The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Places that are in during the off-season
Cambodia is not the only destination where a visit outside high season can be a rewarding experience. A bit of lateral thinking and a counter-intuitive response to what the guidebooks recommend under their standard “When to go” advice often pays dividends. You can find excellent value, enjoy crowd-free sights and generally enjoy a much more authentic experience of many destinations when they are free of tourists. Here are 10 more to consider:
TOBAGO
As the troubled weather patterns of the past few years have starkly demonstrated, Atlantic hurricane season is a phenomenon you really want to avoid. It reserves the worst of its fury for September, but it can stalk the Caribbean and its otherwise tranquil beaches at any point between June and November. Tobago, though, has a relative amount of immunity to this seasonal situation. It lies so far to the south-west – closer to the east flank of Venezuela than to the south coast of Barbados – that hurricanes rarely reach its shores. And yet prices in October are as low as anywhere else in the region – a storm discount, without the storm.
A seven-night all-inclusive holiday to the four-star Coco Reef resort, flying from Gatwick on Oct 12, costs from £1,619 per person through Tropical Sky (01342 886153; tropicalsky.co.uk). Wait until January and the same escape will cost from £2,219 per person.
THE MALDIVES
Popular opinion has it that the Indian Ocean’s most celebrated collection of desert islands bathes in bright light and 86F (30C) glow at all times of year. While there is some truth in this, the generalisation fails to factor in the wet season and the downpours that can strafe the beaches from May to December. In short, there is a reason why January to April is peak season. That said, rainfall levels are inconsistent in the second, damper half of the year. And while you probably want to swerve September and October, when the chance of a deluge is at its highest (and water visibility is reduced for divers), you would be savvy if you opted for August, when the sun breaks through the clouds – and prices are still lower.
A seven-night all-inclusive getaway to the Veligandu Island Resort & Spa – a four-star retreat with a house reef in the North Ari Atoll – departing from Manchester on Aug 17, costs from £2,913 per person through Kuoni (0800 540 4267; kuoni.co.uk).
TUSCANY
Tuscany has long been a fixture of British dreams in July – when sunlight flashes on the windows of hilltop citadels such as San Gimignano, and the evenings stretch out warm and fragrant. But my, a week in a villa near Siena can feel like an expats’ convention as a result. The same cannot be said of October, when Surrey has gone home and the region is devoting itself to autumn and the harvest. Tiny Cinigiano, near Grosseto, throws a wine festival on the first weekend of the month (Oct 4-6 this year; prolococinigiano.com), while those of an active bent might consider L’Eroica (Oct 6; eroicagaiole. com) – a vintage bike race through Chianti – knowing that the heat of high summer has dissipated.
Seven nights at the Villasanpaolo Spa Resort in San Gimignano, flying out of Heathrow on Oct 2, cost £770 per person through Citalia (01293 831357; citalia.com).
VENICE
No Italian city is a greater victim of overtourism than Venice, which is stuffed to its Renaissance seams in
July and August. Go in winter, however, and – as long as you skip the costumed mayhem of Carnevale (Feb 16-March 5 in 2019; carnevale.venezia. it) – you will find a far quieter, calmer take on La Serenissima. True, the wind may whip in off the lagoon, and St Mark’s Square may be lashed by rain, but with the shadows lengthening down lamplit alleys, this version of the city is also decidedly more romantic.
Three nights at the five-star Baglioni Hotel Luna start at £898 per person, with flights, transfers and breakfast, through Kirker Holidays (020 7593 1899; kirkerholidays.com).
SICILY
Like Venice, Italy’s largest island is perhaps best spurned in July and August. Not because you will bump into so many fellow travellers that you will wish you were somewhere, anywhere, else – but because, with the mercury nudging into the high 80Fs/ lower 30Cs, the temperature can add an extra level of oppression to an encounter with Palermo traffic. Better to target more affable April (66F/19C) and ignore the notoriously busy capital entirely in favour of the southerly province of Ragusa – and Modica. Not only is this lovely town framed by the Hyblaean Mountains, giving it a certain welcome coolness; it sings with Baroque architecture, a Unesco-listed legacy of its recovery from the earthquake of 1693.
A four-night stay at the Palazzo Failla Hotel in Modica, flying from Stansted to nearby
Comiso on April 1, costs from £459 per person, including private transfers and breakfast. Book through Prestige Holidays (01425 480400; prestigeholidays.co.uk).
SEVILLE
The same heat warning might well be applied to Andalucia – where, general wisdom has it, the sun is so vicious in high summer that even Sevillanos flee Seville. But while the city is certainly a place where factor-50 is recommended in July – 95F (35C) and up is not an uncommon occurrence – the region around it has long learned to cope with the cloudless, unflinching skies under which it bakes in the middle of the year. Pale canvas drapes, hung at roof level along the likes of Calles Sierpes and Rioja, shield shoppers in Seville from the madness of midday – while summer is also the perfect season to test the sheltered courtyards and breezy designs which made the Alcázar (in Seville) and the Alhambra (in Granada) so coolly habitable when they were the palaces of Moorish rule 600 years ago.
Cox & Kings offers Andalucia in Luxury, a nine-day tour of Cordoba, Seville and Granada, for £1,995 a head, with flights (020 3918 3292; coxandkings.co.uk).
RUSSIA
Summers in the planet’s biggest country can be surprisingly hot, while its winters are legendarily fierce – but that does not mean you should file the latter in the folder marked “impossible”. There is something endlessly evocative about Russia in the cold months; a romance rescued from the pages of Dr Zhivago. Of course, if you visit St Petersburg or Moscow in, say, December, you lose the “White Nights” which make the former (in particular) seem so alive in June. But what you shed in vibrancy you gain in photogenic vistas – piled snow and ice giving grand onion-domes and epic churches a fairy-tale sheen.
Audley Travel (01993 838230; audleytravel.com) offers an eight-day Classic Russia itinerary, available throughout the year, which divides its time equally between Moscow and St Petersburg. From £2,420 per person – including international flights.
TANZANIA
The Great Migration is one of the globe’s most remarkable wildlife spectacles – the search for fresh grass that sees some 2.5 million wildebeest, zebra and gazelle push north-east through Serengeti National Park and on across the border into Kenya and the Maasai Mara. The drama starts in May, and hits its most exciting chapter in July with the fraught crossings of the crocodile-laced Grumeti and
Mara rivers – a scene of nature at its rawest that attracts tourists in droves, with prices to match. However, the adage that what goes up must come down applies to these African plains, and the wise safari aficionado waits for the animals to return south into Tanzania in November – when the crowd has thinned.
Expert Africa (020 3405 6666; expertafrica.com) offers an 11-day Tinkerbird Fly-in Safari which spends time in both Tarangire and Serengeti National Parks, and at the Ngorongoro Crater. From £8,990 a head in November, including flights.
QUEENSLAND
One of the most persuasive reasons for enduring the long flight to Australia is that it lets you swap the European winter for the Southern Hemisphere summer. So why would you go in May, when the best of the weather has gone? Because, in the case of Queensland, the difference is relatively small – the state capital Brisbane basks in 84F (29C) warmth in January, but can still manage 75F (24C) in May. And the further north you go, the better it gets – Cairns, the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, keeps things tropical around the calendar.
Austravel (01293 837184; austravel.com) offers a 15-day Queensland Classic road trip that forges from Brisbane to Cairns, from £2,295 per person with flights.
NEW ENGLAND
So compelling is the image of the “Fall” in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine that it can seem implausible to visit New England in a month when it has not upended the ruddier end of the seasonal paintbox all over its tree line. And yet, the same foliage-lined lanes, rustic villages, country inns and pastoral landscapes are just as alluring amid the optimism of spring, when the mood is of green-shooted renewal rather than a golden farewell – and the roads are noticeably emptier, too.
Bon Voyage (0800 316 3012; bon-voyage.co.uk) offers a 12-night Historic Inns of New
England Tour which passes through all six states of the region, staying in heritage hotels en route. It costs from £2,675 per person, including flights and car hire.