting all-inclusive package deals at B&B prices."

Travelzoo currently lists an offer for a seven-night all-inclusive stay at the four-star Aquis Marine resort in Tigaki, on the island of Kos, for £339, including flights, for departures in June and September, a 40% discount on the usual price.

But should you be worried about snapping up one of these bargains while the likelihood of Greece exiting the euro increases by the day? Noel Josephides, director of the specialist operator Sunvil, said holidaymakers could only benefit. "If they do exit the euro, it will take time to print the new currency," he said. "In the meantime, if you are holding euros, you'll get a good exchange rate."

Josephides added: "We are not discounting more than normal because we refuse to give holidays away. We've worked with these hoteliers for decades. We're all in this together. We're not out to destroy the only industry which is going to help Greece come out of this."

Stuck for an outing? Try the National Tractor Weekend

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:00:00 GMT

It's the first-ever, prompted by the runaway success of a vintage farm machinery rally in north Yorkshire

The grip of the tractor on the human mind is peculiar but real. I can never shop at Morrisons in Idle without thinking of 'Tractors' – the enormous International Harvester plant which took over from Jowett Cars and was humming away when I was on the Telegraph & Argus.

Pateley Bridge's toyshop is always an enjoyable sight as well. Guardian readers concerned about children playing endlessly with 'war toys' will be revived by its contents. The healthy children of upper Nidderdale clearly prefer model farm machines, combine harvesters, seed drillers and of course tractors by the yard.

And now we have National Tractor Weekend, which prompts this post, following an email from Newby Hall which cautiously describes the coming event as 'a weekend with a difference'. If you have tractor fans in your family or salon of buddies, real-life versions of David and Bert in The Archers, this is the outing for them. It's on 9 and 10 June, rthe first of which is the UK's second National Tractor Day.

Newby is always excellent value anyway – lovely place, ace tearoom and a great history including an ancestor of the resident Compton family who was unfortunately murdered by brigands in Greece. For the past five years, the Yorkshire Vintage Association has held its annual rally there, and now that exhibits have topped 1000, this has become the National Tractor Weekend.

Even those immune to internal combustion and traction engines should be intrigued by some of the ingenious machinery on show. For example, there's the 1920s Hart-Parr 'Bootstrap', a rig operated by a tractor which lifts itself into the air using its own power. There will also be three rare Fowler Gyrotillers, huge caterpillar-tracked machines which carried out deep cultivation on difficult land.

One of them is the biggest ever made, and it will galumph around alongside hundreds of other veteran machines, while sideshows offer rides, tractor races and demonstrations of mechanical tree trunk-sawing, threshing, baling, milling and manufacture of reed mats. The weekend is highlighting five makes which eventually came together in the American White Motor Corp. One of them is Hart-Parr which claims responsiblity – remember this for trivial pursuits and pub quizzes – for adding the word 'tractor' to the English language.

Final proof of tractor power. One of my London colleagues who kindly loaded the pictures accompanying this post on to the big Guardian's system, told me:

My brother owns several of these vintage tractors, so these events are very familiar to me.

Please make your own tractor-related confessions below. Meanwhile, here's a cheery little clip from YouTube of a Bootstrap doing its special thing.

Snowboarding in May on Scotland's Cairngorm – in pictures

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:47:00 GMT

Summer's gone on strike, but it's not all bad news. Snowboarders at Scotland's Cairngorm mountain resort are making the most of fresh powder on the slopes, especially at the snowboard park

Nicaragua: wildife viewing on the San Juan river – audio slideshow

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:35:33 GMT

Nicaragua's San Juan river was once one of the most important in the world; now it is a peaceful waterway surrounded by jungle, with amazing bird and animal life, but very few tourists. Former hunter turned wildlife guide Don Pedro takes Kevin Rushby on a night-time tour in search of caiman

The Quay Brothers re-imagine Leeds for 2012 Cultural Olympiad

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Yorkshire's swishest shopping streets, and the mysterious Dark Arches, will turn into strange and different places for the next three days. Marishka Van Steenbergen has been peeking

Residents of Leeds have woken up to find a boat lodged in a tree in the middle of Briggate, the handsome pedestrian-only street at the heart of the city's shopping district. The unexpected shipwreck, 14 metres across and four tall, is the first major public installation to mark the beginning of the Overworlds and Underworlds event.

The internationally-acclaimed artist filmmakers, the Quay Brothers, have designed this temporary installation as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Overworlds and Underworlds, happening from tomorrow, Friday 18 May until Sunday night, will see the pair, plus a group of carefully selected fellow-artists, using the city centre of Leeds as their canvas.

This is the first project by Leeds Canvas, an arts consortium chosen three years ago as the Yorkshire region winner of a commission for Artists Taking the Lead. The commission is one of 12 across the UK which are celebrating the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics.

Steve Dearden, associate producer for Leeds Canvas, explains:

Initially the arts council invited proposals for a large piece of public art in all the English regions. That's when the consortium came together and made a very basic invitation. We would say to an artist, here's our city, our people, our buildings, make a piece of art which explores and celebrates that.

The free event will include three days of public performances and installations involving light, live music, dance and film. However, specific details of the event are being kept secret until closer to the weekend. Dearden says:

What we want is for people to suddenly be surprised by happenings in their own city or visitors seeing things in the city that have never been seen before.

All along with the brothers what we want to make is a piece of art based on the city. Based on themes in city life, the flow and movement of people and of water around the city. So the day-to-day activities in the city suddenly becoming strange with strange interventions being made, whether by physical objects or moving objects or people.

The Quay Brothers are working in collaboration with eight of the city's key arts organisations; Northern Ballet, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Opera North, Yorkshire Dance, Phoenix Dance, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds Met Studio Theatre and Leeds Art Gallery.

Leeds Canvas said they chose the Quay Brothers because of their previous work in Leeds creating art installations for Leeds Art Gallery. They also knew that the brothers had always had a fascination for the Dark Arches under the city's main train station.

Dearden explains why Canvas is hosting a fleeting public art event rather than a lasting installation.

By choosing the Quay Brothers we always knew we weren't going to get a monumental sculpture. They work with light; they work in that ephemeral way. We knew it would be an amazing thing that came out of the city that would be there for a period and then disappear again. But hopefully it is one of those interventions where it is something that becomes part of peoples' memories or the way they talk about the city.

Overworlds and Underworlds will begin on Briggate in Leeds city centre, including the illustrious late 19th century arcades and leading down to the mysterious underworld of the Dark Arches. Dominic Gray, projects director at Opera North says:

The idea of Overworlds and Underworlds is that we've got these very mysterious atmospheric worlds, one underneath and one above.

There are subterranean movements going on underneath our feet that are historical as well as physical, the movements of people over hundreds of years. Overworlds is the angels and the things we aspire to, the things that are in the air that we glimpse out of the corner of our eye. The project is about how us, the living people, walk between one or the other and negotiate our map through a city where those things are going on.

Dearden hopes that the event will leave a lasting legacy of collaboration between the artists.

It's important to mention that it has not just been about the core team of chief executives or artistic directors. People from different levels have been working together, including the education and marketing teams who have collaborated for the first time. So hopefully the legacy of this, apart from the artistic legacy, will be a much closer relationship between those key organisations in the future.

He has also enjoyed his time with the Quay Brothers:

It's been fantastic working with them, it's been wonderful to go and meet them in their studio. In this very unique working space, you knock on door in the south of London, open it up and suddenly you are in this junk room of a Russian monastery, lots of icons, books, decanters, you could spend years in there exploring. And at the other end there is this high-tech editing suite where they are making films with the newest equipment.

Leeds Canvas expects Overworlds and Underworlds to be an event that will be remembered for years to come. Dearden says:
I think when people see some of the set pieces there will be a sense of wonder and fun. I expect that on Friday and Saturday night people will be taking photos of themselves in front of these amazing things and it will become part of the photographic record of the city and part of the way people talk about the city in the future.

Here's a clip of Steve Dearden and Dominic Gray, filmed by Joe Bream talking to Marishka about the weekend's excitements in Leeds.