“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
St Andrews, Fife, packs a punch with its history, scenic beauty, fresh seafood and student hijinks. It’s the home of golf, the English-speaking world’s third oldest university, a former ecclesiastical capital and once a pull for pilgrims visiting St Andrew’s relics. Go there too for Old Course Hotel, a 5-star luxury establishment that’s a magnet for golfers
I’m swimming when I notice a hippo just a few feet from me, wallowing beside me in the waterhole. My heart lurches. OK, let’s be honest, he’s in the waterhole and I’m in the infinity pool that overlooks it. But there can be few better ways to view game.
Edinburgh: that wondrous place on the shore of the Firth of Forth that’s dominated by its 11th-century castle on a rocky ridge; the capital of Scotland; somewhere with JK Rowling spots aplenty. Heading to the Fringe this summer? Luckily for you, Edinburgh isn’t just host to theatre and comedy’s rising stars, but a stellar destination in its own right. It is a location with top food, excellent shopping and historic sites across the town centre, not to mention those wonderful Scots themselves, with their dry humour, haggis and sporrans. It is, of course, always bathed in sunlight because that’s what the weather’s permanently like in Edinburgh – not. Just prepare yourself for four seasons in one day.
African aesthetics are having a moment – from the spectacular William Kentridge exhibition at the Royal Academy to the V&A’s blockbuster Africa Fashion. And there’s no better place to experience African art in all its forms (from sculpture to scent and gemstones) than at the Delaire Graff Estate. Set in a glorious 106-acre estate bursting with vineyards near Stellenbosch, it’s the hotel of Laurence Graff, jeweller, diamantaire, billionaire businessman and art collector. You can even rent his art-filled private house, the Owner’s Villa, if your pockets are deep.
Here’s a guide to six of the best off-the-beaten track places to stay in Scotland, from a secret historical hideaway in Edinburgh to a private Highlands estate where you can stalk and pan for gold, to a stylish, off-grid property on a remote island. Most of these discoveries are so off-grid, they have never been written about before.
Who could fail to fall in love with this hilltop village’s narrow, terracotta-and-rough-hewn-stone alleys, steep streets that set your espadrilles at right angles, roofs of handmade red clay tiles, and bougainvillea cascading down medieval walls: one of the most beautiful villages in the Côte d’Azur, and all built among the rocks.
Spring seems like the perfect time of year to explore Copenhagen, best seen on foot or by bike, leaving the newish City Circle Line loop of the metro, a decade in the making, for residents who see the city’s beauty all the time. Although, as Ingrid, who had recently moved there told me, ‘I still feel like I am seeing Copenhagen properly for the first time, as high green walls covering the construction cloaked so many of its finest squares and palaces for so long.’
Children dressed as clowns and adults wearing fairy wings – all enjoying a fiesta – stroll past the remains of a Roman amphitheatre. The sun is setting as we sit, al fresco, in an old bodega nibbling local almonds, anchovy olives and drinking fresh Seville orange juice. Above us, an 11th-century Moorish hilltop fortress, Alcazaba, dominates the city. This is the Andalusian coastal city of Málaga, a provincial capital that seems to enjoy a permanent party.
Captivating wildlife, waterfalls, castles galore – you’ll be mighty impressed by deepest Perthshire
It’s like disappearing down the best of rabbit holes and arriving at a Scottish baronial version of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. The skew-whiff clipped topiary on the sloping lawn looks as if it’s been cut by a drunken gardener or the March Hare; the 240-acre estate is dotted with water-sprouting mermaids, characters from Robert Burns, Robert Burns himself and Ossian, the mythical Scottish Bard. The Queen of Hearts must have shouted, “Off with their heads” because there are decapitated heads (AKA stone busts) on the garden walls.
I can’t keep away from Scotland. Yes, yes, I know it rains a lot. And if you go to the wrong place in summer there may be battalions of midges. And, OK, it’s true that far outside the cities a few still think that a vegetarian is someone who’s happy to eat oatmeal picked from the sheep’s liver and lungs of a haggis. But ah dinnae ken of many places I love more than Scotland.
The joys of Cape Town are legion: from its jaw-dropping setting below Table Mountain — one of the world’s natural wonders — to the Atlantic crashing beside it. With its virtually untouched coast that goes on forever (visitors are spoilt for beaches), thriving art and foodie scenes, winelands and buzzy energy, who cares, says Caroline Phillips, that it’s famously windy and grittily edgy, a dangerous city with a brash attitude?
Cyprus is gloriously hot at Easter and autumn half-term, but its trump card for those travelling with under fours is that it’s less than five…
It has been attracting attention from the rich and famous lately, but the lush and beautiful Greek island of Meganisi is still “firmly off the…
These are the islands on the edge of the world. You may see porpoises, basking sharks or dolphins. Or perchance a peregrine falcon or sea…