What are your top 10 travel destinations?
In no particular order of merit, these are not necessarily the places I think everyone ought to visit. They are the places I return to, or would return to, because they have accumulated meaning for me. Some were places to work, some to live, some to raise a family, some to escape to. Geography, history, culture, landscape and memory all come into it.
Barcelona
I’ve been several times and will keep returning. Coming from England, it feels properly abroad, which matters. Once there, it is the Mediterranean climate, Catalan culture and food, architecture and street layout going back centuries, the museums and galleries, shops and cosmopolitan life that knit it all together.
Paris
Like Barcelona, with the significant bonus that I once lived and worked there. I adore the language, culture, history, art and food, along with the streets themselves. Then there is its position: get on an overnight train and much of the rest of Europe opens up around you.
London
I lived and worked in London for eight years. I eventually escaped to the countryside to raise a family, but never escaped London altogether. We remain within commuting distance, so I can still get in for shops, shows, museums and galleries, take what I want from the city and then leave again.
Brighton
London by the sea to many, and close enough for me to cycle over. Brighton is a frenzied hub of activity and my home for life drawing and printmaking. It can be bracing and it will never be Cannes, but it is by the sea, and that counts for a great deal.
Edinburgh
Though I have never lived there, I have often been to Edinburgh both for work and as a visitor. I return for its European, distinctly non-English atmosphere, its culture, history and architecture, and because it sits at the gateway to Scotland’s spectacular interior.
France
I have been a Francophile since my early teens and remain staggered that we never ended up making our home there. We settled in Paris for long enough to imagine it as the place to raise children, and I have travelled through pretty much every corner of France, helped by working for a French television agency that sent us here, there and everywhere.
Wine, the First World War, fine dining, skiing, woods and history have all been reasons to return: Dieppe to Strasbourg, Chambéry to Carcassonne, Hendaye-Plage to Nice, and Paris, Reims, Lyon, Marseille, Limoges and Grenoble in between.
The French Alps
Fifty years of trips to the Alps, most of them to France. I have skied the resorts and slopes of the Tarentaise in every condition across a season that once stretched from November into May, including summer skiing on the Tignes glacier.
I’m not a dancer, but skiing was my disco, my gymnastics and my ultramarathon. The closest I ever came to a book deal was receiving proofs from Collins for a guidebook to the French Alps. Few landscapes have been so persistent in my life.
Beadnell
Still a Northumberland fishing village, however many years it spent becoming Gosforth-by-the-Sea for families escaping Newcastle for their holidays. Growing up, if I wasn’t at school, we were here for most holidays, half-terms and long weekends.
My earliest memories are of dunes and rock pools, cousins and second cousins, school friends and family friends. I would retire there if the weather were better. It was better once. This Northumberland lad has become a southern softie.
Lewes
Chance brought me to this exceptional Sussex market town. I could never leave now.
It has its own history, culture and architectural smorgasbord, but three ingredients matter particularly to me: a river, a castle and hills. Lewes has all three. It sits in the South Downs National Park, close enough to the sea, the English Channel and therefore France, while a fast railway line keeps London within reach.
It has galleries, museums and deep historical roots running through Simon de Montfort and Thomas Paine to the development of democracy. It is also an urban arboretum, rich in green spaces, with excellent schools, a library, leisure centre, two swimming pools, independent shops, too many pubs and plenty of cafés and restaurants. It works as a place to live.
Mawgan Porth
Mawgan Porth became our Cornish version of Beadnell: a family destination for a week or two each year. Sand, surf and eating from the sea; tumbling Cornish countryside meeting a severe Atlantic coastline.
Above all, though, it holds the memories of family gatherings and of watching another generation acquire its own attachment to a particular piece of coast.
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