The globetrotter

Jani Tully Chaplin, author and illustrator

What’s your favourite hotel?

The Hotel Kirchenwirt, Kirchberg, in the Austrian Tirol. It is owned and run by a charming Austrian family, whose patriarch hunts in the mountains for deer and wild boar, which he then prepares for the hotel restaurant. In autumn, there’s a mushroom festival and fungi are gathered from the surrounding pine forests. Kirchberg itself is a pretty and delightfully unspoilt working village, a couple of miles from the cachet of glamorous Kitzbuhel.

Have you had any travel disasters? Several—all in service stations between

Venice and Milan. The first disaster was a mere jammed window, but the second time, €8,000 was stolen from our car as my husband stood by the boot, unaware. It is extraordinary how thieves have such a nose for cash. The third time, a pair of reprobates tried to force their way into our car to steal my handbag.

Where’s top of your travel bucket list? That’s so easy—the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria, with a tour of the stables after the performance. As a former dressage rider, being allowed to ride one of the Lipizzaners, as The Princess Royal did on her visit, would be the icing on the Sachertorte!

Family aside, who’s your dream travel companion?

Joanna Lumley

Holiday book recommendation?

No competition: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. It has me laughing out loud no matter how many times I come back to it. I first read it at boarding school when I was 13 and it was the book that inspired my family to sail our ocean-going catamaran around the Ionian Islands for eight idyllic years. My first memoir, The Butterflies Fly Backwards, is about those years.

‘A Greek Island Nature Diary’ by Jani Tully Chaplin is out now (Unicorn Publishing, £20)