Dive in for deals
GET prepped for when we can start travelling again with Padi, the world’s largest diver training organisation. It has a range of online courses to get you started with a scuba diving qualification.
Paadi is offering 25 per cent off e-learning so you can tick off the theory and be ready for putting it into action. And no stress – you have a year to complete it. See padi.com.
WE will all deserve a break with a large glass of something later this year – whether that’s whizzing through fields of fizz, spending time on the Rhine with wine, or just having another beer, m’dear.
Santé! France’s champagne country
Much of champagne country – the historic province of Champagne – is disappointingly dull but its Aube region is worth a pilgrimage. Centred around the town of Troyes, the countryside is made up of vineyards laced with clear rivers and geranium-splashed villages.
Troyes itself has a downtown area laid out in the shape of a champagne cork and filled with half-timbered houses that lean towards each other, as if frozen in the act of whispering sweet-nothings. Among the villages are pretty hamlets such as Les Riceys, and Essoyes, the village where Renoir spent most of his life.
This is a place to visit family-run champagne houses and check out their good-value prices. See aube-champagne.com.
Prost! Germany’s beer gardens
The home nation of the world’s largest beer festival – Munich’s Oktoberfest – takes brewing seriously. The vast majority of German brewers still follow the 500-year-old beer purity law, the Reinheitsgebot. You do not have to come here in October to experience the party atmosphere, particularly in the likes of Munich’s Hirschgarten beer garden, which has seating for 8,000.
Local breweries are the norm hereabouts, and a pretty town like Bamberg, north of Munich, has no fewer than 11 in town and a further 60 in the region. Of the former, Schlenkerla makes famous smoky beer, which is like a whole meal in itself. And then there are the nation’s monasteries, which brew their own.
At Weltenburg, monk-made beer is served under the lime trees in a seductive riverside setting right by Regensburg. And at Andechs, south of Munich, you can drink in the monastery beer garden and then sleep it off in the monastery guesthouse. See bavaria.by.
Zum Wohl! Austria’s riverside wineries
Any number of vineyard regions can claim to be the loveliest in the world, from California’s
Napa Valley to South Africa’s Winelands. Tuscany is idyllic, especially the combination of vineyard with hilltop villages. But one destination not often mentioned is on the banks of the Danube, in a region of Austria called the Wachau.
Here, in a river valley strung like a harp with vines, little vintner-run Heurige, wine bars that serve the wine-makers’ own vintages, spring up in season, particularly around the pretty village of Durnstein.
Sit, soak up the sunshine and the fruity Gruner Veltliner, and watch the parade of river boats pass by. Bliss. See austria.info.
Salud! Sherry in Spain
Few drinks are quite as regional as sherry. Nearly all are made in the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera, up the road from Seville. Many of the bodegas have surprisingly British-sounding names – Osborne, Williams & Humbert, Sandeman – reflecting historic British interest in this fortified wine.
Most of the bodegas offer tours and tastings, although many a traveller will have their most striking encounters with a chilled fino (dry) or oloroso (sweet) in the tapas bars of the Triana district of Seville. Here the narrow alleys of this former gypsy quarter come alive in the evening with intoxicating music and beautifully dressed couples in bars piled high with sherry barrels.
Chin chin! Cider in northern France
Apple orchards are widespread through Brittany and Normandy but apple-based drinks are at their best in Normandy’s Pays d’auge – a gentle land between Caen and Le Havre. Low hills are covered with orchard, oak and beech and hung with mist. Thatched farmhouses are candystriped timber and plaster and many a farmer still makes his own foaming jugs of cider. They go down nicely with the pungent creamy squares of regional cheese from neighbour towns of Camembert and Pont L’éveque. In this