For more information on Richard Hammond’s work, see his website www.greentraveller.co.uk
Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways To See The World
By Richard Hammond and Jeremy Smith
ISBN 978-184836-0471, £18.99
Catherine Mack – Content manager, editor, copywriter and travel writer
For more information on Richard Hammond’s work, see his website www.greentraveller.co.uk
Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways To See The World
By Richard Hammond and Jeremy Smith
ISBN 978-184836-0471, £18.99
I have always had a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to the French. I lived there for almost three years as a student, and looked on in awe at the women with their perfect skin, toned muscles, and their ‘born to wear tight jeans’ bottoms. I tried very hard to keep up but I didn’t ski, couldn’t talk philosophy and didn’t know an aperitif from a digestif. Years later they still manage to seduce me, which is why I am not surprised when it’s a small family-run French company running walking holidays in France which wins my personal Palme d’Or for all things ethical in travel this year.
Continue reading “Itinerance Trekking: the French do responsible tourism so well”The founders of the Blackgang Mission on the Isle of Wight would not have approved of me. Within seconds of being in this recently converted hall, I had broken one of the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not covet. I was green with jealousy, wanting it not just for the weekend, but for my own home.
Vintage Vacations have pulled it off again. On the island, they have already restored ten airstream caravans, a beach shack, and now this 1890’s corrugated iron Mission Hall, on the south coast near Chale. It was built to provide spiritual ‘care in the community’ and did so right up to the 1990’s. When it closed, the beneficiaries made the right decision, allowing Helen Carey and Frazer Cunningham of Vintage Vacations to take it over. With its new open plan design, revealing all the original wood-panelled walls, pitched ceiling and stained glass windows, you can feel the open, warm tradition of this building as soon as you enter.
Helen and Frazer have added their own ‘religious’ touches. As worshippers of all things kitsch and post-modern, this project must have been heaven. A huge white floor-to- ceiling cube is set into the centre of the hall, with narrow stairs leading up to two suspended double bedrooms. Each has a glass balcony, allowing you to take in the beauty of the hall, as well as all its natural light. For anyone worried about privacy, this might not be the place for them, but I loved the sense of openness and transparency. There are two private rooms, however. One children’s room with bunks, quilted blankets, soft stripy sheets, and 50’s storybooks on the pillows. Another double room beside it, like all the bedrooms, is decorated with a collection of lovingly sought out vintage blankets, cushions and twee ornaments.
Fun is always at the heart of Vintage Vacation’s projects, and this is no exception, yet they still maintain the integrity of the building. The original owners would have loved the giant wood-burning stove, a perfect focal point under the chandelier and stained glass window, as we lounged around on art deco red velour swivel chairs and black leather sofas. An old shop counter has drawers full of games, maps, CD’s (The Mission soundtrack of course) and DVD’s. Fluffiness is also a core theme here, with a vast white furry rug, feather boa wreathes, and a propensity for poodle paintings.
The spacious kitchen still has a church hall feel to it, with old wooden table and chairs, cream metal 30’s units full of china tea sets, pink glassware and funky coffee pots. Modern luxuries of a dishwasher and washing machine have thankfully been snuck in. They have also gone to town on the bathrooms, which are state-of-the-art five star gorgeousness. The sunken bath in place of the original baptismal font might not have made the preachers smile, but it worked for me.
The Mission has a great pub and some of the country’s best coastal walks on the doorstep. I took an early morning walk up to the nearby St. Catherine’s oratory, to take in magnificent seascapes. An ancient place of prayer for those in danger at sea, it is still an extraordinarily peaceful place.
Back at the hall, my hero husband had made Sunday breakfast. He too had found his spiritual home, with a breakfast hamper full of local sausages, bacon, eggs, home-made bread and jams, pre-ordered from The Real Island Food Company. Just as we sat down, snow started to fall. “Do you think we might be snowed in, Mum?” my son asked. I suggested we could try praying, but sadly my prayers weren’t answered and the ferry was bang on time. That’s what you get for breaking Commandments.
(This article was first published in The Observer, 1st March 2009)
Vintage Vacations, Isle of Wight, www. vintagevacations.co.uk
Weekend stays from £395 and weekly stays between £700 and £1600 – for more photos click here
Getting there: SouthWest Trains to Southampton (southwesttrains.co.uk), and Red Funnel ferry to Cowes (redfunnel.co.uk). Taxi or bus to The Mission.
To order great quality local food to be in the fridge on arrival, see realislandfood.co.uk
Sadly I can take no credit. Natural Retreats had already been working with Irish tourism experts, to work out the best way to expand into Ireland and maintain their ethos of sustainability at the same time. They started looking at Irish National Park sites, with a view to replicating their already successful English product. And then the credit crunch hit. But this didn’t stop them, realising there was still room for Irish development. The answer was not to build from scratch, but team up with Irish businesses which already had high quality, environmentally sensitive, self-catering accomodation, and which were willing to find new uses and marketing outlets for them. The result is Natural Retreats luxury villas at Parknasilla (as photographed here), County Kerry, Adare Manor, County Limerick, Castlemartyr Resort in County Cork, The K Club in County Kildare and Kilronan Castle Estate in County Roscommon.
I must admit, I was slightly disappointed when I heard that they hadn’t gone out on their own, and had teamed up with prestigious and pricey resorts. However, Kearney was quick to point out that it is a different world we are working in now, rightly saying “Sustainability is the single most important thing for us, and having access to beautiful areas like Parknasilla, for example, where there is already an excellent product, in a stunning location, which we could only dream of having access to, has been amazing!. There are endless activities here which allow visitors to interact with this stunning natural environment, as well as superb local produce to fill our hampers. This has meant we can all still do what we believe in, despite the challenges of this current economic climate”.
Natural Retreats’ empasis is always on local. At their new Irish sites, they have employed local site managers, for example, insisting they are people with excellent local knowledge, and a passion for the landscape, walking, riding, cycling etc. When they told their new partners that they wanted to provide food hampers, one of them voiced concern at not being able to get Yorkshire produce, not realising that when Natural Retreats say local, they really do mean local.
So, if you want to retreat into the luxurious arms of this new ethical ‘blow-in’, check it out for yourself. Because sustainability is not just about renewables and recycling, it is also about saving what we already have, especially the good stuff, and just making it better. If more businesses combined forces like this to fight the crunch, and create more ethical, sustainable products, we would have a lot more to write home about when we get there.
(Article first published in The Irish Times, 25th July 2009)