Get your rocks off in Nicaragua

Country & Town House | 24 Mar 2015

I’m suspended above the ground wearing a harness. Dangling over rain forest. I’ve already signed a waiver for death, dismemberment and suchlike. Now like some hybrid of monkey and horizontal parachutist, I’m rocketing past trees, rain forest and over coffee plantations. Jumping off the zip line at ceiba trees around which 60ft. high platforms have been built – there to ready myself to take the next leg of my treetop journey. Then careering off again as howler monkeys howl in the forest.

• Travel: Americas

El Salvador: the little country that offers such a lot

Country & Town House | 24 Mar 2015

Almost nobody speaks English and we may be the country’s only tourists, as far as we can work out – which is a delight. Welcome to El Salvador. It is Central America’s least-visited country. Somewhere that has long struggled to gain tourists’ trust. A land perceived as dangerous and with gang killings, violence that has been going on since the 1990s. But if you don’t go into the shanty towns, you’re unlikely to be affected. Instead, we have a holiday in a little country with lots to offer… splendid wildlife and rich forests, colonial towns and beaches, vast mountain ranges and volcanoes. Above all, it’s never more than an hour to reach the city, sea or mountains by car from anywhere in El Salvador.

• Travel: Americas

Bribing elephants with pumpkin seeds and spotting monks with iPads in Thailand

Country & Town House | 24 Feb 2015

The monk in saffron robes clutches a mobile phone and iPad. It’s an incongruous sight. Normally these holy men are holding alms bowls for donations of sticky rice. ‘It’s wrong to use Buddha as decoration or tattoo,’ reads a notice nearby. Across the forecourt I hear the strains of musicians playing instruments with names like Krong, Krap and Pia. Maybe a dignitary has landed. Maybe I’ve got culture shock.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Gold star service

Country & Town House | 24 Oct 2014

Are those chores that need doing nagging away at you? Caroline Phillips picks out eight super services that should be on your speed dial

• Homes, Interiors & Property



View cutting image View PDF

Spa Guide 2014 – Uma Punakha, Bhutan

Country & Town House | 24 Aug 2014

This is the spa with the best and most healing view in the world. No treatment or activity – anywhere – could beat the ‘om’ effect of just gazing through its floor-to-ceiling windows at the snow-peaked Himalayas and glacial river.

• Health, Beauty & Spa



View cutting image View PDF

Spice of Life

Country & Town House | 24 Jun 2014

The fashion for top-notch food continues apace, so Caroline Phillips learns her goosegrass from her ganache with the help of some culinary superstars on the UK’s best cookery courses

• Food



View cutting image View PDF

Watermeadow Cottage

Country & Town House | 24 Feb 2014

This teeny two-bed 18th century Costwold stone hunting lodge, set down a pot-holed farm track on the Blenheim Palace Estate, is as cute as a button. The Duke of Marlborough has leased it to ‘DJ’ Nichols, American founder of ‘lifestyle provider’ Unlisted.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa



View cutting image View PDF

Monteverdi 

Country & Town House | 24 Sep 2013

He’s being dubbed the Mini Medici. That’s Michael Cioffi, everyone’s favourite American lawyer. He’s bought part of a medieval Tuscan hilltop village – it boasts just 30 houses and a year-round population of 10 – and he’s turning it into an upmarket holiday spot cum cultural hub.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa



View cutting image View PDF

Sukotai, Bangkok

Country & Town House | 24 Oct 2012

Although Sukotai is aurrounded by the high-rise buildings of Bangkok, on of the noisiest and most traffic-choked cities in the world, the 210-room hotel is an exercise in Zen. It’s also that rare thing – a resort hotel in the centre of the city. It boasts a stonking six-acre landscaped garden full of Eastern promise, water features, bougainvillaea and even an Olympic-sized pool.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Asia/ Oceania



View cutting image View PDF

Cupboard Love

Country & Town House | 18 Oct 2012

‘Think organised. Think organised squared… and that’s Susanna Hammond. In the space of a day she can change your life for the better. Susanna should be available on the National Health.’ These are the words of Emma Burns, the talented director of interior design company Colefax and Fowler.

• Homes, Interiors & Property



View cutting image View PDF

Spa Guide 2012

Country & Town House | 24 Aug 2012

If you’re looking to lose weight, get fit, reboot or just get away from it all, let our spa guide lead you to a life of wellbeing and serenity.

• Health, Beauty & Spa



View cutting image View PDF

Reinventing the heel

Country & Town House | 1 Dec 2011

The sandstone building shimmers like a mirage. Perhaps a huge creamy Moroccan fort. Actually it’s a resort in Puglia – in the heel of Italy – and a feat of vision and design. It’s a place that has opened to oohs and ahhs. And to which photographers from Architectural Digest Italia to Vogue France have been hotfooting it.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa



View cutting image View PDF