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Turkey from
£289pp:
Depart Stansted on October 7 for a week all-inclusive at the five-star CLC Kusadasi Golf & Spa Resort in Kusadasi.
Just head to teletextholidays. co.uk or ring 020
3001 1273.
Seattle from
£720pp:
Explore the best of the Pacific Northwest on a four-night stay, room-only, at the Crowne Plaza Downtown.
Based on travel from Heathrow with Delta between November 25 and 29 with two sharing.
See americaasyou likeit.com or call 020
8742 8299.
Spain and Portugal cruise from
£679pp: Sail from Southampton on January 2 for a
14-night round trip on P&O’s new flagship Iona, calling at Vigo, Gibraltar, Alicante, Barcelona,
Cadiz and Lisbon. See pocruises.com. Menorca from
£185pp: Save
59% on a sevennight self-catering break at the two-star Son Bou Gardens Hotel in Son Bou.
It’s based on two sharing with flights from Bristol on October 15.
Head to olympic holidays.com or dial
020 8492 6868.
UAE from
£657pp: Enjoy the desert heat on a five-star, four-night BB getaway to the Fairmont Ajman hotel in the emirate of Ajman.
Deal is based on two sharing and flying from Stansted on selected dates in October. Regional departures are also available. Hit emiratesholidays. com to book.
Prices correct at time of publication
IT began with a dream – a dream about a salmon with golden scales and gold nuggets for eyes.
George Carmack was convinced it was a good-luck omen, that he would have a successful fishing trip with his brotherin-law Skookum Jim Mason.
But it turned out he’d focused on the wrong part of his dream because instead of a fish, the pair hooked something more lucrative from the river – gold.
And so began the biggest gold rush in history, in August 1896, which saw tens of thousands of people flock to the Yukon, more than 600 alone on the day gold was discovered.
The nearest settlement of Dawson swelled to a city of 40,000 within months as prospectors from America rushed to the Klondike.
The latest fashions from Paris and New York were sold in the shops and the city had electricity before many others.
And then, almost as suddenly as it started, it was over.
The gold dried up and in a couple of years many of those who went in search of fortune had to return home emptyhanded. Dawson itself, a couple of thousand miles north-west of Vancouver, remains to this day – although rather smaller with a population of around 2,000 – and gold is still mined there.
Just outside the city, a towering mining ship sits abandoned, surrounded by feet of snow, a lasting monument to the huge commercial operations in the 1900s that followed the original rush.
Dawson is in many ways the town that time forgot. Some of the houses stand at an angle as the permafrost under the earth makes them tilt.
And the shops and fabulously named Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall wouldn’t be out of place in a Western movie, if it weren’t for the snow.
That’s something they’re definitely not short of. When we visited in November the area was already under several feet of it, the same amount as they usually get all winter.
It was, locals attested, “shovel weather”, as they happily dug out cars, doorsteps and driveways.
And by the river there was no sign of salmon, or anything else for that matter, as the frozen-over lake was already being crossed by walkers and the odd car.
Within weeks there would be an “ice bridge” there, a government road created over the river. The ice gets so thick even lorries can cross.
Locals use the slightly less scientific rule of walking on the river 72 hours after it stops moving.
I decided not to risk it, just in case.
It’s not the only slightly questionable custom in Dawson, as it is also home to the
Sourtoe Cocktail, inset, which unfortunately, as the name suggests, involves a toe.
Not just any toe, a mummified human one…
The story goes that one of two miner brothers, Otto and Louie Liken, lost a toe to frostbite in the 1920s and kept it as a memento.
Decades later it was found and the cocktail was born, with those taking the challenge “true Yukoners”. There’s even a British toe, belonging to ex-Marine commando Nick Griffiths. He drank himself into the club with his own toe – one of three he lost to frostbite.
So, steeling myself at the sight of the dark brown, shrivelled toe (sorry, there’s no fooling yourself – you really, really can tell it’s a toe), I tried to focus on the Sourdough Saloon’s bartender/ “Toe Captain”, and the shot of Yukon Gold whisky she was pouring.
She recites the rhyme to be allowed into the club: “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch this gnarly toe.”
Then it’s plop, into the shot the toe goes, and down the hatch – with the shot…not the toe. In fact, there’s a hefty fine if you swallow the digit along with your drink. And now I am one of the almost 100,000 members of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club. Mercifully, the burning shot disguised any possible taste and I will for ever be able to say I’ve had a mummified human