David Clensy

As the cruise industry continues to grow in spite of the recession, David Clensy steps aboard the latest giant to grace the high seas

I stretched out, basking in the warm sunshine, feeling the grass between my toes and the icy gin and tonic in my hand.

With the lawn laid out before me, and the American tourists ambling along the promenade, at first glance you might be forgiven for thinking I was relaxing at Miami’s South Beach or at the waterfront in Fort Lauderdale.

But the strange thing is, the strip of land that’s moving into the distance on the horizon is actually Florida.

Despite the expansive, neatly clipped lawns, I’m actually onboard a ship - the MV Celebrity Solstice.

The newly launched vessel is one of the largest and most advanced ships in the Royal Caribbean-owned Celebrity fleet.

The 122,000-ton ship cost the best part of half a billion pound to build - but with the cruise industry ever-expanding, even in the current economic climate, and with room for 2,850 guests onboard, the company expects to recoup its massive outlay within just six years.

Indeed, the American-based Celebrity Cruises already has another four Solstice-class ships on its order books, with vessels being launched each year until 2012. One of these, the Celebrity Eclipse, which is due to hit the oceans in 2010, is to use Southampton as its home port.

These ships offer real ocean-going luxury.

With its shopping malls, casinos, and a plethora of restaurants onboard, the Celebrity Solstice is full of surprises, but none are quite as surreal as the 14,000 sq ft of lawn on the top deck.

During my few days on the ship, I often wondered whether the fact that we were slipping in and out of the Bermuda Triangle was having any kind of influence on the strange maritime grassy knoll.

But each time I visited the top deck, there was one guest examining the lawn a little more closely than the rest.

Given his 33 years experience working as the groundsman at Old Trafford, Lancashire Cricket Club’s Peter Marron admitted he was fascinated by the lawn.

“It’s an amazing achievement,” the 53-year-old told me, as we chatted over a beer next to the grass.

“I thought it was some kind of joke when I first heard about it.

“Anyone who knows anything about growing grass will tell you that this simply shouldn’t be possible,” Peter added, shaking his head, and looking out across the verdant deck.

“For a start, you couldn’t use soil to grow the lawn on the top deck of a ship - it would be far too heavy, it’d sink us.

“They’ve used a lightweight clay and volcanic pumice which acts like a soil. But it’s a real achievement to get the grass to grow like this on a moving vessel.”

The company is making the most of its exclusive new lawn - with guests encouraged towards games of bowls, croquet and pitch and putt golf as the ship cuts through the gentle equatorial waves.

It’s not the only novelty onboard. Downstairs in the Martini Bar, guests are able to keep their cocktails cool on the ice-crafted bar.

The towering central atrium at the core of the ship is decorated, somewhat surreally, with a fully grown tree.

The 5,000lb tree is suspended 60ft in the air in a large conical vase, causing guests to turn their heads in amazement as they pass the fifth floor in the glass-fronted lifts.

All this foliage is a nod to the company’s belief that Solstice is one of the “greenest” cruise ships on the seas.

The days when liners tipped their waste in the middle of the ocean each evening are long gone. Companies like Celebrity take green issues seriously, with massive areas below decks devoted to recycling.

There’s also a full exhibition onboard explaining just how the company is supporting conservation projects across the world, though this slightly worthy exhibit seemed to prove considerably less popular than the flashing neon of the casino, the full-sized proscenium-arched theatre at the aft, or even the wonderfully kitsch library over-hanging the atrium.

But the ship’s state-of-the-art credentials are not just clear in the light-hearted touches.

I’m granted permission to visit the enormous bridge to see Captain Panagiotis Skylogiannis at work.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Captain Skylogiannis is Greek, but living in Norfolk he’s something of an adopted Englishman.

When I arrive on the bridge he’s not clinging imperiously to the helm, as one might imagine.

In fact, he’s seated at a desk in the corner, being taught the intricacies of conducting a civil wedding ceremony at sea - a service the ship is hoping to offer to guests from later this year.

But the extraordinary thing about this bridge is that it’s not the solitary control point of the ship.

In a revolutionary move, there’s also a security centre, in which the duty officers monitor all elements of security and safety - leaving the bridge to concern itself purely with navigation.

The windowless room looks like something out of a James Bond film, with panels of flashing screens monitoring every element of the ship’s life - like a life support machine for a sleeping giant.

The watch officers have the unenviable task of monitoring all these screens in shifts 24 hours a day.

And the security centre is not just there to monitor health and safety onboard.

Many of the ship’s 800 security cameras are on the outside of the vessel - a measure that will come as a reassurance to crew and passengers alike given the recent escalation in incidents of international piracy.

“It essentially means that if there is any kind of safety or security issue occurring,” the Captain explains, “we can close the door on the security centre, and continue to concentrate entirely on navigation, whereas previously the bridge would have had to deal with both.”

It’s proof, if proof were needed, that this ship truly does demonstrate an evolution in cruise ship design for the 21st century.

*The Celebrity Solstice is cruising the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. A nine night fly/cruise in the Caribbean starts from £1,104 per person (based on two sharing an inside cabin).

For more information, visit http://www.celebritycruises.co.uk/ or call 0845 4560523.

*David flew from Heathrow to Miami International with Virgin Atlantic, and stayed at the Hilton Heathrow the night before the flight. Prices start from £169 per room per night. For more details, visit http://www.hilton.com/ or call Hilton on 0208 759 7755.

As he sails across the Mediterranean aboard the MV Saga Ruby, visiting the tombs of Christianity’s great saints, David Clensy becomes a true convert to the cruising life


AFTER two decadent days of cruising, the white cliffs of Dover already seemed a world away.

I could still feel the gentle sway of the ship in my legs as I stood before the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.

The thousand-year-old towers loomed up before me, carved so intricately with saints that they took on the texture of a crocodile’s snout.

I was surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of pilgrims, all looking remarkably alike. They walked with a traditional staff, like St Christopher fording the river, and their rucksacks clattered with the scallop shells that distinguish them from conventional tourists - and all but guarantee them a bed every night of their 700km trek.

There are three pilgrimage roads to Santiago, the most famous being the “Milky Way”, which originates across the Pyrenees in France, with pilgrims traditionally following the great blue arc of the galaxy in the night sky to point the way to the distant cathedral.

After 700km of trekking I had expected the pilgrims to show some sort of celebration as they reached their ultimate goal. But to a man, they simply shuffled inside the great Romanesque edifice, and joined the two-hour queue, so they could embrace the statue of St James the Greater.

St James the Greater (San Tiago in Spanish) was the first cousin of Jesus, nephew of the Virgin Mary, and son of Salome and Zebedee.

He brought Christianity to this north-west corner of Spain, and was executed by Herod upon his return to Judea. His martyred body is reputed to have been sent as far away as possible - back to the Spanish town, which was then considered the edge of the world; the fringe of the Roman empire.

On the other side of the cathedral, the pilgrims wandered out with a “so what do we do now?” sort of look, but I knew where I was headed - straight back on board the majestic MV Saga Ruby, to continue my own voyage of discovery.

The jaunty Cornish master, Captain Philip “rock-dodger” Rentell, was taking to the bridge to prepare the ship for sailing overnight to Lisbon.

For a man who spends half his life surrounded by the ocean, the Captain’s humour is remarkably dry.

At sea Captain Rentell keeps order with a rod of irony. His tannoy updates are lapped-up by the recumbent passengers on deck, who giggle infectiously as he extols the virtues of his home county in between charting our nautical progress and pondering the depth of the ocean floor beneath the Ruby’s sleek hull.

The Cornish flag flutters above the bridge, letting everyone know that Rock-Dodger is in port.

As a first time cruiser, it’s this wonderful approachability of even the Master, that makes the Ruby feel like home within hours of arriving.

The all-Filipino crew perform their various roles with genuine joy, with everyone from the cabin steward to the sommelier knowing you by name within hours.

Smiles fill the ship. And for a time, as we glide through the uncannily calm Atlantic, to me it feels as close to heaven as I’ve ever reached.

Indeed, days at sea, without a landmark on the horizon, lead you to draw the inevitable conclusion that you might have died and washed up on the decks of this nautical paradise.

You soon slip into a daily routine that an Edwardian aristocrat would recognise well. The Saga Ruby - a former Cunard-owned ship - offers the classic cruising experience.

Its gentle elegance becomes obvious as we reach Gibraltar, and berth alongside the Independence of the Seas - the world’s largest supercruiser, which by comparison shadows over us like a block of flats.

With days exploring the streets of Lisbon and Gibraltar sliding into memory, we sailed out across the Mediterranean to enjoy two gloriously exuberant sea days, gliding past the coast of Morocco; skimming within sight of the Balearics; and cruising through the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia.

The stress of daily life becomes evermore distant with every nautical mile.

It’s an expression I’ve never previously understood, but I genuinely seem to “find myself” on board. Somewhere between the Viennese afternoon teas and the sunset gin and tonics in the South Cape Bar, I feel a forgotten fire beginning to glow within me.

The days pass in a haze of chinking cocktail glasses, fine dining and laughter. There’s a light that begins to sparkle behind my eyes, and it feels like joy.

Then we arrive at the Italian port of Civitavecchia, where I sidle down the gangplank and join the coach bound for Rome.

I’ve been to The Vatican before, but the breathless rush of awe I felt the first time seemed even stronger on my return.

I stood before St Peter’s Basilica, feeling like a different man to the one who had gazed upon the carvings of St James at Santiago de Compostela little more than a week ago.

The scale of St Peter’s is designed to inspire a belief in a “creator” beyond the hands of the men who assembled these great chunks of marble, which once adorned the pagan temples of ancient Rome.

But it’s the work of one individual that shines with the most divinity. Michelangelo is alive everywhere you go in The Vatican.

From the moment you walk into the basilica, you become transfixed by the hyper-real stare of the Virgin Mary, as She clings on to the body of her crucified son, in the artist’s “Pieta”.

Michelangelo was just 24 when he created the sculpture. For any mere mortal it would be the achievement of a lifetime, but for the ultimate renaissance man, it was just the start of a career, which would furnish much of this great palace at the centre of Christendom - the resting place of St Peter himself.

The renaissance genius created everything from the statues to frescoes, from the bejewelled mosaics to the great expansive domes.

Beyond the basilica, after miles of lavish corridors, the Vatican Museum finally opens out on to the artist’s greatest masterpiece - the Sistine Chapel.

I had imagined something small and delicate. But I had the breath knocked out of me once again, as I stepped inside the enormous, intricately-painted chamber.

Sadly, many of the hundreds of tourists inside chose to ignore the signs imploring them to maintain complete silence in the chapel. But after a few moments I couldn’t hear their drone. I was looking up, lost in Michelangelo’s visions.

My eyes wandered from the iconic “Creation” at the centre of the Genesis ceiling panel, to the over-powering Last Judgement, which dominates the entire eastern wall.

Christ stands in the centre, unrecognisable from the malnourished corpse of the Pieta. Here he is in his “second coming” - powerfully built, like Mars, clean-shaven and classically-featured, like Florence’s statue of David.

Michelangelo even depicts himself in a grisly self-portrait - as the flayed skin removed from the martyred body of St Bartholomew.

This gentle nod to his own mortality is in stark contrast to the chapel as a whole, which seems to have guaranteed his memory will live on forever.

The colours of his Last Judgement continued to wash through my mind that evening, as I sat back with a gin and tonic, listening to the suitably angelic tones of opera star Katherine Jenkins, who had joined the ship to give a special performance.

Leaving the Ruby at Livorno the next morning, I stopped on the quay and looked back at the ship’s aquiline features - a beauty almost worthy of Michelangelo’s hand.

But there was one last visit to be made before flying home. There’s more to Pisa than the Leaning Tower. The Cathedral, or Duomo, dedicated to St. Mary of the Assumption, offers a powerful spectacle.

The interior is majestic with towering bridged crossings high above the altar, and the walls vibrant with frescoes - less glitzy than St Peter’s, but no less beautiful.

The cathedral contains the bones of St Ranieri, Pisa’s patron saint, who sailed across the Mediterranean in the 12th century on his way to the Holy Land.

Perhaps he also felt something of the serenity that washes over you during those tranquil days at sea, when the horizon is unblemished in a curving blue circle around the ship.

Above all else, this is the joy of cruising.

*David Clensy sailed with the MV Saga Ruby. Saga offers a range of cruises for the over-50s on the Saga Ruby, and her sister ship the Saga Rose. For details of forthcoming cruises and all the latest prices, visit http://www.saga.co.uk/ or call 0800 096 0081.

THE tram rattles across the severe face of Andrassy Street, and the unseasonal watery sunshine is making the inhabitants of Budapest shuffle out of their winter coats.

I get a sudden sense that a man on a park bench is watching me, his eyes peering over the edge of his newspaper nonchalantly, like a character in an old-fashioned spy film.

As I reach the next corner a man is leaning against a wall, his foot kicked back against the bricks casually. He puffs on a cigarette. As I look across he averts his gaze and takes another lungfull of smoke.

I reassure myself it's just my imagination. Nobody's really trailing me - it's just that I know where I'm headed to.

Number 60 Andrassy Street is an address that still sends shivers down the spines of many a Hungarian national.

The former headquarters of the Hungarian Secret Police is a museum now, but the building seems alive with the terror inflicted on the people of Budapest by two successive regimes.

The Hungarian Nazi Party used the building as its headquarters during World War II, and between 1945 and 1956 it played host to the notorious communist terror organisations, the AVO and its successor the AVH.

The museum now has a floor devoted to exhibitions on each period, but the basement, where torture, incarceration and execution took place has been left untouched as a chilling memorial to the victims.

This kind of attraction always throws me into an ethical quandary. But I chose to visit the museum for much the same reason I've visited concentration camps and war grave cemeteries in the past - because spending time walking around these places and thinking about what happened there is wholly preferable to them to being forgotten.

It only becomes terror tourism when people start having their photographs taken next to the hanging gibbets and eating crisps while looking at cabinets of torture chamber implements.

Still, the museum's modern canopy is a bit dubious. With the word TERROR carved out in 10ft-tall letters, casting its shadow on to Andrassy Street far below, it all feels a little contrived.

The first great terror trial I faced was forcing my way through an enormous crowd of spotty German schoolboys who were lined-up in the reception hall listening to each others' iPods and talking about girls, while they waited to shuffle around yet another attraction reminding them of the sins of their grandfathers.

The second wave of terror came tackling the stern-faced ticket office attendant and her security guard sidekick who leapt on me with alarming aggression as he ordered me to put my rucksack in the cloakroom.

By the time I reached the second floor and the exhibition on the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross Party, it wasn't difficult to imagine what it must have been like to be bossed around in these eerie corridors.

"Have you been to the second floor?" an attendant demanded of me as I entered the Communist exhibition on the first floor.

"Yes," I whimpered.

"Okay, then carry on," he conceded, with a curious click of his heels.

But the most oppressive part of the experience came at the end of the second exhibition, where you are forced into a small lift.

As the lift doors close, the lights go out, and a television screen awakens on one of the walls. While the lift capsule heads towards the basement excruciatingly slowly, the video screen features a sinister interview with a Communist-period executioner.

He explains the execution procedure with chilling frankness. By the time the doors open on the creepy cellars all the people in the lift are ashen-faced and sombre.

But nothing can prepare you for what you're about to see - the Spartan rooms where hundreds of unfortunate souls were kept, the particularly disturbing padded cell, and worst of all, the final chamber at the end of the dingy corridor, which still features the gallows.

But the image that remains in your mind for weeks after a visit to the Terror House, as it's now known, is the room where the suppression of religion under Communism is commemorated.

In the centre of the room the floorboards are torn up, to reveal a 20ft crucifix hidden just below the surface of the floor.

Things are different these days, and a visit to the city's cathedral is like arriving at a mini-St Paul's, except inside the vibrant modern frescos are a-blaze with colour.

Built in 1905, St Stephen's basilica needed considerable restoration work following World War II. But to get a real sense of Hungarian history, it's best to cross the River Danube, leaving the Pest part of the city behind to climb the Buda hill.

Beyond the castle, in a heritage location beside the modern Hilton hotel, stands the spectacular Matthias church.

With sections dating back to the mid-13th century, the church has been a place of peaceful retreat for Hungarians long before the turmoil of the 20th century regimes.

The glimmering, dimly-lit interior was alive with rumbling pipe organ music as I slipped into the nave early the next morning.

A woman was kneeling devoutly at a Romanesque corner shrine in stark contrast to the group of excitable Japanese tourists taking multiple pictures of each other standing in front of the main altar.

I headed to the far side, beneath the gothic archways to find the shrine dedicated to the first Hungarian king, St Stephen (1000-1038).

He lays in effigy, recumbent and apparently oblivious to the changing world around him.

As the old lady gets to her feet and crosses herself, still silently muttering, it's strange to think that she would have been forced to suppress her beliefs under the decades of Communist rule.

Indeed, had she persisted in showing such quiet displays of public devotion during the post-war era, she could have ended up in those ominous Andrassy cells.

I opened the sliding doors and stepped out on to the balcony, sipping coffee as the sun rose on the horizon.

From my cabin eyrie I was enjoying breakfast at the top of the tree canopy with the Cornwall Forest stretching out before me for as far as I could see.

By the time my coffee cup was empty the early morning rays were catching the leaves of the oaks, beech and chestnut trees, giving the whole scene a dappled emerald glow.

With nothing to disturb you except the flapping of the wood pigeons' wings and the gentle twitter of the robins and chaffinches, this is the sort of holiday that offers a real opportunity to breathe out and relax.

Deerpark is a complex of stylish cabins set around a tranquil millpond in broadleaf woodland. Run by Forest Holidays, a wing of the Forestry Commission, the emphasis is on providing a resort where you can get a little closer to nature in environmentally friendly accommodation.

And the green designs don't come at the expense of luxury - inside the cabins are beautifully finished with leather sofas, a flatscreen television and a well-equipped kitchen.The cabins benefit from floor-to-roof two-storey picture windows, which offer a breathtaking view of the forest.

The forest's location, near Liskeard in south-east Cornwall, means you're perfectly located for visiting the resorts of Looe and Polperro where old-world fishermen's cottages crowd together in picturesque river valleys overlooking working harbours.

You can also enjoy day trips to the impressive Eden Project ( www.edenproject.com) which is just 20 miles away near Mevagissey, the enchanting Lost Gardens of Heligan ( www.heligan.com) and the less well-known but equally enthralling Looe Island ( www.looeisland.com).

I have particularly fond memories of the island, which is now a Cornwall Wildlife Trust nature reserve. I worked there each summer as a student and later researched the remarkable history of the landmark for a book called Island Life: A History of Looe Island.

Legend has it that the island was visited by Joseph of Arimathea with the child Christ, and for that reason it once housed a medieval monastic chapel and hermitage. The island later became a romantic haunt for a cut-throat band of smugglers.

Today it's a beautiful haven for sea and woodland birds, with seals and dolphins regularly sighted from its sandy shores. Catch the island ferry from Looe harbour (£5 return, £2.50 landing fee).

In what would have been her centenary year, you could also go in search of Daphne Du Maurier. The fishing village of Fowey is just a few miles away from the forest.

The best way to get there is to drive on to the chain ferry, which takes you right past Ferryside, the author's gable-fronted home, which is still a private house owned by her family.

A short drive around the coast and you can walk to the beach at Menabilly - it was this beach and the nearby private house which proved the inspiration for Manderley - the eerie manor house at the centre of Du Maurier's most famous tale Rebecca.

There's also a Daphne Du Maurier museum in Fowey where you can pick up even the rarest Du Maurier novels.

It's worth taking a short drive inland to experience the natural splendour of Bodmin Moor, with the Arthurian Dozmary Pool making for a fascinating day's walk, after which you can enjoy a few pints in that other great Daphne Du Maurier landmark, Jamaica Inn.

And as evening approaches and you head back to the peaceful retreat of your forest cabin, there's one final spectacle to enjoy.

With light pollution expertly eliminated from the forest, you can look up from the balcony over the tree canopy, at the most enchanting night sky you'll ever see.

After hours of sailing along the meandering River Sile, the lagoon now stretched out before us, wide as all the world; hazy with blues and pinks in the late dying sun.

As the engine of our boat rumbled through the scene, seagulls flapped resentfully away from their perches on the creaking wooden briccola markers.

These elm logs act as a guide through the reedy marshes and hidden sandbanks that litter the still waters around the Venetian islands.

As we followed the line of markers carefully with a finger tracing our path on the charts, I turned the wheel, brought the 43ft cabin cruiser’s stern to face the setting sun, and there in the ebbing light, shimmering and elemental, the blue-tinged skyline of Venice rose out of the horizon.

“There it is,” I announced, as the rest of my family on the deck followed my point to see the towers and domes of the city reveal themselves welcomingly on the skyline.

There’s only one way to arrive in Venice, and this was surely it.

We had joined the boat days earlier in a small dockyard outside the town of Casier, close to the budget airlines’ airport of choice for the region, Treviso.

Crown Blue Line provides a broad range of craft from their Casier base. Our boat, the Elegance class, came complete with three separate en-suite cabins, a spacious galley, and a saloon living space.

None of us had any experience of handling a boat, but after a short lesson we found it wasn’t too difficult, and within hours we were navigating our way around the waterways of northern Italy like a crew of salty old seadogs.

The towns and villages along the River Sile were a delight to visit – places refreshingly devoid of tourists, where real day-to-day Italian life was carrying on with ease.

Even just a few miles along the river from the Venetian lagoon, nobody spoke English, and testing out our phrase book Italian was essential, making it easy to feel a part of an authentic Italy.

In contrast the chaotic scenes of pigeon-feeding Japanese visitors and photo-snapping Americans following tour guides in obedient lines, hits you as something of a culture shock as you walk into St Mark’s square.

Venice remains as stunning as ever, with its medieval palaces and cathedrals frowning down unmoved by the hordes of tourists who often seem to outnumber the locals.

But you only have to walk a few streets away from the focal points of St Mark’s and the Rialto to rediscover a Venice of romantic empty backstreets, where your voice echoes off the flaking paint of the houses and washing lines criss-cross over your head like laundry’s answer to bunting.

From the silence singing rises up in theatrical tenor, and as you hear the gentle slap of paddle on water you realise the street ends abruptly at the shining green surface of a narrow canal.

The florid arcing stern of a jet black gondola breaks through the scene, and the smiling oriental faces in the boat lift cameras to take rapid fire pictures of us taking pictures of them.

Behind it all the gondolier brushes his oar through the water with a well practised rhythm to match the Puccini aria he rumbles at the top of his voice to supplement his tips.

After long days of sight-seeing the cabin cruiser feels like home.

We found an excellent mooring on the island of Mazzorbo, with a bridge a few yards away leading on to the picturesque Burano.

Home of Venetian lace-making, Burano rivals Venice itself for the sheer picturesque quality of its canals and brightly painted fishing cottages.

The vaporetto, or water bus, jetty nearby also makes it an ideal place to leave the boat while exploring the islands of Murano and Torcello, the Venician Lido, and Venice itself.

And when the final group of tourists leave the island each day, you’re left with evenings in the quiet lamp-lit streets of Burano, with the island looking and feeling as it must have done for centuries.

So it was hard as our week drew to a close, to cast off the mooring ropes for the final time and turn the boat back towards the mouth of the Sile, knowing an aeroplane was waiting far up the river, to take us back to the reality of an English autumn.

I’ve got to be honest with you, I wasn’t really expecting to experience much in the way of paranormal activity during my weekend in Edinburgh.

Tipsey men in kilts and hen night parties with matching T-shirts were about as paranormal as I thought it would get.

But with the city’s second annual Ghost Fest taking place later this month, I couldn’t turn down an invitation to explore the famous Mary King’s Close as the sun set on Saturday evening.

Mary King’s Close is a bizarre underground street, which runs below the famous Royal Mile.

Once one of the main thoroughfares in the city, the cobbled close and its medieval houses fell foul of the city planners of the enlightenment, who in 1753 built the Royal Exchange building on top of the existing dwellings.

Residents of Mary King’s Close stayed on in the shadowy underworld, with the last person leaving the properties at the end of the nineteenth century.

But many believe the spirits of the former residents live on.

My evening beneath the Royal Mile began with a walk around with psychic medium Ruth Urqhart.

Ruth “the Truth” as she’s known among her devotees left me frankly unmoved, with vague talk of spirit presences and wholly unscientific experiments with dowsing rods and a pendulum.

The evening continued in a similarly uneventful vein, with psychics from the group Scottish Paranormal leading a seance in the one time cow shed, off the main subterranean thoroughfare.

With around 30 of us holding hands in the darkness, the circle seemed more conducive to the hokey-cokey than a seance, so it was unsurprising that nobody came forward to us from the afterlife.

After two hours underground, it seemed like there would be nothing supernatural to report.

But as midnight approached, we met the investigators from the Ghost Finders Scotland group.

Their unusual technique involves the use of a digital dictaphone, which Panasonic reputedly removed from the market after receiving a flurry of complaints about the appearance of mystery voices on recordings.

They ruled out radio interference or previous recordings when they realised the voices were actively answering questions given to them.

Splitting-up into small groups with a dictaphone each, I found myself in Annie’s room – a deep chamber where visitors leave toys for a child’s spirit who was once locked in the room, and left to die alone of the plague.

After spending half an hour in the spooky doll-filled room asking questions into the ether, we returned to the surface to download our recordings.

And to my astonishment there was a very distant voice on the recordings, apparently responding to our questions. When we asked “what is your name?” there was a whispered “Anne”. And to our “who is the king?” there was a very distant “James Stewart”.

But the real horror came with another group’s downloaded recording from another chamber. With their question of “how old are you?” the ghost voice retorted with a horribly screamed “F**k Off!”

Spookier still, another group recorded two phantom voices in conversation with each other. The first voice whispered, “Can you hear voices?” And the fellow ghost muttered, “Yes, voices ...”

Did these poor phantoms believe we were the ghosts?

A strangely clear response from another chamber came to the question: “What is the year?” And the baffling phantom response was “Two thousand and seven”.

This left more questions than answers. But before we left the underground close, I took a few digital pictures of the street.

It was only afterwards that I realised what I’d caught on camera.

All of the images seemed perfectly normal. All but one that is.

When I looked back at a picture I’d taken looking up the underground street, I was astonished to see that the picture was full of orbs.

This much documented phenomenon is believed by many to be an early stage of ghostly manifestation.

Occasionally investigators see one or two orbs appear mysteriously in a shot. But I had apparently caught dozens of them, all different shapes, sizes and colours, up and down the street.

Had they been dust particles, they would have appeared on the numerous other shots I’d taken of the same scene.

Just as inexplicable was the appearance of a solid white space on the edge of the digital picture – something which has never appeared on any picture taken with that camera before.

I can’t give you any explanations. But it seems there really is something strange happening beneath the streets of Edinburgh.

*The Ghost Fest 2006 takes place from Sunday, May 14, to Wednesday, May 17, and Sunday, May 21. Event admission £12. For more information call 08702 430160 or www.edinburghghostfest.com

It’s become a regular part of my weekends – settling down in front of the television to watch the world’s greatest drivers pitted against each other. The roar of the Formula One V10s is as much a part of my Sundays as the smell of roast dinners and the rustle of the papers.

Somehow it seemed like another world – the sleek lines of the carbon fibre monocoques, the beaming smiles of the glamorous pit girls, the stylish swagger of the in-crowd as they watch from behind their Ray Bans.

And there’s nowhere in the F1 calendar to compete with Belgium’s legendary Spa-Francorchamps. Over the years it’s seen more than its fair share of dramatic racing moments.

The 1998 race for example had an almighty 13-car pile-up on the opening lap, and later featured the classic moment when Schumacher reverted to fisticuffs with Coulthard.

Great as Silverstone is, this kind of drama doesn’t happen in Northamptonshire. And the thing about living in East Yorkshire is, thanks to the daily P&O sailings out of Hull, many of the European races are as easy to get to as Silverstone.

So it was with a giddy excitement that my family and I boarded the Pride of York, and settled down for a relaxing crossing, as the ship headed across the North Sea towards Zeebrugge. After a meal, a few drinks, and a night’s sleep in the comfortable cabins, we were back in the car, and heading out across Belgium’s motorway network.

In under four hours we had reached Spa, and pitched up our tents for the night at Camping Spa d’Or, a well-organised site just 9km away from the circuit.

The Grand Prix weekend begins on the Thursday, when punters are given the opportunity of entering the pits, and seeing the F1 teams preparing for the race.

The boisterous Dutch fans were excitedly getting an autograph off Minardi’s Robert Doornbos (pictured). The distinctive Italians were a haze of red caps around the Ferrari pits. But for the Brits the interest lay in the BAR pits, where hopes were being silently pinned on the BAR Honda of Jenson Button.

The most eager eyes watching the work were those of Jenson’s father John, who stood at the back of the garage inspecting the mechanics’ work.
With the Friday morning came the first deafening roar of the F1 engines, as the drivers took to the circuit for their practice sessions.

By Saturday, qualifying day, the circuit was becoming like a second home, and we had a favourite viewing point – perched on a grassy bank at the Pouhon bend.

So when race day dawned, we were ready, trekking through the scenic Ardenne forest at six o’clock in the morning to stake a claim on our vantage point. But there was plenty to keep us entertained in the hours before the race, with eventful Mini, Porsche, and GP2 races.

By the time the F1 drivers were lining up, the grassy bank was so crowded with eager fanatics it was like a petrol-heads version of the sermon on the mount.

In the roaring excitement of the engines, the race itself passed rapidly. But it wasn’t without incident, with Fisichella and Montoya crashing out. And all the while Jenson was gently working his way up the grid – with one impressive overtaking move right in front of us.

As the checkered flag fell Raikkonen may have taken the victory, ahead of championship rival Alonso, but for British fans the excitement came from seeing Jenson take the third place on the podium. And all this excitement, just a few hours drive from Hull.

It had been a simple enough question I suppose. But it was a question that seemed to say more than a thousand answers ever could.

I was sitting in the plush lobby of Madeira’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, waiting for the coach to arrive to ferry us back to the airport.

It had been an eventful few days on this most civilised of islands, and my thoughts were filing the memories in my brain as I looked out to the Atlantic waves.

But my reverie was broken as an elderly English tourist sat down beside me. A smile was exchanged, before a long pause.

Eventually the silence was broken by the gentleman: “This is the Saga welcome meeting isn’t it?”

I stared at him incredulously. Then I stared at myself for a moment in the reflection of the glass. Clearly I had to start looking after myself a bit more.

“No, it’s not,” I replied a little too abruptly. “I’m 27 years old,” I felt like adding sharply.

Madeira has long held on to its image as a retreat for the more senior tourist. Its mild weather (around 70ºF all year round), its fine hotels, easy geography and quiet, civilised ambience all add up to being the perfect place for older folk to relax.

But the Portuguese island, which lies a few hundred miles off the African coast, in line with Marrakech, is not just for oldies. There is a vibrancy to the island and with its miles of volcanic mountain tracks, awesome forest scenery and even west-coast surfing opportunities, it offers plenty of excitement for the more adventurous of any age.

The colourful excitement of the annual flower festival was throbbing through the streets of the city of Funchal, a few days before my disheartening encounter in the hotel lobby.

Implausible quantities of blooms were moving like continental drift on long parade floats.

It was a conservative carnival – a kind of mardi gras with embroidery – but the locals and tourists alike were enjoying the festive spirit. However, it was my first real day on the island and I was itching to see something away from the tourist traps of the capital.

The adventure I was yearning for was to be found after a long winding drive up into the mountains.

Leaving the sky’s few wispy clouds beneath us, we arrived at the footpath to Balcões, thousands of metres above Funchal.

Everyone knows about the island’s twin tourist attractions – the impressive millennium project cable cars rising up to the picturesque Monte, where men in straw hats push you back down the hill in wicker toboggans.

But the equally impressive track to Balcões, with its gloriously lush canopy and spectacular views across prehistoric landscapes, remains little visited by tourists.

More than 4,000 metres above sea level there is a distinctive chill in the air, and those tourists that do make it up to these heights are clearly often caught out by the topography – the shop at the start of the Balcões footpath seems to stock an enormous range of jumpers.

The island’s irrigation system runs in gullies along the edge of the path, giving walkers a relaxed trickling soundtrack to their amble, while unseen birds harmonise in the canopy above.

At intervals the sunlight shafts down on to the path, as breaks in the foliage reveal the spectacular views across the valley. But the real treat comes after just half an hour’s walking, when a weathered sign points the way to a viewing platform. Stepping on to the terrace, the shady green canopy is left behind and even the sturdiest of brains spirals with vertigo as the 4,000m straight drop gapes before you.

A dramatic river winds along the valley floor far below, while the craggy teeth of the mountain tops tower high above the epic gorge.

In order to recover from the adventure, I headed to the sophistication of the island’s most famous five-star hotel – the suave, colonial Reid’s Palace Hotel.

Madeira’s best-loved older tourist came to look upon Reid’s as a kind of home away from home, and Sir Winston Churchill’s distinctive silhouette still looks down on the lobby from a framed photograph.

Relaxing back into a chair in the corner of the elegant bar, a brandy-alexander wallowing in a cocktail glass in my hand, it was a moment for reflection.

The lights of Funchal sparkled below in the bay, and as I gazed through the panoramic picture windows of Reid’s bar, I thought to myself, if this is getting old, it’s not such a bad thing after all.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, after a five-course lunch and a few generous glasses of Chablis.

 

The merry beachside feast in the decadent surroundings of St Lucia’s Anse Chastanet restaurant had done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for trying my hand at snorkeling. So I wandered down on to the beach, hired myself a pair of flippers and a set of snorkels and headed for the waterline.

 

Surrounded by the tropical beauty of the cove, I was determined to experience the natural wonders of the mild equatorial waters. I was picturing clown fish and sea urchin, sea horses and majestic rays, as I struggled to fit the flippers on to my feet. With the excitement of the moment pumping through my veins, I was keen to put trifling matters to the back of my mind – like the fact I hadn’t swum more than the length of a swimming pool since 1989.

 

Finally, with my flippers on, I rose to my feet and attempted to walk towards the glistening sea. After roughly half a step, I tripped on the flippers and fell head-first into the sand – my snorkel and mask taking the worst of the face-first tumble.

 

Always a quick learner, I stood up once again, turned my back on the sea, and started walking backwards into the water, to avoid a similar trip.

 

The water was warm and languid, but the snorkeling area was cordoned off, some 200 yards or so out towards the horizon – the idea being to keep swimmers safe from the to-ing and fro-ing of the boats.

 

I started swimming towards the snorkel zone and tried to use the crawl method, but soon remembered I’d never learned the crawl. Regaining my buoyancy, I opted for the breast stroke. Tiring, I converted to a backstroke, my flippers dashing manically in the air as I cut a swathe through the waves.

 

The spiny lobster risotto and yam dumplings I’d enjoyed so much a few moments before were beginning to weigh down on my midriff by the time I reached the safe swimming area.

Gasping for breath, I arrived on the scene to interrupt the tranquility of the other snorkelers.

 

Swimming (a little frantically) on the spot, I washed the sand from my mask, fitted it back over my eyes and pushed the snorkel into my mouth, immediately consuming half the Caribbean Sea that had accumulated in the tube during the swim across.

 

Spitting the salt water out with a panicked flourish (I was beginning to attract frowns from the other swimmers, some of whom I’d just spat on), I started again.

 

With my mask and snorkel finally in place, I lay forward bravely in the water and submerged my face. A hitherto unseen world opened up before me. There were no fish in sight (I’d almost certainly scared them off), but the distance of the seabed – some 30 or 40 feet below – filled me with a sudden terrifying vertigo and, single-handedly breaking the laws of physics, I began to sink towards the distant floor.

 

With the kind of adrenalin rush normally reserved for Great White shark attacks, I lashed out and resurfaced with all the grace of a Trident nuclear submarine. Turning over and over like a rutting walrus my mask window filled in turn with abyss, tropical sky, abyss, tropical sky, abyss, tropical sky.

 

I was still flailing in paradise when the cramp struck. So, with one leg trailing behind me, like Quasimodo in an Olympic triathlon, I headed straight for the shore.

 

The St Lucian seaside is paradise, but I was ready to leave it to the massed ranks of honeymooners for the afternoon. I wanted to experience the interior – to see a little bit of the real St Lucia.

 

After a half-hour bus ride through the rainforest paths, I arrived at the Latisab plantation. Doused in a tropical steam, the lush clearings were alive with exotic crops. Bananas curled together towards the sky in their long green bunches, and mangos and cocoa beans flourished all around. The land has been farmed by Canice Thomas’ family for more than 40 years. The resourceful 42-year-old farmer proudly showed me around the land that his great-grandfather first cultivated.

 

“We grow coffee beans, cocoa, mango, banana, coconut, and my particular favourite, nutmeg,” Canice said, as he picked open the aromatic kernel and held the nutmeg out towards me.

 

“Down in the river we lay nets for crayfish, and on the higher ground we forest a little of the wood, using our own simple techniques.”

 

Two elderly men were sawing through a log with a blade that appeared to be as old as they were. Another man kept the work moving with a steady drumbeat, while an elderly lady watched the work from a little distance.

 

“This is the Creole way of life,” Canice told me, as he surveyed the scene around him. “We live together, work together, and help each other. We don’t have a lot, but we’re happy. “This is the real St Lucia, and it’s a very beautiful place.”

As the sun set over the Mediterranean, the dusty streets of Faliraki came slowly to life. Neon lights crackled along the length of the ominously-named Bar Street and Club Street. Sandals shuffled in all directions and the concrete roads became the home of patent leather brogues and stilettos.

By day the town is a normal resort, with its all-day full-English breakfasts and shining lager-pumps – hardly a typical experience of Rhodian culture, but no different from 100 other beach bases around Europe.

But Faliraki really comes to life at night. Like Spain’s Ibiza and Ayia Napa in Cyprus, the town has become synonymous with drinking and clubbing culture.

Each year thousands of young men and women buy into the hedonistic lifestyle. But last summer Faliraki suffered a body-blow as a carefree culture appeared to reach crisis point.

The nationals produced columns of negative publicity, with tales of debauchery and even occasional tragedy.

Given the numbers of young people drinking heavily, trouble seems inevitable.

According to the Foreign Office, the number of British women raped in Greece doubled over the past four years, while violent crime against tourists nearly trebled.

One incident last year was particularly shocking. A fight broke out between two tourists in a club. Seventeen-year-old Paddy Doran, from Peterborough, was fatally stabbed with a broken bottle. And the cause of the fight? A spilt drink.

There was an equally senseless death last season, when a 29-year-old British man drunkenly bragged he could roll under a moving bin lorry. He was crushed to death.

The fear in Faliraki is that, after all the negative publicity, this year people will simply stay away.

So as dusk enshrouded the bay and the music began to pump out of the bars, I got out of a taxi and walked down Bar Street for a night out.

Young Brits were already in evidence, merrily propping up the bars and giggling in a rich variety of regional accents.

The lights of the quaintly-named Sinners Club were already lit, but the club world wouldn’t begin until midnight. For now the focus was on the bars.

Ironically, one group of lads from Scarborough had chosen to start their evening in the Climax Bar.

“The place just has a good buzz,” said 21-year-old Alex Wingfield, as he joined his friends on the hunt for the next bar.

“We’ve been here for a week and haven’t seen any trouble. And the nightlife is excellent.”

Alex’s younger brother Paul, 19, was equally impressed: “You come here for the pubs and the clubs,” he said. “If your idea of a good holiday is getting drunk and meeting girls, this is the place to come.”

Faliraki acquired notoriety a couple of years ago after the broadcast of ITV’s Club Reps, a bawdy documentary depicting the excesses of Club 18-30 holidays.

But the Faliraki locals believe the series, and lurid tabloid reports since, portrayed the resort too negatively.

George Statiou, 44, who has owned the popular Jamaica Bar for 22 years, said he was horrified when he saw the final edit of the show.

“I welcomed the film-makers here warmly,” he said. “I thought it would be good publicity for us. But I couldn’t believe it when I saw the programme. They only showed the sensational stuff and the place came across really badly.

“Strangely enough it encouraged a lot of young lads to come here. They would go into travel agents and ask for a holiday in that ‘Club Reps’ place.”
Over dinner in the Sunrise restaurant – upstairs from McDonalds – George told me things started to go wrong last summer.

“So there was an influx of tourists,” he said. “But it was attracting the wrong crowd, so things got more and more out of control.

“One of the biggest problems was caused by the bar crawls the holiday reps hosted, and the bar-owners association managed to get them banned.
“But the real body-blow for us was the bad press we got after the stabbing and after the rape of a British woman, which happened a few miles away from here but was reported as Faliraki.

“The way I see it, these are all things that could have happened just as easily in any town in Britain, but the press had its teeth into Faliraki, so every incident was really hyped up.”
George has seen Faliraki develop from a small fishing village in the 1970s, into a clubbers’ paradise, and he admits locals are equally responsible for the changes.

“We all have to accept blame,” he said. “We saw a gap in the market and actively courted young tourists. But now it’s about finding balance, before things go too far.

“So we now all agree to turn off the music in the bars at midnight, to encourage drinkers safely into the clubs.”

The building that is now the Jamaica Bar was George’s childhood home. As a boy growing up on Bar Street – High Street as it then was – George knew Faliraki as a place of open fields and fishing boats.

“My grandfather started modern Faliraki,” he said. “He opened the first bar in the town 30 years ago. It was just a shack on the beach, serving coffee to the fishermen.

“And it’s still a very clannish town. I’m related to most of the bar owners on the street. And this place,” he added, gesturing across the restaurant, “is run by my nephew.”

Compared to the likes of Hull city centre, Faliraki is tame. In just two streets, the bars and clubs have stamped an identity on the resort.

Back at the Jamaica Bar, the evening was in full swing. A tubby man wrapped in a Cross of St George was angrily gesturing at the barman, while a group of drunken Glaswegian teenagers were slipping from their chairs on the veranda. But the general atmosphere was good-natured and lively.

The Glaswegian group were drinking greedily, each with a straw in one large bowl of cocktails.

“It’s called a fishbowl,” George explained. “People love them because they’re fun, but we’re aware of the dangers and we watch people very carefully. “When I think they’ve had enough for one night, I’ll ask them to leave.

“We don’t have bouncers, because we don’t need them. I find the matey approach works much better.”

Within half an hour, George was doing just that – patting the Scotsmen on their back and leading them off the premises. One of them, incapable of walking, or even opening his eyes, was carried like a sack of potatoes on the shoulder of his powerfully-built girlfriend. She headed into the night, cheerfully burdening him with the kind of skill that comes, presumably, from a lot of practise.

Across the street at Jimmy’s Bar the karaoke was in full swing. The vocals were grating, but the atmosphere was friendly.

Beverley Morris-Kafetzi has lived in the town for almost a decade. The Welsh academic, a kind of Shirley Valentine with an Oxford degree, met her husband on a holiday in the resort and stayed.

“I love the place,” she said. “And I feel very passionate when it comes to defending it. It’s had a bad press and it will take a long time to recover its reputation. But people will forget in time.”
Back over in the Jamaica Bar, George was reminiscing.

“I remember sitting here 30 years ago and there was nothing but olive trees for as far as you could see.”

He gave a nod towards the forest of neon lights that now marked out the view.

“Of course things have changed,” he added, with a distant stare. “But I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it one bit.”

 

 

With the spring sunshine beating down, I paused at the end of an empty track.

The road ended square at the nose of Gibraltar’s distinctive rock. A wall of limestone stretched for 500ft above me and sank more than 500ft into scrubland below.

Gibraltar is loved for its colonial atmosphere, and its mischievous colony of Barbary apes. But I’d done all that, and was ready to discover the hidden side of the Rock.

I breathed the warm salty air, rising from the straits where the Mediterrannean meets the Atlantic.

With a final look across the waves at the North African coast, with Tangiers shimmering vaguely on the horizon, I turned back to the Rock and stepped into its shadow.

The great lump of limestone is broken at the end of the road, in an archway affectionately called Maida Vale.

The apparently solid rock, jutting out from Andalucia, is less solid than it seems. In the dark days of the Second World War, the Rock was the only land on the continent that remained defiant and independent of Hitler’s power.

Its proud civilian population was evacuated to London and to British colonies around the world, while the garrison rock lived up to its history, and became one large military camp.

Its strategically important position, guarding the mouth of the Med, meant the loss of the Rock could have swung the course of the war. With the world’s most fearsome army towering down upon them, the British were pessimistic. They expected an invasion.

And they were determined to fight to the last man to hold the Rock. In preparation for the awesome battle – which never came – the Allies took a lead from their forebears during the Great Siege of the 1780s, and set to work on tunneling.

With diamond drill technology they built a labyrinth of 32 miles of tunnels inside the Rock. The idea was for the entire town to retreat inside – giving a mighty defensive position from which to battle against the Nazi onslaught.

Today, Maida Vale is an eerie entrance to a little-known subterranean world, untouched since the military moved back into the open after the war.

The tunnels are still owned by the Ministry of Defence, and many are still used by the army to practise tunnel warfare.

My “man from the ministry” guide, John Murphey met me inside the entranceway with an enthusiastic handshake.

John was born and bred in east Hull, but moved to Gibraltar more than 20 years ago after falling in love with a local girl during his career in the RAF.

“These are the most fascinating tunnels you’re ever likely to see,” he promised, as he rummaged around with a box of hard hats.

After a series of twists and turns, designed to absorb any blasts hitting the entrance, John led me into the main tunnel – dubbed the Great North Road.

It is a staggering achievement – a lofty, wide roadway, overhanging with the sharp craggy limestone, like a scene from a James Bond movie.

“There’s a very good reason for that,” John said, conspiratorially. “Ian Flemming was based here when he worked in military intelligence,” he said. “And he went on to base the underground scenes in Thunderball on these very tunnels.

“If you can imagine, during the war this place would have been just like Thunderball. There would be jeeps speeding up and down this tunnel, and there would be all manner of operational rooms through the rock.

“In fact,” he whispered, “British Intelligence still has a base deeper into the Rock. It’s the biggest listening station in Europe.”

After walking a mile through the tunnel, we reached a ramshackle doorway, marked unceremoniously with the word “Headquarters”.

Clambering across a pile of debris, we ventured into the pitch-darkness. John’s shaky torch lit the way for just a few feet. The walls narrowed to shoulder width, as we squeezed through a series of further blast protection chicanes.

The passage opened out into a large, unlit cavern, with an over-sized Andersen shelter built within it.

“This was the headquarters for the Rock,” John said, sombrely.

“Men and women would work down here for days at a time. That’s why they fitted this building inside. It created a sense of not being underground. They even fitted windows in the building, even though they opened into the tunnel.

“If someone became claustrophobic, they would tell them to open the window, and they’d feel better.”

John’s tour led ever deeper into the Rock, through the one-time hospital wing and into the redundant powerplant and rainwater collection units – which allowed the garrison real self-sufficiency.

Until at last, after miles of underground trekking, a narrow tunnel emerged suddenly into the outside world. The sunlight blinded momentarily, but as my eyes gradually adjusted, I realised we were standing on a ledge halfway up the sheer rockface, looking out at the Spanish border.

We had walked right through to the other side of the Rock.

“There was a final cave high in the Rock,” said John. “It was called Stay-behind cave, and was so secret, we still haven’t been able to find it.

“But that’s where a couple of officers would have remained after a Nazi invasion, to spy on ship movements in the straits.

“Oh yes,” John said, chuckling. “The Rock still has plenty of hidden secrets to reveal.”

Standing at the foot of the near perfect Roman coliseum at El Jem, the sun burning your face, and a hot Saharan wind blowing from the south, it is easy to become lost in the history.

A camel sits impassively at the entrance to the ruin and a row of desperate traders jump into life at the rare sight of tourists.

It may have taken us the best part of four hours on a coach to get here from our hotel near Tunis but the historical spectacle of El Jem is well worth the journey.

From miles away, the Roman amphitheatre dominates the scrub landscape of mid-Tunisia.

It looks disconcertingly as if the coliseum of Rome has been magically transported into the middle of this desert land.

The weary traveller is left wondering what will appear over the horizon next - the leaning tower of Pisa perhaps? Stonehenge or the Statue of Liberty?

But the area wasn't originally this isolated. Today the amphitheatre is surrounded only by a ramshackle town and a rather desperate tourist trade in nicknacks - an industry probably as old as the building itself.

However, in the wake of September 11, and after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tourists are hard to come by here, and we have the frantic souvenir-sellers all to ourselves.

Once, the coliseum stood at the heart of Thysdrus - one of the richest settlements in the Roman province.

Some 40km from the Mediterranean coast, Thysdrus was at the hub of a star-shaped network of roads through which the wealth of ancient Tunisia was drawn on the way to the Roman ports of Hadrumete (modern-day Sousse) and, of course, Carthage (near modern-day Tunis).

The market town's heyday ended suddenly in 238AD when Emperor Maximus of Thrace needed a bit of extra cash. His men attacked Thysdrus and left it sacked of its wealth.

Only the mighty amphitheatre survived the generations. And, today, it stands alone but remarkably intact.

At 148metres long and 122m wide, it was once the third largest amphitheatre in the Roman world - and the largest outside modern-day Italy.

Surprisingly, little is known about the building - but academics believe that it was built by the first century AD sports fan Emperor Gordien I.

And, for a real sense of history, you need only to walk into the building - beneath the rows of
ancient seating and on to the blisteringly hot, dusty oval where the blood of man and beast alike was shed on a mammoth scale.

For this 2,000-year-old stadium was once the scene of gruesome contests - all manner of animals from lions to dogs would have been let loose on each other; men, both slaves and gladiators would have also been thrust into the bloodbath.

Animals fighting men - men fighting animals. Animals fighting animals, and men fighting men. And almost always they were fighting to the death.

Few would survive in the barbaric arena as long as it took me to take a few photographs and enjoy a quick walk around.

I took the chance to gaze into the holes where predators would be thrust into the ring through a trap door; to climb up to the grandstands and imagine the deafening chants and taunting as men met their grizzly deaths below.

And perhaps most powerfully, I walked down through the underground tunnel to see the corridor where gladiators would prepare for battle beside the angry caged beasts that they would be pitted against under the hot North African sun.

"It is a truly amazing place," explained Moncef Battick, of the Tunisian Tourist Board. "When you look around, it is almost like stepping back in time 2,000 years."

But Tunisia holds surprising jewels for the holidaying historian. Three hours south of Tunis in the other direction, high in the Atlas mountains, another gem was waiting for us.

Despite being comparable to Pompeii or Herculaneum, the remarkably preserved ancient Roman town of Dougga remains uncommercialised. Not only was the place devoid of visitors, it was even devoid of shops and peddlers.

The hilltop site, over-looking the fertile wheat-growing valley of Oued Kalled, has been occupied since the second millennium BC - although the few villagers that were left were moved to a new Dougga in the 1950s, in order to preserve the Roman remains.

And well preserved they certainly are. From the dramatic Roman theatre - with the lush valley acting as a backdrop for the stage - to the equally spectacular Capitol temple - reminiscent in proud stature to the Athenian Parthenon.

But across the site, the hillside is peppered with the ruins of the ancient town - hundreds of houses are broken up by various temples, fountains, statues, squares, bath-houses, latrines and even a brothel.

And if, after all that, you are not completely historied-out, you have to find time to explore the ruins of ancient Carthage - just a few kilometres from the centre of modern-day Tunis.

The remains of the once-powerful city are now broken up by residential streets - but if you see nothing else be sure to visit the Roman Antonine Baths, perched on the edge of the Mediterranean coast.

As you gaze across the 2,000-year-old pillars and stones, you will achieve a better understanding of Roman life than you ever could in the busy streets of Rome.

“And there ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he knew that there was where he was going.”

Hemingway knew how to write a mountain. But the skills that forged the epic proportions of his short story The Snows Of Kilimanjaro, were developed on an earlier high-altitude adventure.

In the 1920s, Hemingway visited the Austrian Tirol with a pair of wooden skis and a devil-may-care smile.

Just another unknown traveller, he billeted himself in the quiet ski resort of Ischgl – a snow-capped town resting in the remote Paznaun valley.

From his Ischgl base, he was able to explore the off-piste running over the mountains to the village of Samnaun across the Swiss border.

The visit would later spawn an obscure short story – An Alpine Idyll – but, furthermore, would continue to develop Hemingway’s famous love of the great outdoors.

Keen as ever to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps, I found myself standing before the Ischgl lift, holding skis, boots and poles.

Looking up at the misty range of mountains looming ahead, I became acutely aware that I had just one problem, I can’t ski.

A friendly slap on my back gave me a sudden combination of reassurance and mild concussion.

It was Tony, my ski instructor – a middle-aged, chestnut-skinned Tirollean, with a wispy grey goatee beard and a hearty laugh.

“Come on David, you vill be fine,” he chuckled in his broken English, as he led me on to a ski lift.

It swung beneath the grinding wire as we ascended through the thick-falling snow. Below a monochrome landscape of snow and ashen-black wisps of trees stretched out to the craggy peaks.

The mountains towered above us in every direction, monumental blank cliffs meeting the sky high in the indefinable whiteness.

“I had imagined the nursery slopes to be at the bottom of the mountains,” I muttered nervously through my many-layers of clothes.

Tony smiled like a shark. “Nein, zey are right at ze top. No problem, David.”

Twenty minutes later we were at the end of the line, almost 200 metres high, and at the start of the gentle blue runs.

By the time I had walked to the base of the piste, my feet were already beginning to throb as the slanted ski boots pushed my nails back into my toes.

But ignoring the discomfort as best I could, I clipped my feet into the skis, and followed Tony towards the first piste lift.

The concept seemed simple enough – grab the hanging rope, stick the disc-shaped end of it between your legs, and let it drag you up the mountain.

Not so easy in reality though. I grabbed the rope, pushed it between my legs, lost my balance, and proceeded to be dragged across the ground.

Disentangling myself from the contraption, I rolled sideways in the snow, just quick enough to avoid the skis of the child on the next rope.

This was going to be a long day, I thought, as Tony skied to me and lifted me back on to my feet.

After a few attempts I got the hang of the lift – keep your skis parallel and you can’t really go wrong. That is, until you have to get off.

The general idea is that you lean to the right, and you will move to the left. Once out of the line of the lift, you quickly release the disc from between your legs. The elasticised rope then flies forward.

You can probably guess what happened next, but I was not so bright.

My run off was not nearly far enough, and despite releasing my own rope successfully, I was almost immediately hit in the back by the next man’s cord.

“Now ve are ready to ski,” Tony announced as he lowered his goggles, and handed me two sticks to use as safety guides.

“First we keep the skis parallel to move,” he explained, as we began to pick up speed.

“Then, watch me, we move our heels, out into a snow plough to stop,” he added, as I came to an impressive halt.

This was surprisingly easy. After a few more attempts, a satisfied-looking Tony removed the sticks.

“You are on your own,” he said.

Not a problem. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start … increase speed, can’t stop, panic, panic, panic, fall, tumble, tumble, come to rest in a snow covered heap.

Ah, not so easy then.

“You’ve got it fine David – you racer,” Tony said confidently as he dragged me back on to my feet. “Now ve learn to turn.”

Turning was not as difficult as I had imagined. Ski, snow plough, lean to the right, turn to the left.

“Great! Einfach toll!” Tony screamed.

Ski, snow plough, lean to the left, turn to the right.

“Wunderbar!”

Ski, snow plough, lean to the right, turn to the left,

“Ja-vol! Now ve ski to ze end – David, you racer!”

At the Panorama restaurant at the base of the Idalp nursery slopes, there was a wiener schnitzel with my name on it. So I set my skis parallel, and sped downwards, the chill wind in my face.

After two days of intensive lessons, boisterous après-ski, and enormous restaurant meals, I limped back on to the Swiss airbus plane at Zurich airport.

My toes were a swollen black shadow of their former self, and my limbs ached, but I was consumed with a sense of satisfaction. I had done it. I had followed in Hemingway’s footsteps, and come out in one piece.

The soprano’s sapphire eyes beamed across the room as she embarked on an aria from Don Giovanni.

The velvet sound of her voice draped itself around the baroque hall, touching every diner with a soft satin kiss.

Beneath the ornate ceiling, lit by the crystal chandelier glow, an elegant old lady closed her eyes and allowed the music to envelope her in memories.

Outside the narrow, dimly lit streets of Salzburg were lashed with rain, looking much as they did on the winter’s night in 1756 when a boy called Wolfgang was born in a cold upstairs room.

Mozart may, or may not, be surprised to see that the whole of this evening’s dinner concert is devoted to his music. And the whole of tomorrow night’s concert too.

In fact, every night is Mozart night here at the candlelit Stiftskeller St Peter restaurant.

The ensemble of period-costumed musicians plays the works of Salzburg’s favourite son each night, after a long day’s study at the city’s world-famous Mozart Conservatory.

But Mozart wouldn’t be surprised to find that the food that comes between each course of his music is of the highest quality – visitors to Saltzburg have been dining here since 803, when Charlemagne started the trend.

As dawn broke over the domes and spires of Salzburg the following morning, I asked Maria Altendorfer, of the city’s tourist board, about Mozart’s influence.

“He is certainly one of the biggest draws for the city,” she explained. “People all over the world love his music, and more than 320,000 people visited his birthplace last year.”

Mozart is a tourist magnet, and is to Salzburg what Shakespeare is to Stratford. Everywhere you look you see a street named after the boy genius, and every shop sells its own variety of Mozart-themed confectionary.

“You must look out for Mozart’s balls,” Maria warned me obscurely. “Shopkeepers in the city have been making chocolate truffles, called Mozart’s balls, for more than 100 years.”

I promised Maria that I would set myself the task of sampling as many as possible, and, in the process irritate scores of Austrian confectioners by buying single chocolates from their plush displays.

Mozart’s ghost even haunts the breathtaking interior of Salzburg Cathedral. Of all the domes in this city of domes, the cathedral’s green copper edifice is the biggest.

Inside, eyes are drawn up to the ceiling, which arches high above the congregation, adorned with intricate depictions of biblical tales.

The back of the cathedral is dominated by the extravagant pipe organ, which rises like a cliff face above the entrance.

Mozart played the instrument as a young man, when he was employed as the cathedral’s organist.

One place where you might be forgiven for expecting to bump into Mozart is the city’s Marionette Theatre. But in fact, there he is nowhere to be seen.

The company’s latest production is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and head puppeteer Barbara Heuberger introduced me proudly to Oberon.

As Barbara picked up the puppet’s strings, the enchanted marionette came alive before me.

He offered me a deep, courteous bow, before performing a brief, slightly pompous dance

“It is not just for children,” Barbara explained. “Here in Salzburg adults have loved marionette theatre for more than 100 years.

“They often come to see a play, and they even have favourite actors – they really take the puppets to their hearts.”

As I walked away from the theatre, a brief burst of Eine Kleine Nacht Musik from the windows of the Mozart Conservatory college reminded me that I was abandoning my pursuit of all things Amadeus.

So I made my way to the Mozart Geburtshaus, the house of his birth, in the centre of the city.

It had been made into a stylish, if slightly soulless, museum, where Mozart’s instruments stand silently behind glass cases, and multi-lingual history panels rest where a chaise-lounge or a standard lamp may have been in his day.

But the worn panel on the back of the miniature violin (given to Mozart on his sixth birthday) is a reminder of what went on beneath this rood almost 250 years ago.

I looked out across the dancing wheat field towards a distant villa. The golden sea that stretched before me seemed to be moving in gentle channels.

The sun was warm on my face and the breeze moved lightly around me. I stood for a moment and, closing my eyes, found that the image had ingrained itself on the inside of my eye-lids.

With a contented smile playing on my lips, I opened my eyes, and took a step backwards; back into the marble grandeur of the art gallery.

The Van Gogh painting of the wheat field smiled back at me from the wall with its warm amber glow.

“He shot himself in that field,” a voice announced from behind me.

Turning around I found a fellow sightseer – a middle-aged man dressed in a polo shirt and chinos. He smiled at me like he was sharing a closely cherished secret.

“Really?” I muttered, with a staggering absence of journalistic inquisition, and continued my tour around the gallery.

But my eyes kept drawing back to the Van Gogh, as I wandered around the neo-classical grandeur of the Kunstmuseum of Winterthur, in northern Switzerland.

Overshadowed by the neighbouring city of Zurich, the delights of Winterthur as a Mecca for art lovers and historians remain largely untapped.

However, behind the unexceptional buildings of this unknown Swiss community lie 16 museums and art galleries, containing room after room of world-class art.

Imagine the Louvre spread out across a town, with edelweiss and cuckoo clocks, and you would be halfway there.

But perhaps Switzerland should have a greater reputation in the art world. It is a country that has long had powerful effects on the artists of Europe.

After visiting Switzerland at the peak of his career, Turner returned home and developed a curious trait.

He began to paint the gentle landscapes of Yorkshire with discordant mountains and gaping cliffs. It seems that he just couldn’t leave the dramatic nature of the Swiss Alps behind.

Similarly, after Wordsworth had taken a walking tour of Switzerland in 1790, he wrote to his sister: “At this moment when many of these landscapes are floating before my mind, I feel a high enjoyment in reflecting that perhaps scarce a day of my life will pass in which I shall not derive some happiness from these images.”

So it was, on the recommendation of two of Britain’s finest creative minds, that I headed to Switzerland to experience something of the sublime.

In my mind I had hoped to tap into the sublime nature of Switzerland in some dramatic alpine pass – but my geography isn’t quite what it should be. The landscape around the Zurich region is more Pennine than Alpine.

So I turned my attention to the art, and sure enough, in the galleries of Winterthur I found inspiration in abundance.

Thomas Meier, head of tourism for Winterthur, explained: “People just don’t seem to realise quite how impressive our art collection is.

“No other Swiss city can boast as many major works of art, ranging from the Renaissance period to the present day.

“Tens of thousands of art lovers from all over the world travel to the city each year to see the Rembrandts, Renoirs, Van Goghs, Hodlers and all the other famous painters on show here.

“But contemporary art features prominently as well, and through special exhibitions the art museums organise a steady stream of spectacular encounters with great contemporary artists.”

Leaving the Kunstmuseum behind, I headed for the Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, just across the road. Even more impressive than its neighbour, it specialises in Germanic artists.

With more than 500 paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the 18th century to the early 20th century, it provides a comprehensive overview of the best of German, Swiss and Austrian art.

I found something close to my much sough-after sublime moment standing before the Chalk Cliffs in Rugen, by Caspar David Friedrich.

Framed by the branches of trees, a hapless trio of 19th century travellers peer over improbably spectacular white cliffs, towards the stretching sea. I stood for a dozen minutes or more looking at the range of graduating aquatic blues lost in a summer’s haze.

Drawn into Friedrich’s scene, I relived for a few brief moments, exquisite boyhood memories of gazing into the open void of sea and sky on the warm Cornish coast.

But Winterthur was holding on to another secret jewel. In the centre of the city I headed for the Villa Flora.

For decades, the Villa Flora was a seemingly inaccessible place shrouded in mystery.

The populace of the city had heard of the spectacular Hahnloser collection, but a visit was a privilege granted only to friends and family, artists and historians.

But in 1995 the doors of the villa were opened to the public for the first time, and the citizens of Winterthur were able to enjoy the collection in the delicate setting of the sophisticated villa.

But the jewel in the crown is a temporary collection, which will be held at the villa until March 2003.

Der Samann collection is a series of Vincent Van Gogh’s most awe-inspiring moments of brilliance.

The highlight, Le Semeur – the sower, takes pride of place in the centre of the room.

Like the wheat field in the Kunstmuseum, I found the multi-coloured swirls of the ploughed landscape drawing me in.

A step back from the painting and the colourful brushstrokes mould themselves before your eyes into a depiction of photographic clarity.

So it was that I stepped on to the upturned soil, and headed towards the distant villa. The sun was warm on my face and the breeze moved lightly around me. And as I closed my eyes, I felt I had sown a few seeds

There are times when it is difficult to decide upon a fitting facial expression.

Finding myself in a heavy artillery crater, with a four-foot Edith Piaff impersonator singing at me with gusto, was one such occasion.

I eventually settled upon a thoughtful, but sombre frown as I stood in the October rain listening to her let-rip on the 17th verse with a knew-found warbling passion, which mercifully seemed to indicate that the ballad was reaching its trembling climax.

The thoughtful frown proved fitting, as it transpired that my guide was singing of how the town of Craonne, which had once stood on the spot, had been completely destroyed during the ravenous shelling of the First World War.

The once bustling streets are now lost beneath the woodland undergrowth, and the memories of the busy little town live on only in the words of song.

Craonne was eventually rebuilt further down the valley, and the emerald copse which grows on its original site, is an arboretum to its memory.

The Plateau de Californie upon which the arboretum grows, was ravaged by the torrent of the Great War, as French and German forces struggled for supremacy of the strategic eerie overlooking the Aisne and the Ailette valleys.

The Chemin des Dames, the road that runs across the crest of the ridge, became synonymous with death and destruction.

The road achieved its name – The Ladies’ Way – in the eighteenth century when Adelaide and Victoire, the glamorous daughters of Louis XV, followed the route from Paris to visit their governess at Vauclair.

One French soldier, of the First World War, tortured by the three-year stand-off wrote in his diary “what a pretty name for such an ugly place”.

Today the Chemin des Dames offers as beautiful a tableau of rural France as could ever be experienced. But its rich history gives a constant reminder of its bloody past.

The plateau is undermined by a labyrinth of ancient caves. These served as a stronghold for each occupying army.

Although held by French forces at the beginning of the war, from 1915 the Caverne du Dragon, as it became known, was transformed into an underground city by German units.

Dormitories, a first aid post, and even a chapel were built in the chalk, deep below the trenches.

The caves have now been turned into a museum of remembrance, offering a fascinating insight into the everyday lives of the troops trapped beneath the ground.

My base for the weekend was the three-star Mercure hotel in Chamouille at the base of the Chemin des Dames.

The spacious, and comfortable hotel enjoys spectacular lakeside views across the Ailette Waterpark.

The 1,111 acre (450 hectare) park has been developed over the past decade to offer the adventurous thrill-seeker every conceivable water-activity at the nearby imported beach.

A well-maintained caravan park provides a cheap alternative to the hotel.

Further around the bay, the Ailette Golf Course offers 18 holes that the more sedate thrill-seeker may find difficult to resist.

A visit to the medieval champagne Cellar Pannier at Chateau Thierry offers a fascinating insight into the work that goes into a bottle of bubbly.

The cellar, which is an hour’s drive to the south of the Ailette Waterpark, is set within two miles of ancient underground caves.

A guided tour of the cellar reveals the opulent world of champagne production. A decadent morning of champagne tasting in these sophisticated surroundings is unmissable at a mere 30 francs.

The medieval walled town of Laon is also well worth a visit. Just 15 minutes away from the Ailette Waterpark, this ancient town is situated upon a rocky plateau.

A speedy funicular railway offers a nippy ride up to the delightful narrow cobbled streets.

The centrepiece of the town comes in the form of the dramatic gothic splendour of Notre Dame Cathedral. A trip up one of its five elaborate towers rewards the traveller with incomparable views across the Aisne countryside, but the task is only for the fit and the adventurous. Much of the long spiral climb is in near darkness.

Further along the Chemin des Dames, the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice lay beneath endless rows of gravestones at Cerny-en-Laonnois.

The French lay beneath a legion of white crosses, and the Germans in the next field beneath a legion of black crosses.

Standing in the no man’s land between the two there is a striking sense that even in death the infamous bitter stand-off is maintained across the misty ashen field.

The thoughtful but sombre frown reappeared across my face. But this time it was genuine.