HemmersChess

The new "super cottages" combine spectacular locations with luxurious facilities. Here are 10 of the UK's best…

According to the Office For National Statistics, Britons went on 10m fewer trips abroad last year than in 2008, many opting instead for a holiday in the UK. But that doesn't mean a no-frills break. James Morris, managing director of Farm and Cottage Holidays, says many of us now expect holiday cottages to have the same features as those of a plush boutique hotel. "We've noticed the trend for 'super cottages' building over the past four to five years," says Morris. "Properties are coming on to the rental market with extra features, such as private cinemas, indoor pools and hot tubs. One of the first was The Pad in Torbay, which offers a top-of-the-range entertainment system, steam shower with MP3 function and a dancing pole." They don't have to be "super" expensive either – fill the property and you could pay just £60 per person a week. Here's our top 10…

Wychwood Cottages, Banbury, Oxfordshire

These 12 characterful cottages have been converted from the stables of a ruined abbey. They sleep between 2 and 10, and have a country-cottage feel, with floral furnishings, chinaware and wingback chairs. As well as a games room (with pool, table tennis, darts et al), each cottage has free run of the extensive grounds; while the kids explore the wendy house in the walled garden, parents can play croquet or relax in the pool and spa (treatments are available). A private chef and babysitting services can also be arranged. Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden are a short drive away.

Book it Sleeps 2-10, from £1,073 per week; 020 7401 1010, cvtravel.co.uk

Hazel Cottage, Acharacle, Argyll

Just 250m from the shores of Loch Awe, this recently renovated four-bedroom cottage features a lounge with a gas stove, a spacious kitchen and outdoor decked area – all with stunning loch views. But it's the Finnish barbecue hut outside that really steals the show: built from Arctic spruce, it seats 15 and is wonderfully cosy, with a barbecue stove, reindeer skins and tea lights. Fishing and boat hire are available just a few minutes' walk from the house, or you could explore the nearby village of Dalmally and Kilchurn Castle.

Book it Sleeps 8, from £480 per week; 07790 104 073; holiday-rentals.co.uk/p732437

The Ducket, Belford, Northumberland

This 18th-century 65ft-high tower, which stands guard over the Northumbrian coast, wows you before you even step through the front door. Sleeping two, it has five round rooms on five floors, which are connected by a wrought-iron spiral staircase, all newly restored with polished wood floors, exposed stone walls and homely floral furnishings. There is Wi-Fi access throughout the property, and a miniature library on the top floor which offers panoramic views of Lindisfarne Castle and the Cheviot Hills. Budle Bay is half a mile away, and the National Cycle Route 1 and St Oswald's Way walking path are right on your doorstep.

Book it Sleeps 2, from £450 per week; 01668 213 336, rosscottages.co.uk

Providence House, near Holt, Norfolk

Owned by artists and spread over three floors, this house is straight out of the pages of Homes & Gardens – old floorboards, stylish furniture and vintage wallpaper by American design house Brunschwig & Fils. There are four double bedrooms; our particular favourite is the Sewing Room, with its kingsize bed, window seat with views over the garden and antique cabinets full of beautifully arranged remnants of fabric and sewing thread bobbins. Curl up in front of the open fire in the lounge – complete with a well-stocked bookcase, flat-screen TV and DVD player – and pick your fruit and vegetables each morning from the organic garden. Day trips could include Holkham Beach and Blakeney Point, which is home to more than 100 basking seals.

Book it Sleeps 8, from £790 per week; 01728 638 962, bestofsuffolk.co.uk

Chapel Hill, Camborne, Cornwall

Cornwall has its fair share of luxury cottages, but this lovingly converted chapel, set in its own extensive grounds on the edge of a nature reserve, has to be one of the best. Perfect for large families or groups of friends, it sleeps 12 in four bedrooms, and mixes beamed ceilings and oak furnishings with underfloor heating, a widescreen plasma TV, PlayStation and contemporary woodburner. But you will probably spend most of your time outside, where there is a trampoline, climbing frame, hot tub, swimming pool – covered with a retractable glass roof (and shared with one other property) – and a Swedish barbecue cabin that seats 14. The property also comes with mountain bikes and kayaks to use for free. A five-mile footpath leads down to the beaches, and there are child-friendly pubs within a few miles.

Book it Sleeps 12, from £995 per week; 01237 459 888, holidaycottages.co.uk

Shell House, Exmoor, Somerset

Just yards away from Porlock Weir, this property has a log burner in the lounge and folding doors that open out on to a balcony with views across the water. Architecturally striking, with high apex ceilings and skylights, it has four double bedrooms (three en suite) with kingsize beds and iPod docking stations, a well- stocked kitchen, plus a cinema and games room. It's a short stroll to a real ale pub and a bakery run by surfers, and you also get a free concierge service to organise days out for you. Or you could just relax on that balcony with a G&T.

Book it Sleeps 8, £2,500 per week (year-round price); 01865 764 087, sheepskinlife.com

Hopton Hall, Wirksworth, Derbyshire

The stables, coach house and servants' cottages of this grand hall, located in the Derbyshire Dales, were recently converted into four self-catering properties. They each sleep between 4 and 14, and feature exposed brick walls, sofas you can sink into and a log burner or open fire, and two of the cottages have their own private gardens. Explore the 30-acre grounds and you will find woodland areas, a paddock with football and volleyball nets, barbecue tables and a children's play area. The properties also have shared use of an indoor swimming pool, and there's a residential beauty therapist on call, too. Carsington Water is within walking distance, with bird sanctuaries, sailing, fishing and sailboarding.

Book it Sleeps 4-14, from £389 per week; 01629 540 458, premiercottages.com

Brecon Beacons Cottage, Brecon Beacons

Located in the heart of the national park, with views of the Black Mountains, this 16th-century stone farmhouse (see picture, above) is as remote as it is stylish. It mixes exposed stone walls, flagstone floors (complete with underfloor heating) and large oak beams with vintage rugs, beautiful fabrics and antique furniture. There's a pool table in the lounge, and a large enclosed garden and paddock outside (just in case you want to bring your horse). You can set off on a walk through the Brecon Beacons from your front door, or have a go at Canadian canoeing, archery or caving – all of which can be arranged locally.

Book it Sleeps 6, from £650 per week; 020 7401 1010, cvtravel.co.uk

Hillcrest, Bigbury-on-Sea, Devon

Just 350m up from the sandy beach, this split-level hillside house was inspired by the beach houses of Sydney. It features sliding walls of glass, designer fabrics and local artwork. There are five double bedrooms, a home cinema system in the "snug", table tennis and a sauna. Outside you'll find a lawned garden, decked terrace and hammock – perfectly positioned to lap up the views of Burgh Island and Stoke Point. If you can tear yourself away, head to nearby Bantham, renowned as one of the south coast's best surf spots.

Book it Sleeps 10, from £995 per week; 01647 434 063, helpfulholidays.com; ref L114

Lowtherwood, Ambleside, Cumbria

Enjoy views of Windermere and the Langdale Valley on the balcony and terraces of this newly renovated property. Inside you'll find four bedrooms, all en suite with free-standing baths, a spacious lounge with exposed beams, a woodburning stove and floor-to-ceiling windows, and a plush kitchen. There's even a helicopter landing pad. After a day's ramble through the fells, the sauna and outdoor hot tub will be just what the doctor ordered. There is a Michelin-starred restaurant two minutes' walk away.

Book it Sleeps 8, from £1,390 per week; 01228 599 960, cumbrian-cottages.co.uk

Visit guardian.co.uk/travel for more advice and travel suggestions

Hard on the heels of a good Italian in north London comes a restaurant worth crossing the river for

184 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 (020 7378 6809). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75

You wait ages for a good, reasonably priced, achingly hip, modern Italian restaurant, and then two come along at once. There are, naturally enough, various things to separate last week's Trullo at London's Highbury Corner and this week's Zucca, on that tight knot of streets near London Bridge where smart young things without children live in apartment spaces without walls. Trullo had a youthful vibe; Zucca feels like Trullo's grown-up brother – it's what the latter would have looked like if they'd had fat investors wanting a piece of the action. It is a clean white space of clean white tables, big windows, concrete and metropolitan attitude, constructed by professionals. It looks, I said to my companion, like the canteen for a smart architectural practice, and then recalled that this was exactly how its inspiration, the River Cafe in Hammersmith, started. The staff are older than at Trullo, their hair cuts a little sharper, the menu a little longer, the kitchen a little more open, the better to watch the cooks taste every dish as it goes out.

What unites them is quality and price. They are each other's ying and yang, separated only by Old Father Thames. Zucca's big selling point is a lengthy list of antipasti at astonishingly good prices. A generous plate full of carpaccio of sea bream, for the princely sum of £4.15, came dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice and curls of fresh red chilli. It had us debating the meeting point of Japanese and Italian food.

Baked hunks of beetroot, long-roasted shallots and soft goat's cheese was both pretty and rich. The most indecently indulgent of the lot, however, was a plate of the vegetable from which the restaurant takes its name – zucca is the Italian for pumpkin – soft cooked, chipped and lightly battered. For £3. Oh my. If I lived nearby I would sneak in for a plateful every day, until I was the size of an apartment block rather than a mere house.

There were just two pasta dishes, one of which, wide pappardelle with peas, lemon and a snowfall of grated Parmesan, had run out by 8.15pm, which suggests pretty poor stock control, but the servings going past us looked irritatingly lovely. The other was exactly the same as at Trullo last week: skinny threads of taglierini with brown shrimps and courgette, a beautiful fusion of an English ingredient with Italian principles. Zucca's was as good as that at Trullo – silky egg-yolk-yellow pasta, nutty little shrimps, a ripe starchy liquor – though at £6.50 it was £2 more expensive for the starter portion. Which is what white walls, acres of shiny glass and older, more plentiful and more seasoned staff costs.

A veal chop, with crisp, caramelised fat and a heap of well-seasoned wilted spinach, was a simple dish full of simple virtues. Another of curiously meaty squid, chargrilled and curled, sprinkled with red chilli and laid on borlotti beans was equally good. The only duff notes were rather ordinary desserts: a slightly overset panna cotta with roasted peaches, and a more than slightly over-baked almond and cherry tart. But when the bill stacks up as it does here – helped by a wine list with lots of choice in the teens – such a thing is merely a vague disappointment rather than the bloody outrage the too-standard three-figure bill engenders.

So now north and south London have access to great Italian food. To those outside the capital who want to moan that there is a world beyond London, I could say that the city is witnessing a massive explosion in restaurants. But the real reason for the outbreak of London reviews involves one of my kids, a raging infection, the brilliant services of the NHS and a lot of time bedside. (He's fine now.) Frankly, for anybody wishing to rage at me for being metro-centric, I regard this as a get-out-of-jail-free card. And the restaurant reviews as a blessed relief from far too much canteen food. After all, man cannot live by paninis and packets of crisps alone. Normal service out-of-London will resume shortly.

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

Travelling on your own lets you do exactly what you want when you want. Author and veteran solo traveller Jenny Diski shares her strategies.
See the rest of our experts' tips on holidaying solo

It's really simple: the great thing about travelling alone is that there is no one else with you. No one whose wishes and needs you have to consider when you want to spend the day at your hotel in bed reading excursion brochures or gloomy Thomas Bernhard. You want to stay in bed? You stay in bed. You want to lie at the edge of an ocean and let the surf play with your feet? You do that. You want to see the sights? Really? Do you really? Well, if you must, you can.

You travel alone, you do exactly as you want. This surely needs no further explanation. But, of course, I'm from what Margaret Thatcher (that well-known communitarian) called the Me generation. Being with other people on holiday makes me anxious. Are they comfortable, happy, restless, resentful, bored? On the whole, togetherness requires compromise and why would you want to compromise (more than already required by the location and budget) while travelling, as well as in your real, everyday life?

Nevertheless, I know that there are those who find the word "alone" distressing. That scene in Les Enfants du Paradis where the insufferable toddler enters the theatre box, in which the gloriously tragic Arletty watches her secret love on stage, and pipes: "Vous êtes toute seule, madame?" makes being toute seule a lifelong terrifying prospect. Well then, try "solo".

The difference between travelling solo and travelling alone is a state of mind. I've been travelling alone for decades, long before I could call myself a "travel writer" – not that I do call myself a travel writer. But the word could is essential here. It's true that, for different reasons in different places, people can be curious, suspicious even, of a woman (young, middle-aged or old) travelling alone. Yet tell them you're a writer and not only is everything explicable but people will stay and talk to you, telling you sometimes wonderful stories about their lives. Use the writer excuse with a different look on your face, and people will understandingly leave you alone.

In those circumstances where you might feel awkward – eating alone in a restaurant full of holiday couples and families, lizarding on a beach hoping for perfect peace, ordering a drink at a bar in a small town – only think of yourself as a writer on an assignment and the unease falls away. You are, after all, doing what a writer does: looking, thinking, playing with characters or ideas, and idling. Once you've explained yourself to yourself it does wonders for not worrying about what other people think. It makes all social unwillingness acceptable. You can talk, not talk; join, not join; everything's covered for other people and for you. You're travelling solo, not alone.

I've chilled out in the Caribbean, encircled America by train, cargo-shipped across the Atlantic and explored the Antarctic peninsula, all solo and at ease, using my laptop as a flag of peace and quiet. Even before I really did write travel stuff, I went to Greek islands in that blissful condition of being alone but free to talk to people if I wanted, by using the journalism excuse.

There are other ways to travel solo without raising eyebrows, as I did when I went with my three-year-old to Lake Como and was stared at with deep suspicion and disapproval by the other, mostly elderly, Italian guests in the hotel. Eventually, I made it a point to "find" myself sitting in the foyer next to the crossest-looking elderly lady and explained how sad and yet comforting it was to return here where my late husband and I had enjoyed such happy holidays. She broke into a relieved smile to discover I was a virtuous widow and not a disreputable single mother, as I was, and passed the news around, so that the rest of the vacation allowed me to "mourn" while basking in benevolent glances.

As a young woman in Greece, I found a polite but very firm "no, thank you" was sufficient to send young Greek men, who were both practical and fatalistic, off to try their luck elsewhere.

There are limits to easing your way alone in the world. None of these strategies would have worked in the train I took in my late teens from Rome to Assisi. It was full and I had no seat booked, so I spent the journey standing in the corridor in a tube-like crush with what seemed like an entire brigade of the Italian army. This was awkward and uncomfortable.

For several hours the young men, every one of them, stared unblinking at me with that deadly gaze poised between loathing and lust, until the train reached Assisi, where I fought my way through hands, mouths and groins to the exit. I hadn't thought of the journalism justification at that stage, but it really wouldn't have helped.

Jenny Diski's latest book is The Sixties

The poems of a 10th-century minstrel and tales of extraordinary hospitality sent the author to the Soghd region

Comparing places today with the descriptions in medieval annals can be a risky business: more often than not, time has ripped most of the old details out, replacing them with something much more mundane. But as I drove through the region of Soghd in Tajikistan, it looked like little had changed. Cows ambled across the path and women balanced sacks, buckets or ceramic pots on their heads.; Along the road to the village of Panj Rud, I could still see the "running water" and "many trees" for which this region is praised by medieval geographers. I was on the trail of a blind minstrel – a 10th-century poet called Rudaki, whose verses are still recited by Tajiks today. In the city of Khujand, I'd strolled into a sugar market to see an old man, sitting among boiled sweets and bags of sugar cubes, dangling his pointy-toed shoes off a cart and plucking a traditional dotar. He was reciting a poem by Rudaki – and judging by the rapt attention he was paid, it struck the same chord as with its original audience, when the poet's mouth would be filled with gemstones by admirers.

Visiting Panj Rud, where Rudaki is buried, I scrambled up to his domed mausoleum before strolling into the village. It was his townsfellows that I really wanted to meet. Back in the 10th-century, a geographer called Ibn Hawqal praised the Soghd region for its hospitality, citing the example of a local landowner who fastened back his doors with nails to keep them open for anyone travelling through. "Strangers might arrive here at the most unseasonable hours, or in any numbers," wrote Ibn Hawqal, "for the master of the house had provided everything necessary both for the men and their beasts."

Modern-day Soghdians were clearly just as friendly: sitting under their scythes, which hung from nails sticking out of the shop wall, they beckoned me over and began questioning me about my travels. But, despite Ibn Hawqal's account, I could hardly have anticipated what happened next: a debate over who would have the duty of hosting the grubby, pasty-faced stranger.

Up a muddy track at the top of a hill, a wooden gate swung back, and two cows nodded to the side, the smell of their mud-walled byre confused by a drop-loo. A potato plantation spread out in front of me, framed by wooden stalls stacked with hay, ahead of a yard where rugs were on a washing line, along with a turban and a set of stirrups.

"The guest," exclaimed my host – the eldest of the villagers, "is a god!"

A teapot and bowls were set on a small cloth-covered table, to be followed by mint leaves and bowls of fresh yoghurt. My host lowered himself on to the carpet and produced a Cyrillic copy of a 10th-century epic poem, which he kept beside his Qur'an.

"I was like this character," he said, tapping a muddy finger on a passage about a mighty hero with an ox-headed mace. "When I was young I was strong too," he said. "That is when I built this house. But now my beard is white and my strength is ruined." He wrinkled his nose, as if age was something that really should have been avoided – and would have been, with a little more luck.

I spent most of that evening with his son. Mansur wasn't far off 50 years old, but he still treated his father with great respect.When Mansur introduced himself to me, he secretively patted his waistcoat and cast me a comradely wink. I wasn't sure what he meant, but the answer came when his father stepped outside to pray. Thrusting one arm inside his waistcoat, Mansur pulled out – with the flourish of a conjuror – a bottle of Anzob vodka. It tinkled against the bowls as he poured out the measures, and he drained his at once.

"Quick!" he whispered, throwing nervous glances through the crack in the door. When the old man shuffled back in, Mansur rolled the bottle under the table and shot me another of his winks. Vodka may not feature in the medieval accounts, but fear of a father's wrath certainly does. Even if Mansur was grey-haired himself, he clearly wasn't too old to reap a whirlwind if his father should catch him boozing.

• For visa details see tajembassy.org.uk. Air Baltic (airbaltic.com) flies from Gatwick to Dushanbe from £714 return

Nicholas Jubber is the author of Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard

Oriente is the steamy, jungle-dense, tourism-free side of Cuba – it is also where Fidel Castro grew up. Lydia Bell visits his family's finca and his revolutionary HQ

The clapped-out Moskvich is blaring Charanga Forever, the hottest salsa band in Cuba. Its owner, Yasser, is being paid to drive us to the Sierra Maestra. The blacked-out windows are de rigueur to hide his illegal cargo – the yuma (foreigner, me) and her Cuban husband. We are cutting past the Bay of Nipe, shooting at breakneck speed down straight roads banked by thigh-high sugar cane, the Sierra Cristal hovering on the horizon, when Yasser mentions that Fidel Castro's childhood farm is five kilometres away. I plead with him to make a detour.

Twenty minutes later, past a tiny hamlet called Birán, we arrive at a remote farm overlooked by mountains, set in sun-kissed meadows. There is no one there save a couple of guards who send for a guide for us. We have chanced upon an extraordinary place: the estate where the nine Castro siblings spent their halcyon childhood.

I had no idea Fidel's father was so successful. An immigrant from Spain, Angel Castro married Lina, a Cuban girl 28 years his junior, and bought a farm, which he kept expanding (Fidel ultimately confiscated land from his father: no special treatment there). Angel built a general store, telegraph room, school, hotel and mini cockfighting stadium.

You can visit the house Fidel's parents lived in until their death. Lina's bedroom is dotted with religious statues, her glass-top dresser decorated with clippings of her son in the jungle. There is Angel's old wardrobe with his clothes hanging there, and all the family bric-a-brac. In a country of closed doors, which knows about as much about museum curating as it does about hedge fund management, this is most compelling – perhaps because it was rescued from dilapidation and passionately restored in 1979 by Celia Sánchez, Fidel's friend and rumoured lover, rather than by a bunch of Communist party officials with a lot of agenda and little insight.

I don't know why I should be surprised that austere Fidel spent his formative years here, so far from the bright lights of Havana. Like many Cuban anti-imperialists, including those who fought the Spanish, he was brought up wealthy, amid great poverty, in the east. In Oriente, peasant insurrection and revolutionary passions were always easily ignited.

Today Oriente remains the Cuba of your wildest imagination, a world away from beach loungers, cuba libre cocktails and musicians singing Guantanamera on auto-pilot. It has dense jungles, hidden rivers and unvisited coasts. The weather is steamier and more temperamental; the roads peter out into tracks. The people are darker, their mores and beliefs more African, their manners lackadaisical and Caribbean.

If we feel we've seen a new side to Fidel here, where we are headed is more fearfully revolutionary: the Sierra Maestra, the tallest mountains in Cuba, where the rebels hid while they plotted their revolution (see the Stephen Soderburgh biopic, Che: Part One, for details). Santo Domingo in the Sierra Maestra is the jumping-off point for La Comandancia, Castro's headquarters. We arrive at dusk, aware that it is by the grace of God that Yasser's panting Moskvich made it up these gradients.

Villa Santo Domingo is a collection of cabanas wedged into the side of the road next to a river in the middle of nowhere, overlooked by towering peaks. We cross the river to find a village of wooden shacks and tethered horses, where they seem to husband farmyard animals in miniature: chicks, piglets and kid goats, even puppies. On the path there are two boulders, daubed with one word each – "Fidel" and "Raúl". Not the usual government-ordered murals, just villagers who still have revolutionary fervour in their breasts. We return to the villa to find them spit-roasting a pig.

The next morning we awake to discover that the downside to this apparent idyll is a complete lack of organisation. The only way to get up to the mountain is by taxi. There is a visitor centre, but you are supposed to transport your guide. There are no taxis available till midday.

In typical Cuban style, the guides in the centre are busy: watching a Rambo-style film. In typical Cuban style, our appointed guide is thoroughly miserable to be coming up the mountain with us (when our taxi finally arrives) and doesn't bother hiding it. And in typical Cuban style, he turns out to be charming and amusing, and offers an insight into the failings of the local farming economy.

When Castro had his headquarters here, he chose it for its virgin jungle, obscurity and austerity. A sympathetic local population protected the rebels. We stop at the house of a family who delivered early warning signs of outsiders. Their impossibly isolated home has turkeys, peacocks, chickens and a panoramic view from a terrace with rocking chairs. We eat juicy oranges sliced with a sabre.

Arriving at La Comandancia we see that the dwellings – hospital, radio tent, lookout and small museum, among others – were thatched shacks some distance from each other. At Fidel's hut, a nest of bees has taken residence by the front door. Whether you are a socialist or not, whether you admire what has happened in Cuba since the revolution or not, the romance and idealism of this place is moving. We are alone on this mountain today, walking in Casdtro's footsteps for the second time in two days.

We leave Santo Domingo for Santiago, which, the taxi driver informs us, is the home of the most annoying policemen in Cuba. To avoid them he peels off the motorway at El Cristo, a village in the hills just above Santiago with stunning plantation-style mansions in spectacular states of dilapidation. The closer you get to Santiago, the more overpowering the heat and humidity become.

Like so many famous places in Cuba, Santiago feels small, with a handful of key venues. The place to hear the city's cutting-edge salsa and rumba is La Casa de la Trova, where the tables and balconies are packed with tourists and lady hustlers. From the top of the Casa Grande hotel you can see the whole city, starting with the bell towers of the beautiful Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. For epic scale, there's the Castillo del Morro, the old fortress outside town, at dusk.

If you seek revolutionary history, Santiago has it in spades: Santiago people were always more Cuban, less Spanish, and prone to disobedience. The Moncada Barracks, where Fidel led a failed coup in 1953, are here but we don't visit. I'm interested in what the Cuban government calls "the triumph of the revolution" but I'm tired of being force-fed it.

More decadent is the Museo Emilio Bacardí Moreau, which houses the art and archeological collection of the former Santiago mayor and rum king. It has everything from Egyptian mummies to sinister slave-whipping devices. I wonder when the Bacardí family will return to try and claim it back.

Our last stop is the most eastern of the eastern towns: Baracoa. The road from Santiago to here passes through the wild-west-style country town of Guantánamo and skips over the top of Guantánamo Bay before hugging a deserted coastline. From our Chinese-made bus we pass resting farm workers in high, straw-thatched hats sitting in carts next to their oxen. They look like people you might squint at in a scuffed black-and-white photograph. It is hard to imagine Gitmo just "over there" on the other side of the cactus curtain, with its mini movie theatres and McDonald's.

Then the bus scales La Farola, the road that was cut through the Sierra del Purial in the 1960s and opened Baracoa to the world. The bends are speckled with clapboard dwellings with cottage gardens, where women sell mandarins, Baracoan chocolate and cucurucho – a cloying mixture of coconut, orange, guava and sugar sold in cones made of palm leaves.

Cuba was Columbus's second landfall in the New World, and Baracoa was his first port of call, in 1492. He planted a cross in the ground and got an enthusiastic greeting from the doomed Taíno Indians. Diego Velázquez founded the first colonial town in the Americas here in 1512, and it was Cuba's capital from 1518 to 1522.

You wouldn't know it. This is not a town trumpeting faded colonial grandeur; rather it is a village in disrepair, with colonnaded colonial shacks in tumbledown rows, where cockerels, piglets and strays mingle with children. The cathedral is a shell awaiting restoration, and Columbus's Cruz de la Parra has been removed to a house on a side street. The northern part of town is full of the scent of cocoa: Baracoa has Cuba's only chocolate factory.

Cut off by the mountains for centuries, Baracoa remained sequestered, the only place you could still see the genes of Taíno Indians in the faces of the locals. It was here that the 16th-century Taíno chief Hatuey raised an army to fight the Spanish. Away from the centre, the town drifts upwards into the hills, its houses dotted among palms, breadfruit and mango trees. The archaeological museum is housed in caves that are Taíno burial sites: skeletons rest in the foetal position alongside a trove of pre-Columbian artefacts. It's surrounded by shacks among banana trees; to reach it you push through washing strung between fat palms, and paths criss-crossed by piglets. We are the only people there.

We stay in hotel El Castillo, one of Baracoa's old fortifications. From its pool you can see the town's greatest asset: the whole, glistening countryside, from the mist-covered flat peak of El Yunque to the snaking rivers and brooding seas. There is no doubt that this is the most enchanted landscape in the whole of Cuba.

Much of the time we are in Baracoa it thunders and pours, so we sit in rocking chairs on the dripping porch and watch the landscape turn against itself. The skies light up, water gushes down from the hills, the rivers turn a strange burgundy and the sea goes an apocalyptic brown. When the rains abate we visit the mouth of the Rio Toa. Under storm-cloud skies we find a wilderness beach with a thousand tides' worth of coconut husks and driftwood scattered over it, huddled beneath towering royal palms.

The Toa, a dark emerald green, swirls moodily into the sea. We see three people fishing quietly, a clutch of girls washing clothes and two lovers embracing in the shallows. We hike up to El Yunque, the remnant of a plateau so isolated it has its own species of ferns and palms. At the mouth of the Rio Yumuri, which cuts through stunning gorges, we eat coconut-poached snapper prepared by women in tumbledown houses on the beach.

We end at Playa Maguana, a beach 25km north of Baracoa where we stay at Villa Maguana, an elegant beach shack, with 12 spacious timber-built rooms. A villager called Javier brings us home-cooked lobster, plantain and salad on the beach for a princely £2.60, and slices off the tops of green coconuts for us to drink. We eat the lobster, observed by a giant, malodorous pig, and ponder how to get out of here.

Rain is expected again, and tomorrow we need to find someone to take us the 25 muddy kilometres to Baracoa, so we can catch a bus to Santiago, as all the planes are booked. It's an odyssey, but then that feels right for a place that looks like the Garden of Eden at the end of the earth.

Way to go

Journey Latin America (020 8747 8315, journeylatinamerica.co.uk) can organise an eight-night stay in Cuba taking in Havana and the highlights of eastern Cuba, including Santiago, Baracoa and the Sierra Maestra, from £942. This price includes accommodation, internal flights, transfers and some meals, but not international flights. Flights from the UK to Havana with Air France (0871 6633 777, airfrance.co.uk), via Paris, start from £495.

The Conjunto Histórico de Birán, the museum in the Castro family finca, is 3km northeast of Birán (open Tue-Sun).

Travellers used to skip 'boring' Santiago, but a new boutique hotel and revamped downtown barrios are bringing life to the capital

"This is most definitely not the new caipirinha," I think as I take a sip of my first terremoto cocktail in downtown Santiago. A mix of sweet fermented wine, pineapple ice-cream and fernet (a herb-infused spirit that tastes a little like dentist's mouthwash), it defies all sense and, within not much time, all sobriety.

The terremoto – meaning earthquake – is the house speciality at La Piojera, an infamous downtown drinking den in Santiago. The theory is the drink earned its name after being concocted from the few ingredients that remained after the big 1960 quake or, more simply, because one too many will make your legs tremble. I'm here just a couple of months after February's devastating 8.8 tremor and surely it's too soon to order a terremoto, I think to myself. Then I notice almost every single local patron is clutching a plastic pint glass filled with the stuff. In Santiago, 300km north of the epicentre, life goes on. Although the capital was nowhere near as badly hit as the second city, Concepción, I find the clean-up is, nonetheless, remarkable. A visitor arriving today is likely to note just a few telltale cracks and some extra scaffolding.

The city's comeback (at least on surface level) has positioned Santiago at the forefront of the campaign to call for tourists to return. This is not the easiest of tasks. Even before the disaster, the capital had some hurdles to jump in attracting visitors. Though fantastically located – just one hour from the coast, under two hours from ski slopes and just 30 minutes from vineyards – the city is generally regarded as a quick stop-off on the way to somewhere else. It also has a reputation for being, well, a bit boring.

Tellingly, until recently, there was no outstanding boutique hotel flying the flag for it as a destination for an aspirational city break. This changed with the opening of The Aubrey, a £2m project that has transformed two rundown 1920s mansions into the city's hottest property, at the foot of Cerro San Cristóbal, the city's second-highest peak. The British/Australian owners have spent three years restoring the mission-style buildings, retaining art-deco wood panelling and creating a stylish, hybrid interior that mixes Tom Dixon lamps with 17th-century oil paintings.

The Aubrey also looks set to be a major catalyst in the transformation of the tiny Bella Vista neighbourhood. With its colourful houses, street cafes and lively nightlife, the area is best-known as a hangout for students and a stop-off for those visiting the city pad of the poet Pablo Neruda, which is kept shipshape (literally), just as he and his third wife left it. Although the barrio prides itself on Patio Bellavista (patiobellavista.cl), a sleek bohemian complex with a sushi bars and a rock-themed restaurant, its real character can be seen in a traditional cité (rows of houses that extend down narrow alleyways) or with an unpretentious dinner somewhere like El Caramaño (Purísima 257, caramono.tripod.com), a former speakeasy serving Chileno classics such as pastel de jaibas (crab casserole) and machas a la parmesana (razor clam gratin).

Santiago is often thought of as lacking the passion and spark of other Latin capitals. I start to wonder if this is, in part, due to many tourists basing themselves uptown, where the gleaming skyscrapers, wide streets, American chainstores and guys dressed in chinos can make it feel slightly sterile. In a bid to prove that downtown is where it's at, I sign up for a walking tour with La Bicicleta Verde. It's designed to take in the city's "B side" attractions, which is what, in turn, leads me to the terremotos of La Piojera (Aillavilú 1030, lapiojera.cl).

La Bicicleta Verde's itinerary has a firm focus on food and drink. Starting in the Patronato neighbourhood, home to many of the city's Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants, we try "the best seafood empanadas in the city", before moving on to explore the sprawling La Vega market, where the air is permeated with the smell of fresh coriander and the avocados are the size of mangos. Next we head to the not-to-be-missed Mercado Central. The food court here is a fantastic place for an informal lunch, featuring all manner of barely recognisable sea critters, from spiky sea urchins to conger eel.

Finally, before winding up at La Piojera, our second-to-last stop is at one of the city's infamous cafés con piernas. A "cafe with legs" basically involves scantily-dressed barmaids serving coffee on an ogle-but-don't-touch basis. The story goes that, seeing as there was no real coffee culture in Chile in the 1950s, they had to add an extra incentive to get workers to make a coffee break part of their day.

I'm too curious not to take a peek, so I pluck up the courage to step behind the seedy neon sign and blacked-out window of Café Romeo (21 de Mayo 580). I find myself in small, dark room resembling a downmarket nightclub. The lunchtime rush is over and we're the only ones here: just me, my guide and six half-naked women. So I down my ultra-sweet cortado and head back into the light of day.

"The restaurant scene here is booming," says Liz Caskey, a long-term American expat who runs culinary tours of the city and has written a guide to the local scene (eatwineguides.com). "It is now more sophisticated and more diverse than ever in its offerings. Whereas in the past people only saw restaurants for special occasions or quick lunches, dining out in itself is now an event."

One place, with a current waiting list of more than a week, is Pasta e Vino. Originally a popular modern bistro in Valparaíso, a hip coastal spot two hours west, the owner/chef branched out into the capital after the opening of The Aubrey. The new outlet sits within the hotel's premises and serves up dishes such as pillows of squid-ink ravioli filled with salmon and slathered in a curry and cashew sauce.

Outside Bella Vista, Liz also tips Bellas Artes/Lastarria as another up-and-coming district. Here you'll find secondhand bookshops and antiques shops alongside Vietnamese restaurants and an ice-cream parlour, serving flavours such as chocolate-basil and green tea with mango (Emporio la Rosa, Merced 291). Hipsters should also make a pitstop at The Clinic (Monjitas 578), a new Chilean-style gastro pub named after a satirical newspaper.

To my delight, everywhere I visit on this trip is within walking distance of my Bella Vista base. Downtown Santiago has been easy to get to know and enjoy. It may remain one of South America's most conservative cities, but it is not without its quirks and is definitely not out of bounds post-earthquake. As Pablo Moll Vargas, general manager of Turismo Chile, said at a recent conference: "This earthquake got one of our knees on the floor, but not both."

• Iberia offer return flights from London to Santiago from £550 return (iberia.com). Rooms at The Aubrey cost from £161 a night (+56 2 940 2800, theaubrey.com). Meridiano Sur Petit Hotel, Sta. Beatriz 256, Providencia, is a seven-room hotel in the heart of the city with doubles from £65 a night (+56 2 235 3659, meridianosur.cl). A main meal at Pasta e Vino costs around £12 (+56 2 940 2830, pastaevinoristorante.cl). La Bicicleta Verde's Santiago Huachaca walking tour costs £40. They also do walking and bicycle tours that cover the city's political and cultural history (+56 2 570 9338, labicicletaverde.com)

The launch of Sunsail's first flotilla holiday in the UK shows just how much fun you can have in a force 8 gale, with all your wet-weather clothes on

It took less than five days to transform me from landlubber to salty sea dog. But I knew I had made it when, struggling to keep the yacht upright in a force 8 gale, I uttered no more than the mildest of sailor's curses as a freezing wave crashed over the bow and into my face.

The yacht had heeled over at 30 degrees, but I merely wiped the icy water from my eyes as best I could and jammed my foot even more firmly against the side of the cockpit. As water dripped from every inch of me, the memory of having tripped gaily into the Port Solent marina in Portsmouth a few days earlier, with dry hair, a dainty summer dress and pretty strappy sandals, seemed like an image from another era.

As a teenager, I sailed fairly frequently, spending wet weekends tacking up and down a grey and choppy Thames with my parents in our small Mirror dinghy.

Since reaching adulthood, however, I have largely stayed on shore. The shipping forecast became a comforting blur of words to fall asleep to. The artistry of knots, the language of clouds and the gradations of gales were just something out of Swallows and Amazons.

I had always quite fancied setting sail again, though, and now, thanks to a new venture by Sunsail, there is an easy, and fairly cheap, way to swap city shoes for sea boots. After more than 35 years of running flotilla holidays in warmer waters, the company has launched its first UK flotilla break, in the Solent, with trips running through the summer into October.

Largely designed for those with some sailing experience (20 days on a yacht or a Royal Yaching Association skipper qualification is required) but not the confidence to head out on their own, flotillas allow nervous and rusty sailors to experiment with independent skippering and free sailing, with time for exploring on land, too.

You sail from port to port with the other yachts in the flotilla and a lead vessel, with a Sunsail crew, is always close at hand. For extra reassurance, you can also engage your own on-board skipper.

The most striking thing about sailing in a flotilla is the support and enthusiasm of the crew on the other boats. Sailing etiquette is nothing if not inclusive: woe betide the helmsman who passes another at sea without exchanging a wave and a cheery greeting. The same applies in the flotilla – just more so. With everyone at a different level, hollered words of encouragement from the other yachts are both useful and uplifting, while the advice and yarns exchanged during communal suppers in restaurants and pubs along the route are invaluable.

Such enforced mingling with strangers could, it is worth adding, be a mixed blessing. The week before my friends and I arrived, the group was apparently bubbling over with young couples and lively groups. Our crowd of four yachts, however, was a quieter affair, predominantly composed of older couples and young families. My friends and I had a skipper on our boat to teach us, but most yachts in flotillas are hired out to families or groups of friends, without a skipper.

As we sailed between Port Solent, the lovely Osborne Bay (where Queen Victoria liked to bathe), chic Poole, hectic Southampton, Lymington and, finally, Cowes – the spiritual home of sailing – our confidence increased.

And our fascination with sea lore blossomed. We spent our evenings at restaurants and pubs around the Solent, ranging from trendy to cosy – with some, like the Folly Inn on the Medina river, accessible only by sea (it runs a waterbus to bring those without their own keel up the river from Cowes) – perfecting our knot-tying skills on ropes spun out of paper napkins. As the wine flowed, we could be found reciting the different gale categories. By the time puddings arrived, we would be testing each other on weather patterns and how best to trim the sails depending on the direction of wind.

It seems amazing, given how rusty I was when I stepped onto the deck on my first day, but by the time I reached shore at the end of the week, the evenings spent reciting crewmanship lessons and days spent scampering over the boat putting them into practice had worked their magic.

Having excavated my teenage bent and enthusiasm for sailing, I am now confident that I could be a genuinely useful crew member to any skipper brave enough to take me out to sea. Even more thrillingly, with my RYA competent crew certificate under my belt, I am now half-way to achieving the day skipper qualification, which will enable me to hire a yacht, both here and abroad, without a skipper.

And for a girl who just a few short days earlier hadn't known her hitch from her bowline, let alone how to read the dark patches on the sea or work out where a low front was coming from, that's an achievement.

• Flotilla holidays depart Port Solent on 7, 14, 21 August and 23 October. A yacht with berths for eight people costs £1,699 for a week in August, £1,499 in October; but Guardian readers who quote GFLOT when booking can claim a reduced rate of £1,499 in August. Double berths are also available on the lead boat – phone for details (0844 463 6578, sunsail.co.uk). It will cost you £175 a day to have a skipper on board.

Bethnal Green's former civic HQ is the stage for some extraordinary food, and some serious people-watching

Another hotel has opened in London's East End. A few weeks ago I reviewed Shoreditch Rooms. Now I'm checking in at Town Hall, so-called because that's what it once was, elegant, Edwardian and rubbing shoulders with the kebab shops and mini markets of Bethnal Green.

Great lobby – marble pillars, sweeping staircase. No slumming it for the councillors. Check in, to the sound of Aladdin Sane. There is no room service, they tell me. Oh. Isn't that the point of paying all this money?

My room, on the top floor, is very cool. Almost all the rooms have a kitchen, mine also has a sitting area and sliding doors to the bedroom and bathroom. I love it up here in my wood and white domain. The third floor has been added to the existing structure and heavy windows open out to a balcony encased in sculpted metal. The kitchen is disproportionately big to desk and wardrobe space.

Whoever designed the wardrobe must have a capsule-clothing collection of five items, none longer than a shirt. There are thief-proof hangers (oh puh-leese) and no full-length mirror (so if I hit the bar with my dress tucked into my knickers, it won't be my fault). The all-white bathroom's a chic Corian cube, but L'Occitane toiletries? Hardly edgy.

I ring down to ask how easy it is for my dining companions to park. The voice, Castillian rather than Cockney, doesn't know, she isn't a driver. I go down myself and a woman from the flats opposite (who is an East Ender) assures me that there's usually a space or two at night, then adds that the hotel management asked one of her neighbours to turn their music down. Hotel complaining to a local resident – bet that's a first.

The pals arrive. We like the commissioned art but it fails to temper the feeling of emptiness down endless corridors. Great bar though.

Many column inches have already been devoted to restaurant Viajante, not least in this paper, so I'll be brief. While tasting menus seem, to me, the chefs' equivalent of fret-wanking, we find we're having a ball, although we don't choose – but are brought by lovely staff – beautifully presented course after experimental course. Nuno Mendes is doing really exciting food – even if some of it goes too far (we say no to milk skin).

Next day, breakfast is in a gloomy room at the rear of the building. The waitress's first words are, "You won't be able to choose from the full menu because that stops at 10 o'clock". I check my phone – it is 10.01am. Tea arrives, or rather boiling water in a cup, with a teabag on the saucer. What a contrast to the Taiwanese teas served in the bar last night in glass teapots. I nibble a bit of £6 buffet fruit and smoked salmon but give in to the urge to leave.

Now I'm feeling the lack of a guest lounge – to kick back with a coffee and the paper. It is as though everyone is meant to hide away in their rooms with iPods, computer screens and private kitchens. There is a fantastic lap pool in the basement, and gym, but I'm not sure this hotel has quite reconciled the buzzy, people-watching vibe of the bar and restaurant at the front with the rest of the building behind it – and surely that's what staying in London is all about.

sally.shalam@guardian.co.uk

As London's cycle hire scheme starts, we try out the bikes in the city where they were designed – and discover what Montrealers have learnt about getting the best out of their system

"Bixi bikes are for short hops, not days out." This was the advice I was given about Montreal's hugely popular bike share scheme on my first day in the city. It came from André Giroux, who was clearly keen to make the distinction between this new scheme and his own 16-year-old cycle hire shop, Ça Roule. "Tourists get confused," he sighed. "They try to take the Bixis on the out-of-town routes for hours on end, then wonder why they get hit by a huge bill."

Today, those same Montreal-designed public bikes are rolling around London and with them come the same misunderstandings. Some of the UK press is up in arms about £50 charges for 24 hours' use, but, as Montrealers know, no one is supposed to hang on to one bike for this long. The key to affordable usage is to dock the bike for five minutes between each "free" 30-minute session and – bingo – no extra charges. This is provided that you've paid the subscription charge, which in Montreal is C$78 (about £50) for a year, or C$5 (£3) for a day.

With their heavy frames and three-gear system, the bikes should have "short hop" written all over them. Are Londoners already struggling to see beyond the heavy-handed Barclays branding?

The name has certainly been the most controversial change made for the UK market. This aside, more than 40 practical modifications have been made to the Montreal Bixis in preparation for hitting London's roads. Brakes have been reversed, adjustable seats made higher and, for added safety, the dynamo lights will now stay on even when the user stops.

I've been putting Montreal's Bixi system, which launched last spring, to the test for the past fortnight. During this time, I have abandoned the city's perfectly serviceable metro system and I haven't set foot on a bus. I have barely even set foot on my feet. Why walk when you can Bixi? My online statistics tell me I have taken 36 trips, totalling 114km and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 29kg. That last figure may be debatable, but there is no denying the feel-good factor.

The Montreal set-up is highly impressive. The annoyance felt when you come across an empty rack is soon offset by the knowledge that there is always another station just around the corner - there are 3,000 bikes at 300 stations. It's also a very bike-friendly city. There are abundant cycle paths (more than 560km across the city at large); downtown is compact; and the traffic has neither the volume nor the aggression found in London.

"The Bixi has been adopted into the city's DNA," says company chairman Roger Plamondon. Residents are already taking proximity to Bixi stations into account when renting homes, or arranging to meet for lunch at cafes near docking stations. Surely the name helped. The sweet-sounding Bixi (bike/taxi) is easy to take to heart; it has even inspired a .

Plamondon recognises that making the system work in London will be a learning curve and making changes as they go along won't be quite so easy. In Montreal, the semi-permanent docking stations are solar-powered and can easily be moved as demand dictates. In London, they are obliged to be hooked up to a fixed electric supply.

The London bikes are only currently available to registered subscribers for annual, weekly or 24-hour access as they break the system in. The programme for tourists and occasional users is said to be "coming soon".

Prime minister launches emergency legislation as dry fuel pumps leave drivers stranded

Thousands of Britons heading to Greece for their summer holiday last night risked becoming caught up in the chaos of a nationwide strike by protesting truck drivers that is threatening fuel, food and medical shortages across the country.

From the popular Chalkidiki peninsula in the north, to Rhodes in the south, holidaymakers were affected by the mayhem amid reports that supplies had dried up at petrol stations countrywide.

At least 100,000 tourists who had driven to Greece from neighbouring Bulgaria and Serbia were stranded, with thousands abandoning their cars by the side of the road and officials taking the highly unusual step of beseeching visitors to stock up on fuel in Macedonia.

The prime minister, George Papandreou, resorted to emergency legislation late on Wednesday, telling the drivers that unless they returned to work they would face stiff fines and their vehicles being requisitioned.

It was the fourth time since the end of military rule in 1974 that a mobilisation order – usually announced at times of war or great natural disaster – has been issued by a government. "This is an unpleasant decision … but the country cannot afford adventures in the middle of the summer," Papandreou said.But the reaction was swift and unforgiving.

"It is highly unusual that after just three days of going on strike we should be mobilised in this way," said Giorgos Stamos, a member of the truck drivers' union. "The order is coming through to [drivers] but I have no idea how they are going to react to it."

In a culture where workers' rights are seen as sacred, the mobilisation call has riled unionists with the KKE communist party newspaper, Rizospastis, declaring that the government was bent "on smashing every striker's right".

"There is nothing left but to gather forces and fight," it proclaimed from its front page.

The prospect of tourists being mired in further mayhem deepened as tourist industry officials said it would be days before the situation returned to normal.

On islands, where the vast number of holidaymakers are headed, vital food stuff and medicines are already in short supply.

Boat connections to the mainland are also threatened as petrol supplies quickly diminish.

In a bout of especially bad timing for the beleaguered government, the chaos erupted after domestic terrorists warned tourists this week that they would turn Greece into a "warzone".

In a week when Britons traditionally begin their summer break, flying into airports across Greece, air traffic controllers compounded the chaos by staging a stringent work-to-rule protest that saw dozens of flights either cancelled or delayed.

"What we are seeing is a catastrophe for tourism, for our [debt-stricken] economy," said Yannis Evangellou, one of the industry's leading figures. "There have been hundreds of cancellations, particularly by tourists who had planned to drive into northern and central Greece."

Last night the truck drivers defied the emergency order to return to work immediately, saying they would decide what to do later today. "The federations will express their position on what we have negotiated," George Tzortzatos, head of Greece's Truck Owners' Confederation, told reporters, without elaborating.

Wendy Taylor, 55, a doctor from Newcastle on holiday in the Peloponnese, said that the popular tourist area was running out of fuel and that hotels had stopped taking bookings.

"We heard that there was a problem on Monday, when we tried to go out for the day. We had to drive around about six different petrol stations before we found one – people kept waving us away. Kalamata, the biggest town near us, has run out of fuel. We have heard there are shortages on the islands as well."

The drivers launched the strike last Monday. But by yesterday visitors who had planned trips around the isles were faced with the prospect of fuel-deprived cruisers and yachts remaining docked.

The protests have been sparked by fury over the unpopular economic austerity measures the ruling socialists have been forced to enact to stave off bankruptcy.

The 33,000-strong union of truck drivers is up in arms over government plans to open up the freight industry – one of many "closed–shop" professions blamed for keeping the economy uncompetitive.

But with the nation's economic recovery now more dependent on holidaymakers than at any other time – and with most Greeks also poised to begin their summer break – the industrial action has been quick to trigger widespread condemnation.

Tourism, which has already taken a blow in the wake of repeated riots and strikes, accounts for one in five jobs and nearly 20% of GDP. An estimated 3 million Britons visit the country every year topping arrivals alongside Germans.

Despite popular opposition to policies not seen since the second world war, most Greeks understand that their country is under intense pressure from the EU and IMF to make the changes following the organisations' decision to inject it with €110bn in emergency aid in May.

London to Istanbul, Part 4: Benji Lanyado reaches the end of the line, and unearths a link to the city's ancient trading past

Acclaimed director's Italian retreat on the Amalfi coast reopens as luxury hotel – three years after sale

"Leonard Bernstein, Laurence Olivier, Maria Callas, Elizabeth Taylor – it sounds like a legend, doesn't it?" mused Italy's most celebrated opera and film director, Franco Zeffirelli, as he recalled the guests who had passed through his retreat on the Amalfi coast.

For 35 years, until he sold it in 2007, Villa Tre Ville was a place that gave him "the opportunity to put together my mind with those of creative geniuses", he told the Guardian. "But I cannot enjoy it any more, and so it is right that other people should be able to enjoy it."

This month, Zeffirelli's house started a new life as a hotel, offering guests the chance to brush shoulders with the ghosts of celebrities past and present. The three-villa estate's links with the arts go back to the 1920s, when it was a meeting place for Russian cultural exiles. Sergei Diaghilev was a guest. More recent visitors to Villa Tre Ville have included Liza Minnelli and Elton John.

When Zeffirelli's biographer, the late David Sweetman, travelled out to meet him, he later recounted how: "Eventually, some ancient servant let me in, and I was shown on to this opera set. I've never seen anything like it. It seemed, just possibly, the most beautiful place on Earth."

Built on the rocky coastline near Positano, Villa Tre Ville offers sublime views over the Mediterranean. But its originality as a hotel, which will go at least some way towards justifying prices of up to ¤5,000 (£4,171) a night, is that its new owners have left it as untouched as possible. The biggest suite, named after Zeffirelli himself, is much as it was when he moved out. The bedroom furniture, inlaid with mother of pearl, was brought by the director from Syria. Guests will even be able to browse through the books he left behind.

Villa Tre Ville was bought by a local hotel owner, Giovanni Russo, who has two establishments in Sorrento. "The thinking was to alter it as little as possible", he said. "And we have made really very few changes."

The old bread oven had been turned into a shower cabin, he said. But even an eccentric greenhouse, made from part of the set for one of Zeffirelli's productions of La Traviata, had been kept and adapted for use as accommodation.

The cheapest of the 12 suites and rooms is available for a mere €1,100, including breakfast, but not VAT.

Zeffirelli said the years in which he owned the estate "were the very best years of my life, when I was climbing the steps of my career. But it could not go on forever. The time of climbing the steps of Positano is over. And I have a beautiful house in Rome where I can read and entertain my friends."

For a man of 87, he remains extraordinarily active, having just completed a cycle of operas staged at the Arena in Verona. But his work schedule has gradually diminished, and next year, he said, he was booked to direct "only three operas".

Zeffirelli's biographer recalled that getting to Villa Tre Ville was a rather less than luxurious experience. "It took hours. The taxi bill was unreal, but eventually we arrived at the top of this little winding road. And there was just a gate, and I had to go down all these bloody stairs to the villa."

So that the estate's well-heeled visitors do not face the same difficulties, the new owner of Villa Tre Ville has installed a lift to carry guests down from the road. "This was the real change we made", he said. "And it was a major work of engineering."

Need help planning your summer break? Or do you have a general travel question? Lonely Planet's Tom Hall offers expert advice live online

If you're stuck for ideas for your next holiday, need some practical tips, or have a general travel query, Lonely Planet's Tom Hall will answer your questions. So, send your questions to: tomhalltravel@googlemail.com. Post questions in advance, or post them on the day – Tom will get to as many as he can in an hour.

Free shows, food for under a fiver, cheap digs and blagging backstage passes in our insider's money saving guide to the Edinburgh festivals, which kick off this week

Top entertainment for free

Catch Unbound, every night from 14-30 August, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival's Spiegeltent – a great mélange of stories, music and literary entertainment hand-picked by the hottest names in the circuit, including Canongate Publishers and McSweeneys. Most exhibitions at the Edinburgh Art Festival are free to enter, and of course the Free Fringe continues to grow (there are precisely 558 shows going gratis this year). For late-night grandness get yourself a good viewing point of the castle and stare in awe at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo's firework display. And tap into some park-side benefits by catching Naturally Inspired at the wonderfully peaceful Botanic Gardens: a whole afternoon of dance, music and storytelling inspired by nature on 8 August.

Unbound: edbookfest.co.uk
Galleries: edinburghartfestival.com
Free fringe: edfringe.com
Naturally Inspired: edinburghfestivals.co.uk/events/naturally-inspired

Eat for under a fiver

You can't go wrong with two of the cheapest eateries in town. For under-a-fiver-grub in the Old Town try The Mosque Kitchen's cheap and cheerful outdoor canteen, run by a bunch of affable men with a generous take on what a curry and rice portion should look like (Edinburgh Central Mosque, 50 Potterrow). Kampong Ah Lee Malaysian Delight is equally inexpensive – and you know you've hit a good spot the minute you walk in, as the Malaysian-sounding patter of regular diners bounces off the kitsch sparkly decor (28 Clerk Street). Those with a sweet tooth will be glad to turn up at the Italian-styled Caffe Lucano after 4pm, when all cakes go for half-price. With window seats facing one of the busiest thoroughfares in Edinburgh this is a prime location to do a bit of festival-fashion people watching (37-39 George IV Bridge).

Suburban savers

Venture a couple of miles out of the city centre and you'll find plenty of B&Bs to chose from – Edinburgh's network of night buses is excellent and covers most of these routes (try Glenlivet House, near the zoo on 8 St. Johns Road). The halls of residence for Edinburgh, Napier and Queen Margaret Universities are another great bet. Some of them will offer you the cheapest self-catering flats in the area (just over £500 a week for a three-bedroom flat). Private halls of residence are also worth a try – Unite is offering en-suite rooms from just £25 per night during festival season.

B&B: glenlivethouseedinburgh.co.uk
Edinburgh University festival accommodation: flats.accom.ed.ac.uk
Napier University summer accommodation: napier.ac.uk
Queen Margaret summer accommodation: qmu.ac.uk
Unite: unite-students.com

Half-price shows

The Fringe Half-Price Hut is a great port of call to catch some of the best entertainment in Edinburgh. Head there on the day to see which tickets you can grab with the 50% discount. There's always a generous range of options, from the most lavish productions to yet-to-be-discovered shows.

The Mound: right by the National Gallery of Scotland.

Join the IN crowd

For those in their 20s and 30s, £20 will get you membership into IN, the Edinburgh International Festival scheme that offers invites to preview performances, exclusive discounts, access to VIP parties and behind-the-scenes events. That's a lot of theatre, opera and orchestra music for a very smart fee.

Join IN: eif.co.uk/insider

Kids go free at the fair

Drop by the wonderfully relaxed Mela festival, set on Leith Links, one of Edinburgh's beautiful parks. Children under 12 go free and an adult day pass costs £2.50. Enjoy puppetry shows, Indian music and Bollywood dancing workshops, samba drumming and hip hop performances. Did we mention the amazing food stalls?

Mela festival: edinburgh-mela.co.uk 6-8 August

Footloose and fancy free

The one great thing about the Edinburgh Festivals is that once you're there, you are definitely there. The city is a joy to navigate on foot, with architectural delights for your eyes to feast on at every corner. Walking around is half the experience and the best way to bump into an event you'll be tempted into or swap tips with total strangers.

Soak up the buzz in the gardens

Sometimes you just want to stretch your legs and take it all in without going into a venue. Whether you're solo or with the kids, Charlotte Square Gardens (home to the Book Festival) is a pretty heavenly place to be, with free entry and great ice-cream. Otherwise head to the Meadows, the expansive park by Edinburgh University's George Square.

The nice-price boozers

There are plenty of places to pick up a pint surrounded by faithful clientele and prices to match. Two of the best ones have to be Cloisters, a former church near The Meadows (26, Brougham St) and the candle-lit Black Bo's (57-61 Blackfriars Street). Grab the pew by the widow if you can.

A refreshing dip

If you're doing Edinburgh like the pros – weeks of back-to-back events – you will find yourself wanting to re-energise your batteries with some exercise. Forget the gym and visit the newly-restored glorious Victorian Glenogle Baths for an invigorating swim (£3.90, £2 concessions, Glenogle Road in the Stockbridge area).

Glenogle Swim Centre: edinburghleisure.co.uk

• Edinburgh has a packed calendar of festivals and events throughout the year. For reviews, tickets and to plan your visit go to edinburghfestivals.co.uk

Annabelle Thorpe recommends 10 tapas bars and bodegas in the Mallorcan capital

Palma's maze of medieval streets and alleys hides an impressive array of tapas bars and bodegas – from pleasingly ramshackle to gleamingly minimalist. And with pintxos starting at around €2, there's no reason not to try them all.

1. The Tapas Club

Fifteen minutes' stroll out of the centre of town lies the Portixol area; a once run-down fishing quarter that has been spangled up with renovated fishermens' cottages, a smart hotel and a cluster of excellent restaurants around a small beach. In a prime spot at the far end of the beach, the Tapas Club offers cocktails and plates of tapas arranged artfully on the gleaming bar. If it's too hot outside, lounge on the cushioned area inside, while ordering up mojito and mejillones (Spanish mussels) combos.

• Paseo del Portixol, +34 971 248 604, Tapas from €3

2. La Boveda

A perennial favourite with locals and visitors – and it's easy to see why. Boveda combines a busy tapas bar at the front of the restaurant with a slightly more formal dining area behind. Perch at the bar for slices of tortilla, spicy albondigas and grazing plates of local cheeses and hams or reserve a table (necessary) for hearty slabs of veal and pork and simply grilled, locally caught fish. The house plonk is pretty good too.

• Paseo Sagrera, 3, +34 971 72 00 26, mains from €14 (£11.65), tapas from €5

3. Bodega Bellver

Tucked up a side street around the corner from the theatre, Bellver is about as far away from Palma's gleaming 21st- century tapas bars as it's possible to imagine. Dark and shadowy, with shelves lined with dusty bottles and wine barrels, and rickety wooden tables scattered around the small space, it is steeped in history, atmosphere and the smell of spicy pork frying on the tiny grill beside the bar. Order up icy beers and pinchos and settle into a slice of unchanged Mallorquin life.

• Calle Serinya 2, +34 971 247 96, Pinchos from €5

4. C'an Joan de Saigo

If you're after a traditional Mallorquin breakfast, this the place. C'an Joan de Saigo has been serving up ensaimadas – the island's equivalent of a croissant – since its opening in 1700. For something with so much heritage it's unshowy – and pleasingly untouristy - tucked away down a small alley in the heart of the old town. If it's too hot for pastry, they also do pretty good helado.

• Calle Can Sanc, 10, Ensaimadas from €2

5. Bon Lloc

A veggie institution in Palma for 20 years, eating at Bon Lloc is also about what's fresh and available on the day. The set menu is created according to what is available from the market in the morning, with three main choices and two desserts. Chef Juanjo Ramirez uses organic ingredients where possible to create dishes such as spelt and seaweed spaghetti, and polenta with tomato, rocket and coriander. Reservations essential.

• Sant Feliu 7, +34 971 781 617, lunch only, two courses, €13.50.

6. Tast

Popular with locals and always busy, this is an ideal place for a quick refuel if you're on a shopping trip in the centre of town. Plates have coloured rims according to price and you can help yourself to the cold tapas on the bar, or order from the very reasonably priced menu of pintxos, tapas and raciones. Pintxos (small kebabs) are particularly good and the patatas bravas are crispy, hot and smothered in a chile-tomato sauce that is delicious.

• Calle Union 28, +34 971 72 98 78; tapas from €2

7. Cappuccino Grand Cafe

Although there are now several Cappuccinos in Palma, this is one of the oldest and most charming. Situated in a converted Mallorcan palacio, the airy, elegant courtyard has been converted into the main dining area, but the real joy is the shady garden at the back. The strong euro makes Cappuccino a pricy choice for what it is, but order up a plate of pa amb oli to share – a Mallorcan speciality of local bread drenched in olive oil and rubbed with tomato, served with manchego and jamon serrano – and watch Mallorcan ladies who lunch.

• San Miguel 53, grupocappuccino.com; mains from €12

8. Wineing

As the name might suggest, the wine takes precedence here - although the tapas are good, particularly the gambas al ajillo (sizzling prawns). Marketing as itself as La Tapa de Vino, the idea is to try as many different wines as tapas plates. On arrival you are given a card, which you can slot into one of several cabinets each holding around 10 bottles of wine, and select either a taste, half-glass or full-glass of whichever you fancy. The cost is automatically loaded on to the card, so you can settle up at the end. There are knowledgeable staff on hand to offer recommendations.

• Apuntadores 24, +34 971 723 852 Tapas from €4

9. Lizarran

Like Tast, at Lizarran you can help yourself to the pintxos on the bar – slices of French bread pinned to prawns, pates, jamon serrano or roasted peppers on toothpicks. Prices are excellent and the pace is fast – this is not the place for a romantic supper a dos. Stick to the tapas on toothpicks and you'll pay €1.40 for each pick left on your plate – or if you're hungry dive into one of the huge plate of local meats and cheeses.

• Centro Commercial Porto Pi (top floor), +34 971 403 358, tapas from €1.40.

10. Sa Roqueta

Easy to miss, Sa Roqueta is a small wood-panelled restaurant in the Portixol area, which keeps its perfect paellas under the radar, with just a small panel on the wall announcing its existence. The fish is straight out of the sea and the cooking is some of the best in the city. Their arroz marinara - shellfish in a saffron-laced broth – is a delight, and how can you not love a restaurant that has Barry White as their website soundtrack?

• Carre Sirena 11, +34 971 244 658, mains from around €13.

Getting there

Flybe fly from nine UK regional airports to Palma from £55.99 one way. The Hotel Ca Sa Padrina (+34 971 425 300; hotelcasapadrina.com) has doubles from €107.

With exotic tales of JD Salinger and exorcisms, author Tahir Shah is the dream host for a literary pilgrimage to a little-known corner of Morocco

Seven years ago, exasperated by living in a tiny London flat, the writer Tahir Shah enacted the cherished fantasy of stressed city dwellers everywhere by uprooting his young family and decamping to a stunning house on the outskirts of Casablanca.

The house he bought, Dar Khalifa – the Caliph's House – is a sprawling residence with vast high-ceilinged rooms, fountains and tiled courtyards shaded by trailing vines. In the entrance hall hangs a portrait of Shah's great-great grandfather – a tribal warlord from Afghanistan. A swimming pool twinkles in the back garden.

Walking through the cool rooms, admiring Shah's extraordinary library – shelf after shelf filled with different editions of A Thousand and One Nights – it's hard not to feel a stab of envy, but it's tempered by knowing the travails he underwent to make the house habitable.

Shah recounts the process in his 10th book of non-fiction, The Caliph's House. He'd only the slenderest of connections to Morocco, remembering it fondly from childhood holidays spent there. He got the house for a knockdown price from a British expatriate who'd left it empty for nine years and was afraid a Moroccan developer would demolish it. But after the sale went through it turned out that the deeds had been lost, putting Shah and his family in imminent danger of eviction.

In addition to the usual problems associated with doing up a derelict building, Shah had to contend with Moroccan superstitions: workmen and staff believed djinns (spirits) had taken possession of the vacant house and wouldn't enter until they had been banished. At one point, a team of 24 exorcists was called in to sprinkle goats' blood in the haunted rooms.

"What do you think the going rate is for 24 exorcists?" Shah asks me, as he shows me round. "Four hundred euros! I thought it was a bargain. They were here for three days. They were out of control, cutting themselves. They loved it, they didn't want to leave!"

Shah shares with his late father, the Sufi scholar Idries Shah, a love of the traditions of Arab story-telling. In his writing and in person, his anecdotes have a folkloric rhythm, bouncing between triumph and disaster.

With 10 travel books and half a dozen documentaries on his CV, he's achieved an incredible amount in his 44 years but clearly measures himself against the standards of his father, who boasted of being able to write 10,000 words a day. The family counted the writers Robert Graves and Doris Lessing as close friends. Shah remembers the notoriously reclusive JD Salinger visiting their home in Kent in the 1970s. "He was very sweet. He stayed for a while and then he said he had to go home to cut the grass. He just didn't want any part of the world."

Shah lives in Dar Khalifa year-round now, with his Indian-born wife, Rachana, daughter, Ariane, nine, and son, Timur, seven. There are many extraordinary things about the house, but not the least is its location.

The drive to Dar Khalifa – a left turn from a leafy suburban street with handsome art deco houses – plunges you, as though through some kind of time warp, down a sharp dip and on to a dusty road that leads through the heart of a ramshackle bidonville, or shantytown. The rusty corrugated iron, mud-covered breeze blocks and miserable-looking livestock seem emblematic of third-world desolation.

The view from the roof of Dar Khalifa reveals the contrast at its starkest: the house and its grounds are an oasis of green with the sapphire pool at its heart; beyond the wall lies a dystopian landscape of smouldering rubbish and villagers fetching water from the town pump.

Shah is enthusiastic about his neighbours. "It's a functioning community. There's no crime. The thing that makes me cross is when people ask me if it's safe. I wouldn't let my wife and children live here if it wasn't."

I feel a flash of shame as he says this, because precisely the same question occurred to me the first time I drove through the shantytown. Later, I wandered through it at night and in spite of the contrast between the shabby slum and the tranquil luxury of Dar Khalifa, there was no sense of siege. In daylight, the bidonville is a motley jumble of houses, a few shops, a wonky-looking mosque and a man selling vegetables from a cart. Like shantytowns across Casablanca, it houses the low-wage workers without whom the city would grind to a halt. Still, it's the raw side of life in a developing country that most visitors and even many residents would prefer to ignore.

"The people who are most shocked are rich Moroccans," Shah says. "I've heard visitors shouting 'Shauma!' – shame. They think this is a side of Morocco that visitors shouldn't see."

During the period when Dar Khalifa stood vacant, resourceful residents of the bidonville had tapped into its water and power supply. During the first months of occupancy, Shah's water bill was €1,000 a month.

"I came back one time during Ramadan and the whole bidonville was lit up like a Christmas tree. I said to the caretaker, 'This is fabulous, it should always be like this.' And he gave me a funny look and said, 'Do you really?' I think he thought I knew they were stealing my electricity."

With the djinns banished, the house refurbished, and relations with the bidonville now clarified, Shah has turned his energy towards setting up a recycling project for the shantytown. A team of Americans is about to visit to advise on suitable schemes. He's paid a blacksmith to build a machine that will turn the glass bottles into glasses, and a hot press that will make discarded plastic bags into tarpaulins. The intention is for the recycling to be self-funding, but Shah has invested his own money in it and now he's letting rooms in Dar Khalifa to visitors to generate cash for the project.

The success of The Caliph's House has already made the house the object of literary pilgrimage – the American ambassador and his wife have popped out to take a look. Future visitors will be subsidising recycling.

For most writers – introvert, neurotic types – I imagine hosting paying guests would be purgatory, but Shah seems energised by novelty and drama. Sightseeing around Casablanca, we are accosted by an angry sorceress at a shrine who objects to my video camera. Shah is unfazed. He rhapsodises about the crumbling art-deco buildings in the city centre and over the roll-top baths in Casablanca's junkyards.

So far he's had half a dozen guests, all readers of his books. I tell him it's like going to Darrowby to stay with James Herriot, or Provence to stay with Peter Mayle. "So far, it's a bit like Misery. We've had the hardcore fans. I'm hoping we'll get more people who have no idea who I am, or who my father was."

How to get there

Royal Air Maroc (020 7307 5800; royalairmaroc.com) flies to Casablanca from Heathrow and Gatwick from £235 return including taxes. There are two suites at the Caliph's House (thecaliphshouse.com) costing €200 a night for two, including breakfast and dinner (children under 12 stay free).

Tahir Shah's The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca is published by Bantam Books, £8.99

Inspired by the Tour de France? Time to start training for next year's amateur Étape challenge, a section of cycling's toughest race. Or you could do it the Kevin Rushby way...

Coming up the long hill behind the village of Acklam in the Yorkshire wolds, I stopped the bike and lay down among the scarlet poppies. The sun was truly hot for the first time in the year, the land shimmering in haze. I lay down my straw hat and prepared to snooze. This was my kind of bicycle training session. Nothing to it.

At some point later I heard a swish of tyres swooping down the lane towards me. I sat up and watched as a phalanx of Lycra-clad road bike titans swept past in a blaze of product endorsements. No one looked at me, or if they did I couldn't tell as they were all wearing sun visors. In a second they were gone. My peace was ruined. My peace of mind that is.

I telephoned my brother, Chris, who is into road bikes. "I've come out for a ride because I've been given the chance to enter a cycle event," I said. "It's called the Étape du Tour."

There was a long silence. "You are joking?"

"No, it's in a couple of months – in the Pyrenees somewhere."

"That's the toughest amateur cycling event in the world," he said authoritatively. "People spend years preparing. I think this year's route follows the hardest stage of the Tour de France: the Col du Tourmalet – also known as the Assassin. More than 100 miles and over 4,000m of climbing. People die."

I lay back in the poppies. "So should I take the shopping basket off?"

There is, I had discovered, a whole world of sporting travel options: marathons, triathlons, swims and cycle rides – challenges waiting to be taken up by those who want a trip with bite. My way in to the Étape, open to anyone on production of a doctor's certificate of good health, was to apply through the UK charity Get Kids Going, which specialises in placing competitors on events of their choice, in return for raising money for disabled children. There were dozens of other, equally exhausting options around the globe, but the Étape was the one for me. Not only is 2010 the centenary of the Tour de France taking in the Pyrenees, but the Tourmalet was the ultimate, the greatest, the man-eater.

"Yes," agreed my brother, "but popping down to the shops on your rust-bucket is not training. You've got to get serious."

The world of road bikes, I quickly learned, is definitely serious. David Ward from Giant Bikes talked me through chain sets, frames and cranks until my head was spinning. Then he got on to calories and ionic balancing.

"It's going to take you 10 hours," he said, "so nutrition is crucial."

I shrugged. "Maybe take sandwiches? Local patisserie?"

David gave me a withering look. "You'll need energy gels and high- calorie drinks. They'll give you at least 10% extra."

I smiled politely. Consumerisation, I thought. My Central Asia-specialist friend Bruce Wannell put his own spin on it: "You want tarkhan, the mix of dried mulberries and walnuts used by Afghan fighters – it's the snack food that defeated the Russians." Next time we met he handed over a large bag of it. "With the compliments of the Panjshir valley."

My first foray on my superbike did not go well. Riding along at walking pace, I turned to look at the dog – he'd insisted on coming along – and the front wheel dived from under me. As I went down my left knee gave a nasty click and I momentarily blacked out.

When I came round I was lying on the ground and two men in cycling gear were looking down at me.

"Clip-on pedals – lethal," said one.

"Worth 30% extra on hills," observed the other.

Word of my little mishap spread and people rang to offer advice:

"Don't worry. French roads are much safer – better tarmac. That's worth 3% extra."

"Shave your legs for a 2% speed advantage."

Adding up all my advantage points, I discovered I was almost at the finish. But then this confidence – so generously donated – was snatched away with a simple, but terrifying, refrain: "Two months' training! At your age! The Broom Wagon is gonna get you." The broom wagon is a nasty cycling institution where the stragglers, pootling along quite nicely, are suddenly swept up and out of the race for being too slow.

But despite my burgeoning broom wagon fear and a sore knee, my pre-Étape training was going well. I enjoyed my rides along lovely back roads of the Yorkshire wolds. I saw roe deer standing by the lanes, owls watching from fence posts; a weasel almost ran under my wheel. I noticed how these roads were constantly criss-crossed by small creatures: beetles, frogs, lizards, caterpillars and, on one occasion, a foot-long slow worm. The days went by too fast. Two weeks before the Étape, I managed 100 miles in seven hours. On the television I watched the first days of the Tour itself. Men and machines in a catastrophic tangle – a reminder that no amount of training can prepare for everything.

"This year's Tour," the commentator said, "will be decided in the Pyrenees, probably on the toughest stage, the Tourmalet."

My local bike shops in York, Cycle Heaven and Fulford Cycles, helped calm my fears and gave lots of useful advice. By mid-July I was as ready as I would ever be. I dismantled the Giant and took the train to Toulouse, then a hire car to Pau.

At 5.30am on the big day I headed in the dark towards town and the start. There were cyclists everywhere, all rushing to get to their starting positions. My number was 9,955 in a field of 10,000, so I was at the back. A car cut across me. Some drunks shouted. I touched the kerb at 20mph and suddenly I was skidding along the road on my side. People ran to help and an English voice shouted a commentary: "He's bleeding! He's getting up. He's worried about his bike ... Oh, his bike is knackered."

A local twisted the handlebars back straight. "Are the wheels buckled?" No, it was just the brakes that had been knocked. Together we adjusted them. I got back on, blood trickling down my leg and arm.

At the start I was still early enough to claim a front position in the pen for the last 1,000 riders. The atmosphere was electric. I felt like first-world-war cannon fodder about to go over the top. There are so many routes to failure: a mass pile-up, bike breakdown, or that defect in your heart that will only come out in extremis on the last climb. Mark from Australia was white-faced: "It's not fear," he claimed, "just zinc."

Each had a tale of fortitude to get here. There was Daniel from Sydney who had a cougar run out on him when he was training in Colorado. He also had a multiple fracture of his forearm after a crash, set in a bike-friendly cast by his understanding doctor. Chris from Teesside had trained on the same hills as me. "Two months' training?" he said sceptically, "you'll never make it." But we all shook hands and wished each other luck.

Seven o'clock came and went, but we weren't moving. At half past we rolled across the start. Then we were shifting, sweeping down Pau's streets, part of the oldest Grand Prix circuit in the world, past the train station at 30mph. Already there were casualties: bloodied men sitting on the verges, bikes twisted. We crossed the river and I was enjoying myself. The early sun was breaking through the trees, and villagers were standing by the road ringing cow bells and yelling "Courage!" A man played an accordion. Everyone was out in the squares, by the fountains and old churches.

We started climbing, but this was just a lung-opener, not the real thing. At Escot I was 20 minutes ahead of the broom wagon, but then we turned uphill, a six-mile slog up 8oom to the Col de Marie-Blanque. Any chatting stopped. Some riders got off. Then, half a mile from the summit, there was a crash and everyone had to dismount.

Then came another baptism of fire: the big descent: swooping down through the trees at breakneck speed. Within minutes my forearms were aching from holding the brakes, so I just let go and joined the madcaps. The result was total wild exhilaration. Under the trees the air was cold and whipped tears from my ears.

The feeding station at the bottom was a gleeful spree of complimentary bananas, flapjacks and water. I'd already been munching my tarkhan and it was working fine. With the first climb over and some food inside me, I really began to roll. We were in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and early clouds lay below us in the valleys, high peaks looming ahead. My head emptied of thoughts and worries. I thought of nothing. My existence was only the click of the gears. I was meditating at 20mph.

As we climbed the second challenge, Col du Soulor, I broke the silence to chat to Malena, a Danish woman.

"Why are there so few female riders?" I asked.

"It's becoming more popular," she said. "In France Jeannie Longo is still a champion rider and she is over 50. Women are starting to realise that cycling can be great exercise for them."

After Soulor came another epic descent, mile upon mile of fast looping roads and beautiful high Pyrenean villages. But at 80 miles we were heading up in to the mountains again. At the last food stop, the celebratory chatter of the early stops had gone. Everyone was worrying about the final climb: 1,600m without a spot of shade. I ate flapjacks, oranges, apples, cake and the last of my tarkhan.

They say a rider can burn 10,000 calories on the Étape, and for many it is just too much: the muscles simply run out of energy and can't get any more. At that point you stop. Cyclists call it "bonking". And on the Tourmalet, once you've bonked, the only way back is in a broom wagon. I was doing well though: 40 minutes ahead of the broom.

The climb started gently, curling alongside an icy blue river fed by streams tumbling down the hills. Many riders stopped to take a dunk. Imperceptibly the gradient increased. I was on my last gear and out of the saddle every hundred metres, but there were still 12 miles to go. My speed dropped to 4mph and then 3½. Some riders were lying in the shade, asleep. Some were being attended to. Most, however, were just grimly going on.

The final three miles was sheer torture. The Tourmalet towered over us, its pale grey crags seeming never to come any closer. A mile from the top, I simply came to a halt and was about to topple sideways when a spectator grabbed me. I sat on the grass, admiring the hillside covered in blue irises. Someone poured cold mountain water over my head. I fumbled in my saddlebag and found my last resort: one of the energy gels that I swore I wouldn't use. It tasted like heavenly nectar. I got up and back on the bike. The finish came at 2,115m and when I crossed the line, I had been on the bike for 11 hours.

I collected my medal and my food bag. Some people were celebrating, hugging each other and screaming, but I just sat down beside another competitor, who was curled up in a deep peaceful sleep. My brain had not yet started working and I was enjoying the dreaminess, a reverie tinged with a melancholy sense that this whole grand enterprise was over and ordinary life would soon resume. But then a voice disturbed me. "Kevin!"

It was Chris from Teesside. "I take my hat off to you," he said, "I really didn't think it could be done on two months' training."

Well, I say it can be done and it should: for the thrill, the excitement, the sense of achievement, the meditative pleasure of rolling through magnificent mountains – and the 20lb of excess weight I lost.

When the Tour de France finishes in the Champs Elysées tomorrow, I will be cheering them on, and afterwards, maybe I'll get the bike out and head for the hills once more.

A new coast-to-coast cycle track, the 169-mile Way of the Roses from Lancashire into Yorkshire, opens in September

I have a confession to make. Despite the fact that I cycle about 3,000 miles around Britain every year, I've never done the C2C. The classic coast-to-coast route from Whitehaven/Workington to Sunderland/Newcastle is, to me, terra incognita. So when Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, announced that it was celebrating the 15th anniversary of the national cycle network by opening a new sea-to-sea route and that they'd take me in the very first group to ride it, my joy was unconfined. This was not, however, quite the emotion I felt a few weeks later half-way up the well-named High Side, a real cruncher of a hill that rises like some home-grown Mount Olympus from the unassuming market town of Settle, in the Yorkshire dales. I'm not entirely sure of the spelling, but my feelings could best be summed up in the word aaargheeeeeoooofffaaaargh.

But that was one of surprisingly few moments of pain on the 169-mile ride from Morecambe in Lancashire to Bridlington in East Yorkshire that makes up the Way of the Roses. (See what they've done there?) Indeed for a cycle route that must inevitably cross both the Pennines and the Yorkshire wolds, it's extraordinary how much carefree (and, indeed, car-free) riding there is to be had. Throw in the fact that the prevailing westerly wind often gives a helping hand over the hills, and you've got yourself a gauntlet that even fair-weather cyclists can pick up.

I have to say though, that I didn't expect leaving Morecambe to be such a wrench. If you should read a "top 10 hotels with great sea views" that doesn't include the town's Midland Hotel – an art-deco swirl of stone all alone on the front – it's not much of a list. In the morning I drew the curtains to gaze on what looked like a thousand islands dissolving into a blazing Irish Sea, but turned out to be a huge sweep of Cumbrian coastline and some cleverly placed sea mist.

All too soon I was joining my fellow debutants on the promenade and listening to a pep talk from Rupert, an impressive Lycra-clad man who helped devise the route and who would ensure we didn't stray from it. We said our farewells to the sea and were soon bowling along a wide cycle path next to the river Lune. The game was afoot.

In my view, and I don't think it's a particularly controversial one, there are two things that make for a really good bike ride: cracking views and plentiful refreshment stops. The Pennines, we were fairly sure, would not disappoint us with regard to the former. With four blazing hot days of cycling ahead of us, we would just have to ride in hope of the latter. As it happened, almost every time we crossed a bridge – and there was always another river to cross – a teashop or pub tempted us. There was an ancient cottage smothered in yellow roses where homemade lemonade and scones magically appeared at our table; tearooms at the back of farm shops piled high with local delicacies; cafes in the quiet back streets of somnolent towns; a National Trust teashop at a lovely red-brick Georgian mansion and the largest monastic ruins in Britain (take a bow, Beningbrough Hall and Fountains Abbey); and no end of rustic pubs.

The crunching hill out of Settle lifted us from the Forest of Bowland into a high region of the Pennines, home only to sheep, curlews, dry-stone walls and the occasional wind-blown tree. From there we enjoyed the roller-coaster ride that took us plunging into one Yorkshire dale and soaring up to the next.

But the Way of the Roses is not just about bucolic charm. In the commendably compact city of Ripon we witnessed a ceremony that, rather astonishingly, has been enacted every day at 9pm without fail for 1,124 years. An elderly gentleman decked out in impressive regalia blew an archaic horn at four corners of an obelisk in the main square. In his spiel-cum-disarming-stand-up-routine afterwards he explained how, in days of yore, Ripon householders would pay a small amount to the hornblower as the city's gates were closed. If they were burgled in the night, he would compensate them. And thus was born the concept of home contents insurance.

We had first spotted Ripon and its unmistakably chunky cathedral from Coldstones Quarry, 420m up on Greenhow Hill. Here Bob Orange – dressed from head to toe in eponymous fluorescent garb – guided us around a monumental artwork made of huge stones that we walked through and which he was confident would rival the Angel of the North as a northern icon. He was also confident that it would be finished by the launch date of 16 September – just five days after the Way of the Roses' official opening, when all the signposts will be in place .

The following day, we found ourselves cycling right past the front door of York's thundering minster and sumptuous Treasurer's House; refuelling with delicious salads at the nearby Café Concierto; and debating whether to resist the rather less healthy "fat rascals" – a sort of über-scone – at Little Bettys just around the corner. It has to be said that the last 60 miles from York to the end are not ideal for burning off such excesses. It's all pretty flat except for a short climb to the under-explored Yorkshire wolds.

The roads were incredibly quiet right up until the time we emerged from an avenue of trees to spy Bridlington down below just a couple of miles off. I celebrated on the seafront that serves as the finish line with a bag of chips, no longer a coast-to-coast virgin.

And furthermore, I was ready for the question every cyclist gets asked about a long-distance ride: What's your favourite bit? My answer? The four miles on the way to the village of Tibthorpe, about 20 miles from the east coast: huge skies, an empty road beneath my wheels and the sylvan countryside below melting away in the summer haze. I'm ashamed to say I threw my arms out wide and, coming over all Leonardo DiCaprio, shouted out, "I'm the king of the wold". Which just goes to show that country air may not be so good for you after all.

A new law will make it difficult for travellers to find affordable apartments and vacation rentals in New York City through popular websites like AirBnB and Craigslist

* Update 24 July 2010: Governor David Paterson has signed the bill. The new law will come into effect on 1 May 2011. You can read his statement here

If you like the idea of renting an apartment during a short break in New York, you could be facing some problems if new legislation is pushed through. The controversial proposal could make it illegal to rent an apartment in the city for any period under 30 days.

The "subletting" bill – which has been passed by senators and is currently awaiting final approval from the state governor – has been designed to crack down on illegal hotels that cause problems for permanent residents by depleting the local housing pool and creating noise and security issues. However, it is feared the ban will affect growing online networks, such as AirBnB, Craigslist, Crashpadder and Homeaway, which allow travellers to find short-term accommodation in privately owned properties.

Although the bill is said to contain "appropriate exceptions for roommates and boarders who live or rent in the unit with the permanent occupants", if you are looking to step in while the owner is away, you may only be able to do so if no money changes hands. This means home swapping is permitted, but paying to rent an apartment for private, short-term usage could become illegal.

The bill blames the internet for the rise of illegal hotels, stating that "it is easier than ever to advertise illegal hotel rooms" and "most tourists have no idea they have not made reservations at legitimate hotels until they arrive at their destination". Sites such as AirBnB – which has more than 3,000 properties listed in New York City - maintain they make it very clear that these are residential properties.

Joe Gebbia, president of AirBnB.com, said: "We have received over 300 letters from New Yorkers who depend on renting by the night to make ends meet. As everyone knows, NYC is financially a challenging place to live – especially in a down economy. The consequences of this generalised bill will negatively impact thousands of New Yorkers more than by the small number of 'illegal hotels'."

Many residents argue that they rely on their right to sublet in order to
stave off foreclosure on their homes. For many travellers, renting an apartment or a room in an apartment is the only affordable option in a city where the average hotel room costs $232 a night.

On Wednesday, 500 bed-and-breakfast owners and private homeowners gathered to protest outside City Hall. "Save our sublet" petitions have also been organised, while a band of estate agents specialising in tourist rentals have created a website: protect-vacation-rentals.com.

"This is an extremely complex area," said Michael T Sillerman, a New York-based land use lawyer at Kramer Levin. "We are in an era of mixed use. People want to live in hotels because of service, people want to buy a condo to occupy part of the year and rent for the rest, and people coming to a city may want to stay in a residential setting. The aim of this law is to bring clarity to a very ambitious area, but as often happens, certain groups have been overlooked."

One online commenter wrote: "This industry needs regulation, not eradication." They compared the situation to saying: "I don't like NYC taxi drivers who rig their meters and overcharge passengers. Let's create a law that will make all taxis illegal."

Parisian authorities are also trying to crack down on short-term rentals in a bid to stop people buying pied-à-terres that are used for just few weeks a year and rented for the rest of the time.

Meanwhile, a new London website OneFineStay.com is trying to make the most of luxury central properties that lie empty for a large part of the year by renting them to tourists. Founder Greg Marsh has expressed concern over the New York bill: "By pushing for such wide legislation which criminalises anybody who has paying houseguests city authorities in New York could choose to go after both private individuals and the companies that help them. Would they do so? The issue is they could, and simply that threat may scare off the more respectable firms."

As schools break up for summer many families will be swapping foreign trips for a traditional British holiday