Vegas to LA win-win
GRAB a double whammy of a deal taking in LasVegas and Los Angeles in one week for £899. Save £134pp with Hayes and Jarvis and enjoy three nights at five-star The Signature at MGM Grand in Vegas followed by four nights at four-star Milennium Biltmore Hotel. Internal flight and return flights from Heathrow on March 1 included. Book on 01293 762 456. THIS is a landmark year for many of our literary giants, from Jane Austen to JK Rowling. Andrew Eames rounds up the places that inspired them. WHY: 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death and there is loads going on. WHERE: Hampshire is Jane Austen country. Her former home in the village of Chawton near Alton is hosting exhibitions, talks, and activities. Alton will chip in with a Regency Week from June 17-25. A highlight will be The Mysterious Miss Austen exhibition, which will tour Winchester, Gosport and Basingstoke. Jane’s final resting place, Winchester Cathedral, is also running tours exploring her life. Jane Austen Big Picnics across Hampshire offer the chance to see some performances and try some Regency food. See janeausten200.co.uk. HOW: The Wheatsheaf Hotel just outside the village of Steventon, where Jane was born. The hotel is a former coaching inn where she used to collect her post. Double rooms cost from £53. See chefandbrewer.com. WHY: Poldark is the gift that keeps on giving to Cornish tourism and this spring the BBC brings us Series Three. WHERE: It is easy enough to emulate the signature Poldark ingredients of unbuttoning shirts and smouldering on clifftops pretty much anywhere in Cornwall. Poldark’s creator, the writer Winston Graham, lived in the seaside town of Perranporth. More popular is Fowey, where Jamaica Inn author Daphne du Maurier lived for over 20 years.
Besides Fowey’s boat-bobbing estuary, there is dramatic coastal path walking at nearby Polruan, where she got married, and peachy protected beaches at Polperro and Looe. HOW: Penquite Farm on the creek at Fowey has self-catering cottages from £350 per week and a new pool. See cornishfarmholidays.co.uk. WHY: June marks the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the book that started a worldwide phenomenon. WHERE: Many Potter locations will celebrate the date. But JK Rowling lives in Edinburgh, and particularly important for Potter pilgrims is the city’s Elephant House cafe, where she wrote much of that first novel.
There’s a free Potter Trail, pottertrail.com, around the Old Town, with a robed guide leading you through the narrow, magical alleyways that influenced the series.
True fans will then head for the Highlands to ride the Jacobite, westcoastrailways.co.uk, the steam train that acted as the Hogwarts Express in the films. HOW: JK Rowling finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Edinburgh’s five-star Balmoral Hotel, roccofortehotels.com, where double rooms start from £189. WHY: We are in the middle of Brontë bicentenaries – Charlotte was born 200 years ago last year, difficult brother Bramwell this year, and Emily next year. WHERE: The interest around the Brontë birthdaysb i thd i is b beingi whippedhi up by new books andan TV documentaries – BBC’s To Walk Invisible plusp films on Wuthering Heights and the family.
Up at Haworth, West Yorkshire, where the si sisters spent most of their tragically short adult liv lives, there are new guided walks. Their pa parsonage home is a museum and the Pennine M Moors are just beyond their front door.
Also this year, the Keighley and Worth Valley Ra Railway, with a station in Haworth, will have the world’s most famous steam locomotive, the Fl Flying Scotsman, in a ction from April 1-9. HOW:H Cottages in Haworth are available from Sy Sykes Cottages (sykescottages.co.uk), such as Th The Dairy (ref 30156, sleeps two), for £264 for tw two nights. WHY:W It has been 230 years since William W Wordsworth’s first poem was published, a high po point of the romantic approach to poetry and