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JAL asks for another bail-out: Flights in the ointment

October 1st, 2009 | No Comments

A struggling airline poses a test for Japan’s new government

WHEN the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power last month, it declared an end to the cosy relationship between business and government that has long prevailed in Japan. But what does that mean for Japan Airlines (JAL), the national flag-carrier, which was privatised in 1987 and has been bailed out by the state three times since 2001? JAL is asking for yet more state aid, despite having received a handout of YEN100 billion ($1.1 billion) in June.

JAL is bracing for its fifth loss in seven years, after losing YEN99 billion in the most recent quarter alone (see chart). It has around YEN800 billion in debt, not including YEN300 billion in aircraft-lease obligations and YEN330 billion in pension liabilities. There is hope for an investment of YEN30 billion or so from Delta or American Airlines, which want to gain access to JAL’s coveted landing slots in China and to win the business of its international passengers (though old hands at the airline do not want to turn to foreigners, seeing it as a loss of face). The airline has proposed cutting 6,800 jobs (14% of its workforce) and dropping 50 routes over the next three years. It may also cut pension benefits, which could save as much as YEN88 billion this year. …

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Britain eyes rail to replace short-haul flights

August 5th, 2009 | No Comments

Britain is aiming to replace short-haul flights with high-speed rail travel in a multi-billion pound plan that is well advanced, the transport minister said on Wednesday. Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis told the Guardian newspaper that plans for a route from London to BritainBritain is aiming to replace short-haul flights with high-speed rail travel in a multi-billion pound plan that is well advanced, the transport minister said on Wednesday. Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis told the Guardian newspaper that plans for a route from London to Britain’s second


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Emergency landing closes Gatwick runway

July 24th, 2009 | No Comments

Passengers on Paris to Cardiff plane evacuated and flights diverted to other airports after crew report fault

Haroon Siddique

An emergency landing of a plane en route to Cardiff closed a runway at Gatwick airport this morning.

Flybe flight BE1432 flying from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris was diverted to the West Sussex airport after the crew reported a technical fault, with reports suggesting smoke on the aircraft.

The airport’s fire and ambulance services were deployed “as a precautionary measure” but no one was injured, according to a Gatwick spokesman who said the passengers were able “to exit down the steps in the normal way”. The Dash 8 plane, carrying 46 passengers and four crew made the emergency landing at 12.25am. The runway reopened just before 1pm, after the plane was moved.

Eleven flights due to land at Gatwick were diverted to other airports, while another 15 were put in waiting-to-land “stacking” positions.

“Three other flights have been held on the ground,” the Gatwick spokesman said. “This is a busy day but it’s not our most busy of the summer. We’re hoping that delays will be kept to a minimum.”

A Flybe spokeswoman said alternative travel arrangements were being made to transport the passengers to Cardiff as soon as possible.

The Bombardier Dash 8 is a twin engined medium range turboprop aircraft. In February a Continental Airlines Dash 8 Q400 crashed into a house in suburban Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 passengers. In 2007, Scandinavian airlines, SAS, removed its Dash 8 Q400 type aircraft from service permanently after three safety scares in two months. The company cited “diminished” confidence and customer doubts.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


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Tourists bowled over by £215 flights

July 20th, 2009 | No Comments

British Airways and Qantas offer dramatically reduced tickets to Australia based on Ashes scores

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Gioia Diliberto: Flights of Fashion

July 19th, 2009 | No Comments

Among the styles recently returned from the dead are micro minis, skinny belts, jumpsuits, platform shoes — and now the Amelia Earhart look.

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Asturias: the secret I have to share

July 13th, 2009 | No Comments

Acclaimed food writer Paul Richardson lives in southern Spain but it is the northern region of Asturias with its fertile valleys and stunning coast – and distinctive food and drink – that he tells his friends to explore before it’s too late

Don’t get me started about Asturias. I could go on and on about this inexplicably little-visited region wedged between Galicia and Cantabria along the north coast of Spain. I have been known to get very boring about its dramatic landscapes, its superb beaches, its excellent food, its unique pre-Romanesque architecture, its affable locals, and the strange fact that, as yet, few people seem to share my unbridled enthusiasm for the place.

Asturias is very Spanish in some ways, and surprisingly unlike the rest of the country in many others. Its Celtic, Atlantic culture is the polar opposite of the indolent, sherry-sipping, sun-lounging outdoor life of the Mediterranean.

The greenness of Asturias is astounding, especially if you’re coming from the parched plains of the Spanish south. You might also argue that the region is a microcosm of Spain as a whole, cramming into its borders everything from snowy mountains to sandy beaches, humble tapas bars to avant-garde restaurants, and from raucous local fiestas to silent valleys where bears and wolves still roam. The community has no fewer than 24 nature reserves, including one parque nacional and three of Spain’s largest parques naturales

Where I live, in the Spanish south, three months of spring had gone by without a drop of rain, and the countryside bore a withered, desperate look. Tired of dust and unseasonal heats, I wanted greenness and pleasantness, mountain streams and ocean views. So I worked up a trip, my fourth or fifth to the region, that would take in a little of each of the things I love about Asturias: the rural essences, the modest urban pleasures, the beaches and the wild interior, the simple traditional food and the fab contemporary cuisine.

I’d start out in Oviedo, the delightful capital, counterpoint to the rough-and-tumble harbour town of Gijón, which is the region’s second city. I’d then devote a day to cider, another to cheese – because Asturias is the uncontested cheese HQ of Spain – a day to the Alpine landscapes of the Picos de Europa, and another to the coast. I drove north through Castile, taking the motorway that powers through high mountain passes, past lakes and staggering peaks, before turning downhill into a suddenly green world of chestnut woods and rich pastures, and depositing you eventually in Oviedo.

History and geography dictate the way a place looks, feels and tastes. Asturias was a nation and kingdom seven centuries before Fernando and Isabella invented Spain, and it formed the cradle of the reconquista, by which the rest of the peninsula was eventually won back from the Moors. (Indeed, a popular saying has it that “Asturias is Spain – the rest is conquered territory”.)

The geographical barrier of the Picos de Europa, cutting off access from the south, made Asturias the most isolated part of the country. Hence, perhaps, the idiosyncrasy. And the omnipresent reek of history. Oviedo has some of Spain’s most venerable buildings – such as Santa María del Naranco, an exquisite pre-Romanesque church set in green pastures above the city, built for the Asturian king Ramiro I in the mid-ninth century. San Julián de los Prados, dating from the early ninth century, is a tiny and magical church whose richly painted interior reminds you what a debt Christianity owes to the Orient.

If Asturias is a series of pleasant surprises, Oviedo often comes as the first of them. It’s a compact, handsome little city, charmingly buttoned-up, with a provincial and bourgeois air, where people stop on street corners and the women wear their hair in perms. It says something about the fastidious character of Oviedo that here, uniquely for Spain, rubbish collection happens on a daily basis. (It routinely wins awards for Europe’s cleanest city.)

Oviedo had star billing along with Barcelona in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Woody is a huge fan of the city, which has responded by putting up a bronze statue of him in the street. There is a lively cultural life here (the Campoamor opera house is a classic 19th-century chocolate-box theatre, where Plácido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé have sung), a superb produce market, some wonderful old pastry shops (Camilo de Blas, Rialto, Peñalba), and two or three of the country’s best restaurants. On that first day I had lunch at Casa Fermín, where the day’s menu included sea bass with clams, wild local salmon from the Sella river with yogurt and vanilla, and hand-caught octopus with potato cream and parsley oil.

Asturias shares the Spanish passion for food. Traditional cocina asturiana is wonderful in its plainness, honesty, and heartiness. Uncontested monarch of local dishes is the fabada asturiana, a take-no-prisoners stew of fabas (big white beans) with a compendium of smoked meats and sausages. Thereafter comes the rest of the repertoire: fritos de pixín (deep-fried monkfish pieces), vegetable menestra (stew), empanada (a flat savoury pie with a thick crust), torto de maíz (maize-flour flatbread, fried until it puffs up, with various accompaniments) …

Cheese is a very big deal. Asturian cheeses are many and various, the best of them (like Cabrales, Gamoneu, Afuega’l Pitu, Los Beyos) reflecting in their intense flavours all the verdant richness of the countryside. The seafood, landed at the busy fishing ports of Gijón, Lastres and Avilés, is second to none. Beside the Fontán market in Oviedo I saw a restaurant menu announcing that all its fish was both wild and local – a luxury inconceivable in the fished-out Mediterranean.

There is very little wine made in these northerly latitudes, so what tends to go with all this Asturian food is the Asturian drink by definition: cider. From Oviedo I drove to Nava, cider capital of the region, where José María Osorio, president of the local cidermakers’ guild, took me to see a traditional sidrería, the Estrada, which not only makes cider from the fruit of its own apple-trees, but serves it in an oak-lined cider-house, along with plates of cheese and chorizo. The cider was drawn in a powerful jet from a giant chestnut barrel in a gloomy cellar; it was woody and spicy and palate-scouringly dry. Asturias has almost 250 varieties of apple, José María told me, the great majority of which are quickly moving towards extinction. At Valveran, another sidrería, I tasted ciders of the new generation (known as de nueva expresión) which can be served in posh restaurants without anybody raising an eyebrow, and sweet dessert ciders and sparkling ciders and cider brandy, Asturias’s answer to Calvados.

The cider-house rules can be a puzzle at first, but they are easily understood with a little observation. Cider in Asturias is always served escanciada, which means the cider is poured into the glass from a great height, the oxygen it acquires on the way down giving the drink an essential kick of freshness. The cider is downed in one, but a little is always left at the bottom of the glass, custom dictating that this must be chucked out onto the floor. The reason for this practice is a mystery, though it seems likely to date back to a Celtic belief in returning to the earth a part of what it gave you.

On a fresh May morning after a rainshower, the sun shone on fields of apple trees loaded with blossom. I turned off the main road and drove inland; to left and right were villages of stone houses with slate roofs and the pagoda-like forms of the hórreos, wooden granaries raised on stone pillars to keep out the rats. Above the villages were hillsides densely wooded with chestnut, pine, and eucalyptus. And in the distance stood a line of mountains sugar-iced with snow: the famous Picos de Europa, so-called because these peaks were the first things mariners saw of the continent when returning from their long expeditions to distant seas.

In the fields round about, brown cows grazed indolently on an ensalada verde of the lushest pasture I had ever seen. Asturias is dairy central. In a country not traditionally fond of dairy products, this is one region that loves them unashamedly. An estimated 40 different cheeses are produced within its borders, three of which have Denominación de Origen status. Few places in the world – even in France – can boast such cheesy variety over such a modest surface area.

The Cotera Diaz family have their home and dairy in the village of Arenas de Cabrales, but keep their 28 cows in a stable beside the Cares river. When I visited, the husband and wife were busy milking, the rattle of a generator mingling with the roar of a mountain river swollen with ice-melt from the high sierra. (Its waters were blue-grey, and crystal clear.) The family specialise in Cabrales, a blue cheese which is one of Spain’s finest and a worthy rival to both Stilton and Roquefort. It packs a powerful punch, and often benefits from a good draught of cider to soften its piquant aftertaste.

While the parents worked, their son explained to me the family’s traditional routine, common among cheese-making families hereabouts. As soon as school closes in June, the family goes up into the high pastures of the Picos, where they spend the whole summer with the herd, making cheeses which will be brought down in September to cure in special caves.

The custom of transhumance has declined, but the caves are still an irreplaceable element in the making of both Cabrales and the other great Asturian blue cheese, Gamonedo. After a simple but highly calorific lunch at Casa Morán in Benia de Onis (fabada followed by arroz con leche, number one Asturian dessert and a rice pudding to conjure with), I visited the Cotera Diaz family cave, a dripping corridor bored into the mountainside, with the maturing Cabrales laid out on wooden shelves. Inside it was damp and dark and musty, with a powerful stink in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere that would send claustrophics and cheese-haters screaming into the fresh air.

Next day I met up with Guillermo Mañana, a retired doctor whose overriding passion is the Asturian mountain landscape. Guillermo has spent most of his life exploring every nook and cranny, every peak and valley of the Somiedo and Redes nature reserves, the primordial woodlands of Muñiellos, and his greatest love, the magic mountains of Picos de Europa. He proposed a simple half-day trek following the river Cares from its birthplace in the heights of the sierra down a narrow mountain gorge, the Desfiladero del Rio Cares.

We began in the village of Caín, for centuries cut off entirely from the outside world and, as its name might suggest, regarded by outsiders as a village of the damned. From there we entered the gorge, a dark canyon of Tolkien-esque proportions, with a path carved out of the rock face skirting the cliffs. From far below us came the muffled thunder of the river. Far above, in the gap between the cliffs, if you strained your neck and watched your footsteps, you could just see the snow-capped peaks, sparkling in the sun.

It was an unforgettable walk, and the lunch at the end of it wasn’t bad either: 11 courses of menú degustación at the Michelin-starred Casa Marcial in Arriondas, which along with Casa Gerardo in Prendes, is the most important showcase for the new Asturian cuisine. Nacho Manzano, chef at Casa Marcial, cooks and lives in the village house where he was born and grew up, and where his parents had a small shop that sold everything from socks and shoes to tinned sardines. There was a dance hall on the first floor, a cider press in the basement.

Over the years Nacho has brought his modernisation of cocina asturiana to a high pitch of refinement: his torto de maíz is as light as feather, his arroz con pitu de caleya (a rice dish made with the meat of a free-range cockerel) is densely flavoured and accompanied by a scallop somehow deliciously aromatised with fresh cucumber and green pepper.

As night fell a cold dank mist rolled down from the mountains. My luck had run out, I told myself: the rain, regular protagonist of the Asturian climate, was back. By the morning, however, it had cleared again and the atmosphere was uncannily bright, like when you turned up the contrast and colour on an old TV set. Perfect weather for beach-hunting. I turned back towards Oviedo on the E70 and drove from west to east along the Asturian coast – rebaptised for the incipient tourist market as the Costa Verde.

For years I have been saying to anyone who’d listen that some of the best beaches in the country are to be found along this stretch of coast. At Barayo, for instance, a pristine valley protected from all possible development, inhabited only by otters, the river reaches the sea in a majestic arc of sand. Or Playa del Silencio, aptly named, where dramatic rock formations encircle a lonely beach; or, loveliest of all, Torimbia, a mouthwateringly beautiful sandy bay, utterly unspoilt, which like all the world’s best beaches, can only be reached on foot. On this May morning at Torimbia there wasn’t a soul to be seen; the water was as calm as a mirror, and an appetising, if misleading shade of glassy blue. (Misleading, because the Atlantic is not the Med, and only in the months of July and August would most people think it wise to immerse themselves in it.)

So the Costa Verde has unspoilt beaches; it also has a series of unspoilt harbour towns strung along the coast like a pearl necklace. Ribadesella – once the summer stamping-ground of the Princess Letizia, wife of Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne – and Cudillero, picturesque yet genuine. Lastres is a proper fishing village with winding cobbled streets – you could be in Cornwall. At Llanes, in the far east, a long thin harbour winds up from the sea into a medieval quarter with crumbly palaces, and the sculptor Agustín Ibarrola has painted the concrete cubes of the harbour wall in dazzling colours and madcap designs.

Outside Llanes, easternmost of Asturian coastal towns, is where the idyll ends. I was shocked to see the building going on in the strip of land between the mountains and the sea, the rash of ugly urbanizaciones built mostly as second homes for holidaymakers from the Basque country, and the wide swathe of brand-new motorway, built to give them easier access to what is increasingly a colony of Bilbao. Sad to say, no lessons have been learned from the destruction of Spain’s other costas, and it seems that even this pristine coastline is on the way to being ruined, and that there is nothing you or I can do about it.

Perhaps the only solution is for you and me to get there while there’s still time, and to tell our friends. I always tell mine that the coast of Asturias – along with the mountains, the architecture, the people, and the food – is almost certainly one of Spain’s last great unknown treasures. But then I would say that.

How to get to the heart of the Asturias

Getting there

Easyjet (0905 821 0905; easyjet.com) has daily flights from Stansted to Asturias airport in Ranón, half an hour by car or bus from Oviedo, from £46 return; Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Santander, two hours by car, bus or train from Oviedo, from £21 return. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 0439; brittany-ferries.co.uk) runs ferries from Portsmouth and Plymouth to Santander (20-24 hours) from £167 return for two adults and a car.

Where to eat

Casa Fermín, Oviedo (00 34 985 216452; casafermin.com); Casa Morán, Benia de Onis (00 34 985 844006); Casa Marcial, Arriondas (00 34 985 840991; casamarcial.com)

Where to stay

Hotel Fruela (00 34 985 208120; hotelfruela.com) is a friendly, simple hotel in the centre of Oviedo and good value at €70 for a double room.

Hotel Casona del Busto in Pravia near Aviles (00 34 985 822771; casonadelbusto.es) is an unpretentious three-star hotel in a 16th-century mansion frequented by the diarist and thinker Jovellanos. It’s minutes from the beach and 10km from Asturias airport. Doubles from €84.

Hotel Balcón de la Cuesta (00 34 985 417429; arceahoteles.com) is a chic and comfortable new hotel in the valley of Andrin, just outside Llanes. The 17 rooms are all suites, and cost from €90.

Palacio de Rubianes, Cereceda (00 34 985 707612; palacioderubianes.com), recently opened in a historic country house with magnificent views of the Sueve mountains and Picos de Europa. Doubles from €105.

• Find more information about the region at infoasturias.com

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Welcome to Berlin’s squat scene

July 13th, 2009 | No Comments

Derelict buildings are reopening as ‘living projects’, offering everything from cheap food and parties to classical concerts. By Molly Gunn

One of the quirks I’ve noticed since moving to Berlin is the squats dotted about the city. In London, where I’m from, you don’t see squats much. You might read about them in the paper – a bunch of rich kids who’ve squatted on Billionaires’ Row, or an old man who has squatted for 50 years undetected – but that’s about it. In Berlin, squats are visible from the street. They’re the apartment buildings with colourfully decorated exteriors and posters covering the walls of the ground floor. The plaster could be peeling, there may be flags hanging from the balconies and loud music coming from inside. They stand out from the other apartment blocks because of their unkemptness and, as such, they don’t look too inviting.

So when a German graphic designer friend told me that many of these squats offer food, film nights and gigs to paying guests, I was intrigued. Sarah explained: “I used to pop in for VoKü at a squat near my office in Kreuzberg. Unfortunately, it has now been closed down, but it did the best lunches. Everybody was friendly and the food was delicious and cheap.” VoKü is when squats open their doors to the community and offer food at affordable prices; it is short for Volksküche, meaning “people’s kitchen”. This concept is so established that there is an online list (see below) with details of when and where VoKüs take place. It’s an extensive list, too, with eight or so meals taking place in Berlin daily.

The idea sounds so welcoming that it would be rude not to experience it first-hand. So the following Sunday, at 7pm, my husband Tom and I head for VoKü at Zielona Gora, a rainbow-painted building on leafy Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain – a neighbourhood in former East Berlin. As we approach, we see a mass of leather-clad punks spilling from a large table on the pavement. They’re eating, chatting and laughing, and hardly notice us as we clamber over their dogs lying in the doorway.

Inside, it looks nothing like I would have imagined. Less squat, more student union cafe. The large square room has tables around the edge and a queue snaking into it, the walls are plastered with photocopied newspaper articles and there is French folky music playing. The food smells good and we join the queue. The atmosphere is buzzy and there is an eclectic crowd: intellectual-looking students, Australian backpackers, a few punks, hippyish couples, crusties playing table football, and a bloke who looks like Thierry Henry asleep in an armchair.

All my preconceptions of what a squat might be like fly out the window; it is clean, unthreatening and has a community feel – the newspaper clippings are all about anti-capitalist marches, people’s festivals and demonstrations, and there is a poster for an event the following night where a gay footballer is giving a talk on prejudice within the game.

After queuing for 10 minutes we reach a bar area, where food is being served from a vat by a bespectacled woman. I salivate as she dishes up two platefuls of steaming vegan Thai curry, rice and a large homemade spring roll. She doesn’t skimp on portions, so I’m more than surprised to discover our dinner for two, including beer, comes to just €5. The food is tasty and plentiful. No wonder the place is packed. I’ve eaten much worse dinners in restaurants for more money, and I am thrilled with the discovery of such recession-busting holiday food in such an interesting venue. I’m not the only one.

On the way out, I talk to a lip-pierced Australian called Alex. “I’m backpacking through Europe and heard about VoKü from a mate,” he says. “It was like an urban legend so I was surprised when it actually existed. I’ve tried out a few in Berlin and this is my favourite.”

Buoyed by the success of this meal, I attempt to take Tom on another dinner date a couple of nights later, this time to a squat called Supamolly, also in Friedrichshain. I’ve spotted posters advertising gigs at Supamolly and have been keen to check it out for a while (the name appeals to me for obvious reasons). Initially, I’m not sure we have the right address as the exterior – though decorated – looks very neat, with newish metal balconies featuring well-tended plants.

We head into the ground floor bar, which is dimly lit and stretches back into the building. Rage Against the Machine are playing, scaffolding poles stretch artily across the well-stocked bar area, there are murals on the walls, and 10 or so tables, with drinkers dotted about. It’s like any other grungy bar and Tom and I order drinks. There is no food though. Maia, the twentysomething barwoman, tells us Supamolly hasn’t done VoKü since its chef left a year ago, but it does host gigs and parties in the basement, along with talks and puppet shows.

Maia’s English is great, so we invite her over for a drink and learn more about squat life in Berlin, although she balks at the use of the word squat. “We used to be a squat, but now we technically own the building so it is more like a ‘living project’.”

Maia has lived at Supamolly for five years, and worked there for 10. “This was the first squat in Berlin and we’re legendary,” she says. “The building was taken over by our ‘first generation’ after the wall came down in 1989. It had been left empty by people fleeing the East, and so a group of 20 West Berliners came and squatted. The building was in disrepair, as was much of the East, so the government said we could have it in exchange for renovating.”

These days Supamolly is into its “third generation”, and is inhabited by 50 people, including OAPs and children. Everyone contributes to the day-to-day running, and they hold group meetings and vote on matters ranging from the building’s heating to the gig schedules. It is so organised that you have to fill in an application form and join a waiting list to live there.

Maia says Supamolly is like a commune, but without any nakedness. “The idea of VoKü and events at living projects/squats is to bring a sense of community, as well as helping poorer people – like gypsies or travellers. Although a lot of tourists visit too: we have people coming to our gigs from all over the world, surprised that Supamolly is still here. Lots of Italians come to see our bands.”

Forthcoming events at Supamolly include a Star Trek puppet show for children, and a night called the Poopsey Club, for which guests are encouraged to dress up as Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s muse. “Some people think that we’re selling out – by hosting events like this, or smartening up the building – but we have to evolve to survive and move with the times.”

Another squat that has evolved in this way is Tacheles in Mitte, also known as “the art squat”. It has bar, gallery, restaurant and cinema, helping it to attract more than 300,000 tourists a year.

Like Supamolly, Tacheles and many of Berlin’s other squats started life when the Wall came down and Easterners fled crumbling buildings. The city was in chaos, and during the 80s there were plenty of clashes between squatters and police. Twenty years on, there are comparatively few left, which is all the more reason to visit, not only for dinner or to catch a film, but for a truly inspiring experience.

The squat directory

Supamolly For gigs, parties and events – see website for details. 41 Jessner Strasse; 00 49 30 2900 7294; supamolly.de

Zielona Gora
VoKü brunch on Saturdays, midday. Vegan VoKü dinner on Sundays, 7pm. 73 Grünberger Strasse; 00 49 30 292 2471

Sama-café
Cinema on Mondays and Wednesdays, 10.30pm. Vegetarian VoKü Monday-Friday, 10pm. 32 Samariter Strasse; 00 49 30 7477 5765; sama32.squat.net

Rote Insel
Great stone-baked pizza on Fridays, 9pm. 10 Manstein Strasse

Tacheles
Films, art events and general goings on 54-56 Oranienburger Strasse; 00 49 30 282 6185; super.tacheles.de/cms

For list of other VoKüs and squat contact details: stressfaktor.squat.net/vokue.php?day=all

Getting there
Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Berlin from Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Gatwick and Luton; Ryanair (ryanair.com) from East Midlands, Edinburgh and Stansted. Travelling by train from London costs £149 on the sleeper via Paris (12 hours 30 mins). Book at 0844 848 4070; raileurope.co.uk

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Welcome to Berlin’s squat scene

July 12th, 2009 | No Comments

Derelict buildings are reopening as ‘living projects’, offering everything from cheap food and parties to classical concerts. By Molly Gunn

One of the quirks I’ve noticed since moving to Berlin is the squats dotted about the city. In London, where I’m from, you don’t see squats much. You might read about them in the paper – a bunch of rich kids who’ve squatted on Billionaires’ Row, or an old man who has squatted for 50 years undetected – but that’s about it. In Berlin, squats are visible from the street. They’re the apartment buildings with colourfully decorated exteriors and posters covering the walls of the ground floor. The plaster could be peeling, there may be flags hanging from the balconies and loud music coming from inside. They stand out from the other apartment blocks because of their unkemptness and, as such, they don’t look too inviting.

So when a German graphic designer friend told me that many of these squats offer food, film nights and gigs to paying guests, I was intrigued. Sarah explained: “I used to pop in for VoKü at a squat near my office in Kreuzberg. Unfortunately, it has now been closed down, but it did the best lunches. Everybody was friendly and the food was delicious and cheap.” VoKü is when squats open their doors to the community and offer food at affordable prices; it is short for Volksküche, meaning “people’s kitchen”. This concept is so established that there is an online list (see below) with details of when and where VoKüs take place. It’s an extensive list, too, with eight or so meals taking place in Berlin daily.

The idea sounds so welcoming that it would be rude not to experience it first-hand. So the following Sunday, at 7pm, my husband Tom and I head for VoKü at Zielona Gora, a rainbow-painted building on leafy Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain – a neighbourhood in former East Berlin. As we approach, we see a mass of leather-clad punks spilling from a large table on the pavement. They’re eating, chatting and laughing, and hardly notice us as we clamber over their dogs lying in the doorway.

Inside, it looks nothing like I would have imagined. Less squat, more student union cafe. The large square room has tables around the edge and a queue snaking into it, the walls are plastered with photocopied newspaper articles and there is French folky music playing. The food smells good and we join the queue. The atmosphere is buzzy and there is an eclectic crowd: intellectual-looking students, Australian backpackers, a few punks, hippyish couples, crusties playing table football, and a bloke who looks like Thierry Henry asleep in an armchair.

All my preconceptions of what a squat might be like fly out the window; it is clean, unthreatening and has a community feel – the newspaper clippings are all about anti-capitalist marches, people’s festivals and demonstrations, and there is a poster for an event the following night where a gay footballer is giving a talk on prejudice within the game.

After queuing for 10 minutes we reach a bar area, where food is being served from a vat by a bespectacled woman. I salivate as she dishes up two platefuls of steaming vegan Thai curry, rice and a large homemade spring roll. She doesn’t skimp on portions, so I’m more than surprised to discover our dinner for two, including beer, comes to just €5. The food is tasty and plentiful. No wonder the place is packed. I’ve eaten much worse dinners in restaurants for more money, and I am thrilled with the discovery of such recession-busting holiday food in such an interesting venue. I’m not the only one.

On the way out, I talk to a lip-pierced Australian called Alex. “I’m backpacking through Europe and heard about VoKü from a mate,” he says. “It was like an urban legend so I was surprised when it actually existed. I’ve tried out a few in Berlin and this is my favourite.”

Buoyed by the success of this meal, I attempt to take Tom on another dinner date a couple of nights later, this time to a squat called Supamolly, also in Friedrichshain. I’ve spotted posters advertising gigs at Supamolly and have been keen to check it out for a while (the name appeals to me for obvious reasons). Initially, I’m not sure we have the right address as the exterior – though decorated – looks very neat, with newish metal balconies featuring well-tended plants.

We head into the ground floor bar, which is dimly lit and stretches back into the building. Rage Against the Machine are playing, scaffolding poles stretch artily across the well-stocked bar area, there are murals on the walls, and 10 or so tables, with drinkers dotted about. It’s like any other grungy bar and Tom and I order drinks. There is no food though. Maia, the twentysomething barwoman, tells us Supamolly hasn’t done VoKü since its chef left a year ago, but it does host gigs and parties in the basement, along with talks and puppet shows.

Maia’s English is great, so we invite her over for a drink and learn more about squat life in Berlin, although she balks at the use of the word squat. “We used to be a squat, but now we technically own the building so it is more like a ‘living project’.”

Maia has lived at Supamolly for five years, and worked there for 10. “This was the first squat in Berlin and we’re legendary,” she says. “The building was taken over by our ‘first generation’ after the wall came down in 1989. It had been left empty by people fleeing the East, and so a group of 20 West Berliners came and squatted. The building was in disrepair, as was much of the East, so the government said we could have it in exchange for renovating.”

These days Supamolly is into its “third generation”, and is inhabited by 50 people, including OAPs and children. Everyone contributes to the day-to-day running, and they hold group meetings and vote on matters ranging from the building’s heating to the gig schedules. It is so organised that you have to fill in an application form and join a waiting list to live there.

Maia says Supamolly is like a commune, but without any nakedness. “The idea of VoKü and events at living projects/squats is to bring a sense of community, as well as helping poorer people – like gypsies or travellers. Although a lot of tourists visit too: we have people coming to our gigs from all over the world, surprised that Supamolly is still here. Lots of Italians come to see our bands.”

Forthcoming events at Supamolly include a Star Trek puppet show for children, and a night called the Poopsey Club, for which guests are encouraged to dress up as Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s muse. “Some people think that we’re selling out – by hosting events like this, or smartening up the building – but we have to evolve to survive and move with the times.”

Another squat that has evolved in this way is Tacheles in Mitte, also known as “the art squat”. It has bar, gallery, restaurant and cinema, helping it to attract more than 300,000 tourists a year.

Like Supamolly, Tacheles and many of Berlin’s other squats started life when the Wall came down and Easterners fled crumbling buildings. The city was in chaos, and during the 80s there were plenty of clashes between squatters and police. Twenty years on, there are comparatively few left, which is all the more reason to visit, not only for dinner or to catch a film, but for a truly inspiring experience.

The squat directory

Supamolly For gigs, parties and events – see website for details. 41 Jessner Strasse; 00 49 30 2900 7294; supamolly.de

Zielona Gora
VoKü brunch on Saturdays, midday. Vegan VoKü dinner on Sundays, 7pm. 73 Grünberger Strasse; 00 49 30 292 2471

Sama-café
Cinema on Mondays and Wednesdays, 10.30pm. Vegetarian VoKü Monday-Friday, 10pm. 32 Samariter Strasse; 00 49 30 7477 5765; sama32.squat.net

Rote Insel
Great stone-baked pizza on Fridays, 9pm. 10 Manstein Strasse

Tacheles
Films, art events and general goings on 54-56 Oranienburger Strasse; 00 49 30 282 6185; super.tacheles.de/cms

For list of other VoKüs and squat contact details: stressfaktor.squat.net/vokue.php?day=all

Getting there
Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Berlin from Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Gatwick and Luton; Ryanair (ryanair.com) from East Midlands, Edinburgh and Stansted. Travelling by train from London costs £149 on the sleeper via Paris (12 hours 30 mins). Book at 0844 848 4070; raileurope.co.uk

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Welcome to Berlin’s squat scene

July 12th, 2009 | No Comments

Derelict buildings are reopening as ‘living projects’, offering everything from cheap food and parties to classical concerts. By Molly Gunn

One of the quirks I’ve noticed since moving to Berlin is the squats dotted about the city. In London, where I’m from, you don’t see squats much. You might read about them in the paper – a bunch of rich kids who’ve squatted on Billionaires’ Row, or an old man who has squatted for 50 years undetected – but that’s about it. In Berlin, squats are visible from the street. They’re the apartment buildings with colourfully decorated exteriors and posters covering the walls of the ground floor. The plaster could be peeling, there may be flags hanging from the balconies and loud music coming from inside. They stand out from the other apartment blocks because of their unkemptness and, as such, they don’t look too inviting.

So when a German graphic designer friend told me that many of these squats offer food, film nights and gigs to paying guests, I was intrigued. Sarah explained: “I used to pop in for VoKü at a squat near my office in Kreuzberg. Unfortunately, it has now been closed down, but it did the best lunches. Everybody was friendly and the food was delicious and cheap.” VoKü is when squats open their doors to the community and offer food at affordable prices; it is short for Volksküche, meaning “people’s kitchen”. This concept is so established that there is an online list (see below) with details of when and where VoKüs take place. It’s an extensive list, too, with eight or so meals taking place in Berlin daily.

The idea sounds so welcoming that it would be rude not to experience it first-hand. So the following Sunday, at 7pm, my husband Tom and I head for VoKü at Zielona Gora, a rainbow-painted building on leafy Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain – a neighbourhood in former East Berlin. As we approach, we see a mass of leather-clad punks spilling from a large table on the pavement. They’re eating, chatting and laughing, and hardly notice us as we clamber over their dogs lying in the doorway.

Inside, it looks nothing like I would have imagined. Less squat, more student union cafe. The large square room has tables around the edge and a queue snaking into it, the walls are plastered with photocopied newspaper articles and there is French folky music playing. The food smells good and we join the queue. The atmosphere is buzzy and there is an eclectic crowd: intellectual-looking students, Australian backpackers, a few punks, hippyish couples, crusties playing table football, and a bloke who looks like Thierry Henry asleep in an armchair.

All my preconceptions of what a squat might be like fly out the window; it is clean, unthreatening and has a community feel – the newspaper clippings are all about anti-capitalist marches, people’s festivals and demonstrations, and there is a poster for an event the following night where a gay footballer is giving a talk on prejudice within the game.

After queuing for 10 minutes we reach a bar area, where food is being served from a vat by a bespectacled woman. I salivate as she dishes up two platefuls of steaming vegan Thai curry, rice and a large homemade spring roll. She doesn’t skimp on portions, so I’m more than surprised to discover our dinner for two, including beer, comes to just €5. The food is tasty and plentiful. No wonder the place is packed. I’ve eaten much worse dinners in restaurants for more money, and I am thrilled with the discovery of such recession-busting holiday food in such an interesting venue. I’m not the only one.

On the way out, I talk to a lip-pierced Australian called Alex. “I’m backpacking through Europe and heard about VoKü from a mate,” he says. “It was like an urban legend so I was surprised when it actually existed. I’ve tried out a few in Berlin and this is my favourite.”

Buoyed by the success of this meal, I attempt to take Tom on another dinner date a couple of nights later, this time to a squat called Supamolly, also in Friedrichshain. I’ve spotted posters advertising gigs at Supamolly and have been keen to check it out for a while (the name appeals to me for obvious reasons). Initially, I’m not sure we have the right address as the exterior – though decorated – looks very neat, with newish metal balconies featuring well-tended plants.

We head into the ground floor bar, which is dimly lit and stretches back into the building. Rage Against the Machine are playing, scaffolding poles stretch artily across the well-stocked bar area, there are murals on the walls, and 10 or so tables, with drinkers dotted about. It’s like any other grungy bar and Tom and I order drinks. There is no food though. Maia, the twentysomething barwoman, tells us Supamolly hasn’t done VoKü since its chef left a year ago, but it does host gigs and parties in the basement, along with talks and puppet shows.

Maia’s English is great, so we invite her over for a drink and learn more about squat life in Berlin, although she balks at the use of the word squat. “We used to be a squat, but now we technically own the building so it is more like a ‘living project’.”

Maia has lived at Supamolly for five years, and worked there for 10. “This was the first squat in Berlin and we’re legendary,” she says. “The building was taken over by our ‘first generation’ after the wall came down in 1989. It had been left empty by people fleeing the East, and so a group of 20 West Berliners came and squatted. The building was in disrepair, as was much of the East, so the government said we could have it in exchange for renovating.”

These days Supamolly is into its “third generation”, and is inhabited by 50 people, including OAPs and children. Everyone contributes to the day-to-day running, and they hold group meetings and vote on matters ranging from the building’s heating to the gig schedules. It is so organised that you have to fill in an application form and join a waiting list to live there.

Maia says Supamolly is like a commune, but without any nakedness. “The idea of VoKü and events at living projects/squats is to bring a sense of community, as well as helping poorer people – like gypsies or travellers. Although a lot of tourists visit too: we have people coming to our gigs from all over the world, surprised that Supamolly is still here. Lots of Italians come to see our bands.”

Forthcoming events at Supamolly include a Star Trek puppet show for children, and a night called the Poopsey Club, for which guests are encouraged to dress up as Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s muse. “Some people think that we’re selling out – by hosting events like this, or smartening up the building – but we have to evolve to survive and move with the times.”

Another squat that has evolved in this way is Tacheles in Mitte, also known as “the art squat”. It has bar, gallery, restaurant and cinema, helping it to attract more than 300,000 tourists a year.

Like Supamolly, Tacheles and many of Berlin’s other squats started life when the Wall came down and Easterners fled crumbling buildings. The city was in chaos, and during the 80s there were plenty of clashes between squatters and police. Twenty years on, there are comparatively few left, which is all the more reason to visit, not only for dinner or to catch a film, but for a truly inspiring experience.

The squat directory

Supamolly For gigs, parties and events – see website for details. 41 Jessner Strasse; 00 49 30 2900 7294; supamolly.de

Zielona Gora
VoKü brunch on Saturdays, midday. Vegan VoKü dinner on Sundays, 7pm. 73 Grünberger Strasse; 00 49 30 292 2471

Sama-café
Cinema on Mondays and Wednesdays, 10.30pm. Vegetarian VoKü Monday-Friday, 10pm. 32 Samariter Strasse; 00 49 30 7477 5765; sama32.squat.net

Rote Insel
Great stone-baked pizza on Fridays, 9pm. 10 Manstein Strasse

Tacheles
Films, art events and general goings on 54-56 Oranienburger Strasse; 00 49 30 282 6185; super.tacheles.de/cms

For list of other VoKüs and squat contact details: stressfaktor.squat.net/vokue.php?day=all

Getting there
Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Berlin from Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Gatwick and Luton; Ryanair (ryanair.com) from East Midlands, Edinburgh and Stansted. Travelling by train from London costs £149 on the sleeper via Paris (12 hours 30 mins). Book at 0844 848 4070; raileurope.co.uk

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Asturias: the secret I have to share

July 12th, 2009 | No Comments

Acclaimed food writer Paul Richardson lives in southern Spain but it is the northern region of Asturias with its fertile valleys and stunning coast – and distinctive food and drink – that he tells his friends to explore before it’s too late

Don’t get me started about Asturias. I could go on and on about this inexplicably little-visited region wedged between Galicia and Cantabria along the north coast of Spain. I have been known to get very boring about its dramatic landscapes, its superb beaches, its excellent food, its unique pre-Romanesque architecture, its affable locals, and the strange fact that, as yet, few people seem to share my unbridled enthusiasm for the place.

Asturias is very Spanish in some ways, and surprisingly unlike the rest of the country in many others. Its Celtic, Atlantic culture is the polar opposite of the indolent, sherry-sipping, sun-lounging outdoor life of the Mediterranean.

The greenness of Asturias is astounding, especially if you’re coming from the parched plains of the Spanish south. You might also argue that the region is a microcosm of Spain as a whole, cramming into its borders everything from snowy mountains to sandy beaches, humble tapas bars to avant-garde restaurants, and from raucous local fiestas to silent valleys where bears and wolves still roam. The community has no fewer than 24 nature reserves, including one parque nacional and three of Spain’s largest parques naturales

Where I live, in the Spanish south, three months of spring had gone by without a drop of rain, and the countryside bore a withered, desperate look. Tired of dust and unseasonal heats, I wanted greenness and pleasantness, mountain streams and ocean views. So I worked up a trip, my fourth or fifth to the region, that would take in a little of each of the things I love about Asturias: the rural essences, the modest urban pleasures, the beaches and the wild interior, the simple traditional food and the fab contemporary cuisine.

I’d start out in Oviedo, the delightful capital, counterpoint to the rough-and-tumble harbour town of Gijón, which is the region’s second city. I’d then devote a day to cider, another to cheese – because Asturias is the uncontested cheese HQ of Spain – a day to the Alpine landscapes of the Picos de Europa, and another to the coast. I drove north through Castile, taking the motorway that powers through high mountain passes, past lakes and staggering peaks, before turning downhill into a suddenly green world of chestnut woods and rich pastures, and depositing you eventually in Oviedo.

History and geography dictate the way a place looks, feels and tastes. Asturias was a nation and kingdom seven centuries before Fernando and Isabella invented Spain, and it formed the cradle of the reconquista, by which the rest of the peninsula was eventually won back from the Moors. (Indeed, a popular saying has it that “Asturias is Spain – the rest is conquered territory”.)

The geographical barrier of the Picos de Europa, cutting off access from the south, made Asturias the most isolated part of the country. Hence, perhaps, the idiosyncrasy. And the omnipresent reek of history. Oviedo has some of Spain’s most venerable buildings – such as Santa María del Naranco, an exquisite pre-Romanesque church set in green pastures above the city, built for the Asturian king Ramiro I in the mid-ninth century. San Julián de los Prados, dating from the early ninth century, is a tiny and magical church whose richly painted interior reminds you what a debt Christianity owes to the Orient.

If Asturias is a series of pleasant surprises, Oviedo often comes as the first of them. It’s a compact, handsome little city, charmingly buttoned-up, with a provincial and bourgeois air, where people stop on street corners and the women wear their hair in perms. It says something about the fastidious character of Oviedo that here, uniquely for Spain, rubbish collection happens on a daily basis. (It routinely wins awards for Europe’s cleanest city.)

Oviedo had star billing along with Barcelona in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Woody is a huge fan of the city, which has responded by putting up a bronze statue of him in the street. There is a lively cultural life here (the Campoamor opera house is a classic 19th-century chocolate-box theatre, where Plácido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé have sung), a superb produce market, some wonderful old pastry shops (Camilo de Blas, Rialto, Peñalba), and two or three of the country’s best restaurants. On that first day I had lunch at Casa Fermín, where the day’s menu included sea bass with clams, wild local salmon from the Sella river with yogurt and vanilla, and hand-caught octopus with potato cream and parsley oil.

Asturias shares the Spanish passion for food. Traditional cocina asturiana is wonderful in its plainness, honesty, and heartiness. Uncontested monarch of local dishes is the fabada asturiana, a take-no-prisoners stew of fabas (big white beans) with a compendium of smoked meats and sausages. Thereafter comes the rest of the repertoire: fritos de pixín (deep-fried monkfish pieces), vegetable menestra (stew), empanada (a flat savoury pie with a thick crust), torto de maíz (maize-flour flatbread, fried until it puffs up, with various accompaniments) …

Cheese is a very big deal. Asturian cheeses are many and various, the best of them (like Cabrales, Gamoneu, Afuega’l Pitu, Los Beyos) reflecting in their intense flavours all the verdant richness of the countryside. The seafood, landed at the busy fishing ports of Gijón, Lastres and Avilés, is second to none. Beside the Fontán market in Oviedo I saw a restaurant menu announcing that all its fish was both wild and local – a luxury inconceivable in the fished-out Mediterranean.

There is very little wine made in these northerly latitudes, so what tends to go with all this Asturian food is the Asturian drink by definition: cider. From Oviedo I drove to Nava, cider capital of the region, where José María Osorio, president of the local cidermakers’ guild, took me to see a traditional sidrería, the Estrada, which not only makes cider from the fruit of its own apple-trees, but serves it in an oak-lined cider-house, along with plates of cheese and chorizo. The cider was drawn in a powerful jet from a giant chestnut barrel in a gloomy cellar; it was woody and spicy and palate-scouringly dry. Asturias has almost 250 varieties of apple, José María told me, the great majority of which are quickly moving towards extinction. At Valveran, another sidrería, I tasted ciders of the new generation (known as de nueva expresión) which can be served in posh restaurants without anybody raising an eyebrow, and sweet dessert ciders and sparkling ciders and cider brandy, Asturias’s answer to Calvados.

The cider-house rules can be a puzzle at first, but they are easily understood with a little observation. Cider in Asturias is always served escanciada, which means the cider is poured into the glass from a great height, the oxygen it acquires on the way down giving the drink an essential kick of freshness. The cider is downed in one, but a little is always left at the bottom of the glass, custom dictating that this must be chucked out onto the floor. The reason for this practice is a mystery, though it seems likely to date back to a Celtic belief in returning to the earth a part of what it gave you.

On a fresh May morning after a rainshower, the sun shone on fields of apple trees loaded with blossom. I turned off the main road and drove inland; to left and right were villages of stone houses with slate roofs and the pagoda-like forms of the hórreos, wooden granaries raised on stone pillars to keep out the rats. Above the villages were hillsides densely wooded with chestnut, pine, and eucalyptus. And in the distance stood a line of mountains sugar-iced with snow: the famous Picos de Europa, so-called because these peaks were the first things mariners saw of the continent when returning from their long expeditions to distant seas.

In the fields round about, brown cows grazed indolently on an ensalada verde of the lushest pasture I had ever seen. Asturias is dairy central. In a country not traditionally fond of dairy products, this is one region that loves them unashamedly. An estimated 40 different cheeses are produced within its borders, three of which have Denominación de Origen status. Few places in the world – even in France – can boast such cheesy variety over such a modest surface area.

The Cotera Diaz family have their home and dairy in the village of Arenas de Cabrales, but keep their 28 cows in a stable beside the Cares river. When I visited, the husband and wife were busy milking, the rattle of a generator mingling with the roar of a mountain river swollen with ice-melt from the high sierra. (Its waters were blue-grey, and crystal clear.) The family specialise in Cabrales, a blue cheese which is one of Spain’s finest and a worthy rival to both Stilton and Roquefort. It packs a powerful punch, and often benefits from a good draught of cider to soften its piquant aftertaste.

While the parents worked, their son explained to me the family’s traditional routine, common among cheese-making families hereabouts. As soon as school closes in June, the family goes up into the high pastures of the Picos, where they spend the whole summer with the herd, making cheeses which will be brought down in September to cure in special caves.

The custom of transhumance has declined, but the caves are still an irreplaceable element in the making of both Cabrales and the other great Asturian blue cheese, Gamonedo. After a simple but highly calorific lunch at Casa Morán in Benia de Onis (fabada followed by arroz con leche, number one Asturian dessert and a rice pudding to conjure with), I visited the Cotera Diaz family cave, a dripping corridor bored into the mountainside, with the maturing Cabrales laid out on wooden shelves. Inside it was damp and dark and musty, with a powerful stink in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere that would send claustrophics and cheese-haters screaming into the fresh air.

Next day I met up with Guillermo Mañana, a retired doctor whose overriding passion is the Asturian mountain landscape. Guillermo has spent most of his life exploring every nook and cranny, every peak and valley of the Somiedo and Redes nature reserves, the primordial woodlands of Muñiellos, and his greatest love, the magic mountains of Picos de Europa. He proposed a simple half-day trek following the river Cares from its birthplace in the heights of the sierra down a narrow mountain gorge, the Desfiladero del Rio Cares.

We began in the village of Caín, for centuries cut off entirely from the outside world and, as its name might suggest, regarded by outsiders as a village of the damned. From there we entered the gorge, a dark canyon of Tolkien-esque proportions, with a path carved out of the rock face skirting the cliffs. From far below us came the muffled thunder of the river. Far above, in the gap between the cliffs, if you strained your neck and watched your footsteps, you could just see the snow-capped peaks, sparkling in the sun.

It was an unforgettable walk, and the lunch at the end of it wasn’t bad either: 11 courses of menú degustación at the Michelin-starred Casa Marcial in Arriondas, which along with Casa Gerardo in Prendes, is the most important showcase for the new Asturian cuisine. Nacho Manzano, chef at Casa Marcial, cooks and lives in the village house where he was born and grew up, and where his parents had a small shop that sold everything from socks and shoes to tinned sardines. There was a dance hall on the first floor, a cider press in the basement.

Over the years Nacho has brought his modernisation of cocina asturiana to a high pitch of refinement: his torto de maíz is as light as feather, his arroz con pitu de caleya (a rice dish made with the meat of a free-range cockerel) is densely flavoured and accompanied by a scallop somehow deliciously aromatised with fresh cucumber and green pepper.

As night fell a cold dank mist rolled down from the mountains. My luck had run out, I told myself: the rain, regular protagonist of the Asturian climate, was back. By the morning, however, it had cleared again and the atmosphere was uncannily bright, like when you turned up the contrast and colour on an old TV set. Perfect weather for beach-hunting. I turned back towards Oviedo on the E70 and drove from west to east along the Asturian coast – rebaptised for the incipient tourist market as the Costa Verde.

For years I have been saying to anyone who’d listen that some of the best beaches in the country are to be found along this stretch of coast. At Barayo, for instance, a pristine valley protected from all possible development, inhabited only by otters, the river reaches the sea in a majestic arc of sand. Or Playa del Silencio, aptly named, where dramatic rock formations encircle a lonely beach; or, loveliest of all, Torimbia, a mouthwateringly beautiful sandy bay, utterly unspoilt, which like all the world’s best beaches, can only be reached on foot. On this May morning at Torimbia there wasn’t a soul to be seen; the water was as calm as a mirror, and an appetising, if misleading shade of glassy blue. (Misleading, because the Atlantic is not the Med, and only in the months of July and August would most people think it wise to immerse themselves in it.)

So the Costa Verde has unspoilt beaches; it also has a series of unspoilt harbour towns strung along the coast like a pearl necklace. Ribadesella – once the summer stamping-ground of the Princess Letizia, wife of Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne – and Cudillero, picturesque yet genuine. Lastres is a proper fishing village with winding cobbled streets – you could be in Cornwall. At Llanes, in the far east, a long thin harbour winds up from the sea into a medieval quarter with crumbly palaces, and the sculptor Agustín Ibarrola has painted the concrete cubes of the harbour wall in dazzling colours and madcap designs.

Outside Llanes, easternmost of Asturian coastal towns, is where the idyll ends. I was shocked to see the building going on in the strip of land between the mountains and the sea, the rash of ugly urbanizaciones built mostly as second homes for holidaymakers from the Basque country, and the wide swathe of brand-new motorway, built to give them easier access to what is increasingly a colony of Bilbao. Sad to say, no lessons have been learned from the destruction of Spain’s other costas, and it seems that even this pristine coastline is on the way to being ruined, and that there is nothing you or I can do about it.

Perhaps the only solution is for you and me to get there while there’s still time, and to tell our friends. I always tell mine that the coast of Asturias – along with the mountains, the architecture, the people, and the food – is almost certainly one of Spain’s last great unknown treasures. But then I would say that.

How to get to the heart of the Asturias

Getting there

Easyjet (0905 821 0905; easyjet.com) has daily flights from Stansted to Asturias airport in Ranón, half an hour by car or bus from Oviedo, from £46 return; Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Santander, two hours by car, bus or train from Oviedo, from £21 return. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 0439; brittany-ferries.co.uk) runs ferries from Portsmouth and Plymouth to Santander (20-24 hours) from £167 return for two adults and a car.

Where to eat

Casa Fermín, Oviedo (00 34 985 216452; casafermin.com); Casa Morán, Benia de Onis (00 34 985 844006); Casa Marcial, Arriondas (00 34 985 840991; casamarcial.com)

Where to stay

Hotel Fruela (00 34 985 208120; hotelfruela.com) is a friendly, simple hotel in the centre of Oviedo and good value at €70 for a double room.

Hotel Casona del Busto in Pravia near Aviles (00 34 985 822771; casonadelbusto.es) is an unpretentious three-star hotel in a 16th-century mansion frequented by the diarist and thinker Jovellanos. It’s minutes from the beach and 10km from Asturias airport. Doubles from €84.

Hotel Balcón de la Cuesta (00 34 985 417429; arceahoteles.com) is a chic and comfortable new hotel in the valley of Andrin, just outside Llanes. The 17 rooms are all suites, and cost from €90.

Palacio de Rubianes, Cereceda (00 34 985 707612; palacioderubianes.com), recently opened in a historic country house with magnificent views of the Sueve mountains and Picos de Europa. Doubles from €105.

• Find more information about the region at infoasturias.com

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Asturias: the secret I have to share

July 12th, 2009 | No Comments

Acclaimed food writer Paul Richardson lives in southern Spain but it is the northern region of Asturias with its fertile valleys and stunning coast – and distinctive food and drink – that he tells his friends to explore before it’s too late

Don’t get me started about Asturias. I could go on and on about this inexplicably little-visited region wedged between Galicia and Cantabria along the north coast of Spain. I have been known to get very boring about its dramatic landscapes, its superb beaches, its excellent food, its unique pre-Romanesque architecture, its affable locals, and the strange fact that, as yet, few people seem to share my unbridled enthusiasm for the place.

Asturias is very Spanish in some ways, and surprisingly unlike the rest of the country in many others. Its Celtic, Atlantic culture is the polar opposite of the indolent, sherry-sipping, sun-lounging outdoor life of the Mediterranean.

The greenness of Asturias is astounding, especially if you’re coming from the parched plains of the Spanish south. You might also argue that the region is a microcosm of Spain as a whole, cramming into its borders everything from snowy mountains to sandy beaches, humble tapas bars to avant-garde restaurants, and from raucous local fiestas to silent valleys where bears and wolves still roam. The community has no fewer than 24 nature reserves, including one parque nacional and three of Spain’s largest parques naturales

Where I live, in the Spanish south, three months of spring had gone by without a drop of rain, and the countryside bore a withered, desperate look. Tired of dust and unseasonal heats, I wanted greenness and pleasantness, mountain streams and ocean views. So I worked up a trip, my fourth or fifth to the region, that would take in a little of each of the things I love about Asturias: the rural essences, the modest urban pleasures, the beaches and the wild interior, the simple traditional food and the fab contemporary cuisine.

I’d start out in Oviedo, the delightful capital, counterpoint to the rough-and-tumble harbour town of Gijón, which is the region’s second city. I’d then devote a day to cider, another to cheese – because Asturias is the uncontested cheese HQ of Spain – a day to the Alpine landscapes of the Picos de Europa, and another to the coast. I drove north through Castile, taking the motorway that powers through high mountain passes, past lakes and staggering peaks, before turning downhill into a suddenly green world of chestnut woods and rich pastures, and depositing you eventually in Oviedo.

History and geography dictate the way a place looks, feels and tastes. Asturias was a nation and kingdom seven centuries before Fernando and Isabella invented Spain, and it formed the cradle of the reconquista, by which the rest of the peninsula was eventually won back from the Moors. (Indeed, a popular saying has it that “Asturias is Spain – the rest is conquered territory”.)

The geographical barrier of the Picos de Europa, cutting off access from the south, made Asturias the most isolated part of the country. Hence, perhaps, the idiosyncrasy. And the omnipresent reek of history. Oviedo has some of Spain’s most venerable buildings – such as Santa María del Naranco, an exquisite pre-Romanesque church set in green pastures above the city, built for the Asturian king Ramiro I in the mid-ninth century. San Julián de los Prados, dating from the early ninth century, is a tiny and magical church whose richly painted interior reminds you what a debt Christianity owes to the Orient.

If Asturias is a series of pleasant surprises, Oviedo often comes as the first of them. It’s a compact, handsome little city, charmingly buttoned-up, with a provincial and bourgeois air, where people stop on street corners and the women wear their hair in perms. It says something about the fastidious character of Oviedo that here, uniquely for Spain, rubbish collection happens on a daily basis. (It routinely wins awards for Europe’s cleanest city.)

Oviedo had star billing along with Barcelona in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Woody is a huge fan of the city, which has responded by putting up a bronze statue of him in the street. There is a lively cultural life here (the Campoamor opera house is a classic 19th-century chocolate-box theatre, where Plácido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé have sung), a superb produce market, some wonderful old pastry shops (Camilo de Blas, Rialto, Peñalba), and two or three of the country’s best restaurants. On that first day I had lunch at Casa Fermín, where the day’s menu included sea bass with clams, wild local salmon from the Sella river with yogurt and vanilla, and hand-caught octopus with potato cream and parsley oil.

Asturias shares the Spanish passion for food. Traditional cocina asturiana is wonderful in its plainness, honesty, and heartiness. Uncontested monarch of local dishes is the fabada asturiana, a take-no-prisoners stew of fabas (big white beans) with a compendium of smoked meats and sausages. Thereafter comes the rest of the repertoire: fritos de pixín (deep-fried monkfish pieces), vegetable menestra (stew), empanada (a flat savoury pie with a thick crust), torto de maíz (maize-flour flatbread, fried until it puffs up, with various accompaniments) …

Cheese is a very big deal. Asturian cheeses are many and various, the best of them (like Cabrales, Gamoneu, Afuega’l Pitu, Los Beyos) reflecting in their intense flavours all the verdant richness of the countryside. The seafood, landed at the busy fishing ports of Gijón, Lastres and Avilés, is second to none. Beside the Fontán market in Oviedo I saw a restaurant menu announcing that all its fish was both wild and local – a luxury inconceivable in the fished-out Mediterranean.

There is very little wine made in these northerly latitudes, so what tends to go with all this Asturian food is the Asturian drink by definition: cider. From Oviedo I drove to Nava, cider capital of the region, where José María Osorio, president of the local cidermakers’ guild, took me to see a traditional sidrería, the Estrada, which not only makes cider from the fruit of its own apple-trees, but serves it in an oak-lined cider-house, along with plates of cheese and chorizo. The cider was drawn in a powerful jet from a giant chestnut barrel in a gloomy cellar; it was woody and spicy and palate-scouringly dry. Asturias has almost 250 varieties of apple, José María told me, the great majority of which are quickly moving towards extinction. At Valveran, another sidrería, I tasted ciders of the new generation (known as de nueva expresión) which can be served in posh restaurants without anybody raising an eyebrow, and sweet dessert ciders and sparkling ciders and cider brandy, Asturias’s answer to Calvados.

The cider-house rules can be a puzzle at first, but they are easily understood with a little observation. Cider in Asturias is always served escanciada, which means the cider is poured into the glass from a great height, the oxygen it acquires on the way down giving the drink an essential kick of freshness. The cider is downed in one, but a little is always left at the bottom of the glass, custom dictating that this must be chucked out onto the floor. The reason for this practice is a mystery, though it seems likely to date back to a Celtic belief in returning to the earth a part of what it gave you.

On a fresh May morning after a rainshower, the sun shone on fields of apple trees loaded with blossom. I turned off the main road and drove inland; to left and right were villages of stone houses with slate roofs and the pagoda-like forms of the hórreos, wooden granaries raised on stone pillars to keep out the rats. Above the villages were hillsides densely wooded with chestnut, pine, and eucalyptus. And in the distance stood a line of mountains sugar-iced with snow: the famous Picos de Europa, so-called because these peaks were the first things mariners saw of the continent when returning from their long expeditions to distant seas.

In the fields round about, brown cows grazed indolently on an ensalada verde of the lushest pasture I had ever seen. Asturias is dairy central. In a country not traditionally fond of dairy products, this is one region that loves them unashamedly. An estimated 40 different cheeses are produced within its borders, three of which have Denominación de Origen status. Few places in the world – even in France – can boast such cheesy variety over such a modest surface area.

The Cotera Diaz family have their home and dairy in the village of Arenas de Cabrales, but keep their 28 cows in a stable beside the Cares river. When I visited, the husband and wife were busy milking, the rattle of a generator mingling with the roar of a mountain river swollen with ice-melt from the high sierra. (Its waters were blue-grey, and crystal clear.) The family specialise in Cabrales, a blue cheese which is one of Spain’s finest and a worthy rival to both Stilton and Roquefort. It packs a powerful punch, and often benefits from a good draught of cider to soften its piquant aftertaste.

While the parents worked, their son explained to me the family’s traditional routine, common among cheese-making families hereabouts. As soon as school closes in June, the family goes up into the high pastures of the Picos, where they spend the whole summer with the herd, making cheeses which will be brought down in September to cure in special caves.

The custom of transhumance has declined, but the caves are still an irreplaceable element in the making of both Cabrales and the other great Asturian blue cheese, Gamonedo. After a simple but highly calorific lunch at Casa Morán in Benia de Onis (fabada followed by arroz con leche, number one Asturian dessert and a rice pudding to conjure with), I visited the Cotera Diaz family cave, a dripping corridor bored into the mountainside, with the maturing Cabrales laid out on wooden shelves. Inside it was damp and dark and musty, with a powerful stink in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere that would send claustrophics and cheese-haters screaming into the fresh air.

Next day I met up with Guillermo Mañana, a retired doctor whose overriding passion is the Asturian mountain landscape. Guillermo has spent most of his life exploring every nook and cranny, every peak and valley of the Somiedo and Redes nature reserves, the primordial woodlands of Muñiellos, and his greatest love, the magic mountains of Picos de Europa. He proposed a simple half-day trek following the river Cares from its birthplace in the heights of the sierra down a narrow mountain gorge, the Desfiladero del Rio Cares.

We began in the village of Caín, for centuries cut off entirely from the outside world and, as its name might suggest, regarded by outsiders as a village of the damned. From there we entered the gorge, a dark canyon of Tolkien-esque proportions, with a path carved out of the rock face skirting the cliffs. From far below us came the muffled thunder of the river. Far above, in the gap between the cliffs, if you strained your neck and watched your footsteps, you could just see the snow-capped peaks, sparkling in the sun.

It was an unforgettable walk, and the lunch at the end of it wasn’t bad either: 11 courses of menú degustación at the Michelin-starred Casa Marcial in Arriondas, which along with Casa Gerardo in Prendes, is the most important showcase for the new Asturian cuisine. Nacho Manzano, chef at Casa Marcial, cooks and lives in the village house where he was born and grew up, and where his parents had a small shop that sold everything from socks and shoes to tinned sardines. There was a dance hall on the first floor, a cider press in the basement.

Over the years Nacho has brought his modernisation of cocina asturiana to a high pitch of refinement: his torto de maíz is as light as feather, his arroz con pitu de caleya (a rice dish made with the meat of a free-range cockerel) is densely flavoured and accompanied by a scallop somehow deliciously aromatised with fresh cucumber and green pepper.

As night fell a cold dank mist rolled down from the mountains. My luck had run out, I told myself: the rain, regular protagonist of the Asturian climate, was back. By the morning, however, it had cleared again and the atmosphere was uncannily bright, like when you turned up the contrast and colour on an old TV set. Perfect weather for beach-hunting. I turned back towards Oviedo on the E70 and drove from west to east along the Asturian coast – rebaptised for the incipient tourist market as the Costa Verde.

For years I have been saying to anyone who’d listen that some of the best beaches in the country are to be found along this stretch of coast. At Barayo, for instance, a pristine valley protected from all possible development, inhabited only by otters, the river reaches the sea in a majestic arc of sand. Or Playa del Silencio, aptly named, where dramatic rock formations encircle a lonely beach; or, loveliest of all, Torimbia, a mouthwateringly beautiful sandy bay, utterly unspoilt, which like all the world’s best beaches, can only be reached on foot. On this May morning at Torimbia there wasn’t a soul to be seen; the water was as calm as a mirror, and an appetising, if misleading shade of glassy blue. (Misleading, because the Atlantic is not the Med, and only in the months of July and August would most people think it wise to immerse themselves in it.)

So the Costa Verde has unspoilt beaches; it also has a series of unspoilt harbour towns strung along the coast like a pearl necklace. Ribadesella – once the summer stamping-ground of the Princess Letizia, wife of Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne – and Cudillero, picturesque yet genuine. Lastres is a proper fishing village with winding cobbled streets – you could be in Cornwall. At Llanes, in the far east, a long thin harbour winds up from the sea into a medieval quarter with crumbly palaces, and the sculptor Agustín Ibarrola has painted the concrete cubes of the harbour wall in dazzling colours and madcap designs.

Outside Llanes, easternmost of Asturian coastal towns, is where the idyll ends. I was shocked to see the building going on in the strip of land between the mountains and the sea, the rash of ugly urbanizaciones built mostly as second homes for holidaymakers from the Basque country, and the wide swathe of brand-new motorway, built to give them easier access to what is increasingly a colony of Bilbao. Sad to say, no lessons have been learned from the destruction of Spain’s other costas, and it seems that even this pristine coastline is on the way to being ruined, and that there is nothing you or I can do about it.

Perhaps the only solution is for you and me to get there while there’s still time, and to tell our friends. I always tell mine that the coast of Asturias – along with the mountains, the architecture, the people, and the food – is almost certainly one of Spain’s last great unknown treasures. But then I would say that.

How to get to the heart of the Asturias

Getting there

Easyjet (0905 821 0905; easyjet.com) has daily flights from Stansted to Asturias airport in Ranón, half an hour by car or bus from Oviedo, from £46 return; Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Santander, two hours by car, bus or train from Oviedo, from £21 return. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 0439; brittany-ferries.co.uk) runs ferries from Portsmouth and Plymouth to Santander (20-24 hours) from £167 return for two adults and a car.

Where to eat

Casa Fermín, Oviedo (00 34 985 216452; casafermin.com); Casa Morán, Benia de Onis (00 34 985 844006); Casa Marcial, Arriondas (00 34 985 840991; casamarcial.com)

Where to stay

Hotel Fruela (00 34 985 208120; hotelfruela.com) is a friendly, simple hotel in the centre of Oviedo and good value at €70 for a double room.

Hotel Casona del Busto in Pravia near Aviles (00 34 985 822771; casonadelbusto.es) is an unpretentious three-star hotel in a 16th-century mansion frequented by the diarist and thinker Jovellanos. It’s minutes from the beach and 10km from Asturias airport. Doubles from €84.

Hotel Balcón de la Cuesta (00 34 985 417429; arceahoteles.com) is a chic and comfortable new hotel in the valley of Andrin, just outside Llanes. The 17 rooms are all suites, and cost from €90.

Palacio de Rubianes, Cereceda (00 34 985 707612; palacioderubianes.com), recently opened in a historic country house with magnificent views of the Sueve mountains and Picos de Europa. Doubles from €105.

• Find more information about the region at infoasturias.com

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High on the hog in the Languedoc

July 6th, 2009 | No Comments

It’s a new holiday village but the architecture is traditional, as are the activities. Ian Belcher tries winemaking, trout tickling – and a spot of boar hunting

Club Med, eat your heart out. Mark Warner, look away now. I’ve seen the future of holiday villages and it involves taking pot shots at wild boar, treading Corbières grapes, and – if you’re feeling reckless – tickling speckled trout. Wind surfing and sailing lessons? They’re just so last season, chéri.

Les Jardins de Saint Benoît, tucked into the widescreen panoramic drama of the French Languedoc, is aiming to rewrite the holiday village rulebook. Harnessing the passion, traditions and skill of local Occitane winegrowers and artisans, it offers a practical, herb-infused taste of Mediterranean rural life – a natural high-de-hi.

But the opening revelation comes well before you snaffle a first truffle: Les Jardins has interpreted “village” quite literally – it bulges out from the (real) medieval Saint-Laurent de la Cabrerisse like an ochre hernia. It opened last month, several centuries after its host, but old and new blur into a seamless splatter of terracotta tiles and limestone walls.

It’s a deliberate deception. Three years’ construction, £55m and 15 rewrites of the heritage master plan have captured the details and textures of original village buildings, albeit with modern tweaks such as pergola-shaded gardens. With its grid of stone-paved, car-free streets lined with Victorian copper lamps, it would bring a rosy flush to the Prince of Wales’s cheek. The Gallic Poundbury’s 171 self-catering houses, kissing a stonking restaurant, spa and swimming pool, have state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms but display a style dubbed chic rustique: all earth tones, artfully distressed southern French furniture and pastel shutters.

Occupying the site of a ruined 12th-century abbey, Les Jardins is laced with freshly planted olive trees, lavender bushes and roses. If, understandably, it feels rather new, there’s also an original maze of medieval walled gardens, shared with the villagers. These drip with fruit, vegetables and herbs, bordered by well-established organic vineyards, which lead down to the Nielle river.

But the unique heritage architecture is just a soupçon of its integration with Languedoc life. There’s also employment – nearly all the staff live nearby – and a groundbreaking array of guest activities that involve the area’s farmers, chefs and artisans, from cheese makers to beekeepers. “We’re building a bridge between locals and tourists,” says Miguel Espada, president of Garrigae, the resort operator behind Les Jardins. “At Club Med or Mark Warner everyone stays within the complex, but we’re completely open to the community. We want guests to get back to nature, to sample the Mediterranean joie de vivre, to experience totally new things.”

You can say that again, Miguel: it’s the first time sanglier (wild boar) hunting has appeared on my holiday itinerary. But just hours after arriving, I’m crossing Garrigae’s metaphorical bridge with two locals: Daniel Esparza, Saint-Laurent’s former mayor, and his beefy son, Ludo, who are planning to bag a sanglier they spotted scoffing their grapes.

We climb through pine forests, passing an outcrop where witches once danced on the summer solstice, and the promised joie de vivre arrives in the shape of food. Astounding food. Food eaten alfresco yards from the hilltop garden where it was grown: mushrooms with wine and rosemary, lamb shank with creamy aubergine, and cheek-tingling lemon pie. Under dappled sunlight, we wash the meal down with marquisette – white wine with lemon – and bottles of rosé “from those vines over there”. It’s like a Magners commercial only with better booze.

As I gorge, my hosts talk about the dangerous, sly wild boar. Languedoc’s boar population has exploded as new highways have blocked their old foraging routes. The critters have stayed put, gorging on farmers’ crops and producing super-sized litters. “They eat everything,” exclaims Esparza. “Grapes, potatoes, small rabbits. They are pigs.” Which is accurate, if a little harsh.

“It’s not about killing,” he stresses. “It’s about eating. We’re respecting the natural balance of nature. We don’t give boys PlayStations here; we give them guns. I’ve passed on my knowledge of nature to Ludo since he was young.”

Ludo – who says he sometimes smears himself with boar shit to creep close to his prey – seems a good man to hide behind. At midnight, after a final “savage cherry” liqueur that renders accurate shooting impossible, I climb into his battered van. Ludo makes a strangling noise, hinting at the animal’s fate, asks if I’m “ready for adventure”, and then, bar the odd grunt, doesn’t speak for two hours. I’m boar hunting with Obelix.

The former mayor is in another car, leaning out the window. His loaded shotgun rests on the wing mirror – something Boris Johnson hasn’t tried in Chiswick. Yet. We rip across country, up and down rutted tracks, occasionally zipping past village cafés where regulars sit outside sipping late-night digestifs. Grass and vines tower above the van. Every so often Ludo screeches to a stop, listens intently for evidence of wild boar mainlining grapes, grunts, and accelerates. We perform a high-speed swerve to chase a rabbit. If we hit something, death will be sudden and brutal – and the boar may be a little sore as well.

Yesterday Daniel spotted 23 sangliers, but tonight they have stage fright. Or a crystal ball. After two hours we’re still boar-less. It’s an intoxicating rush, but I have rising indigestion and falling bloodlust. We are packed off home, awaiting a dawn call should they spot one.

Late next morning I’m staring straight into the eyes of a dead sanglier. His whiskers drip pathos, his tusks retribution. Don’t fret. No wildlife was harmed in the making of this article. He was shot years ago by vigneron Jean-Pierre Mazard, and his stuffed head now decorates an atmospheric beamed room at Jean-Pierre’s winery, alongside a stuffed owl and some sepia photographs.

I am here to blend Chateau Belcher 2009. Forget straightforward wine-tasting; this is an advanced vino-experience. “It’s a science,” says Jean-Pierre, “a complex art.”

Oenotourism will be central to Les Jardins. Swaddled by the legendary Corbières wine region, the resort aims to immerse guests in its production. You can even lease a strip of vines and, helped by local farmers, make multiple visits to tend and harvest your grapes, before bottling a bespoke mini vintage.

Most of the activities are highly seasonal – November means picking and pressing olives; January is for hunting truffles – but I’m here in a quiet spell. So Jean-Pierre and wine technician Matthieu Dubernet show me how to mix my own rocket fuel from three classic Languedoc grapes harvested last year: Syrah, Grenache and Carignan. Individually, they’re unbalanced mono-wines, but together they make sweet music.

We start by sampling an acclaimed blend: Jean-Pierre’s 2004 Cuvée Annie, with its scent of cherries, olives and menthol. It’s done in a friendly, unintimidating atmosphere. You don’t have to be an expert, just find a blend you like.

We move on to the mono wines. Carignan is a bit “animaux” and Grenache is “sweeter, bigger, smoother”. But I can’t make a single intelligent observation on Syrah. “Turkish delight?” I hazard. Jean-Pierre, the 12th generation of Mazard winemakers, diplomatically raises the tone, explaining that Syrah is complex, with hints of garrigues, thyme, rosemary and blackcurrant.

Just like Turkish delight. Thank you.

Things then turn scientific, with glass measuring jars and a calculator. It’s seriously absorbing. Minor blend changes carry major clout. Cuvée Annie is 65% Syrah and 35% Carignan and Grenache. But reduce the Syrah, up the Grenache and it becomes “fruity, easy-drinking”.

It’s like playing with a gourmet chemistry kit. We reintroduce a little Syrah, apparently making it more “terroir”, but my first solo tweak turns this to “absolute pants” – my verdict, not Jean-Pierre’s – with astringent tannins. After two more changes, I’ve created Chateau Belcher: 15% Carignan, 30% Grenache, 55% Syrah. It’s declared “very drinkable” but, frankly, it’s basic polyester compared with the velvety Serres-Mazard 2004 I depart with.

Along with other activities – Les Jardins plans to start a weekly market – winemaking is part of Garrigae’s drive to champion local produce. “We want to be a locomotive for the region,” says Espada. “Local producers are passionate, but they know virtually nothing about marketing.”

This is personal. The charismatic Espada, who made his fortune through an internet start-up, is committed to promoting his home region. “I grew up 15km from here and feel a real social responsibility,” he says. “If this wasn’t good, my family would kill me.”

Kids’ activities reflect his Languedoc childhood, whether it’s pottering on the resort farm or harvesting wild figs to make jam. I sample an option you won’t find in Balham: trout tickling. It sounds like an MP’s expenses claim, and is suitably slimy. First we feel under a flat rock in the Nielle, where fish doze in the shallows. Then we sedate them by caressing their bellies, before attempting a lightning grab.

It’s glorious Enid Blyton-esque fun, but it would be a shame to leave surrounding Languedoc unexplored. I drive through a vast landscape marked by vineyards, hamlets and vertiginous switchback roads en route to the giddyingly high Cathar stronghold of Quéribus – a perfect goal for cycling masochists.

Back at Les Jardins I’m paralysed by heat and the range of activities. Perhaps I need a grapeseed oil and herb massage among the vines? Or maybe something more mainstream, like tennis? I’m contemplating whether I’m too old for the kids’ club – Circus Training with Denis la Rue followed by Smell Lotto sounds sensational – when I meet Mark and Jenny from north Lincolnshire. They stumbled across Les Jardins on the web, caught a Ryanair flight to Carcassonne, and appear happily bemused. “I never thought I’d be grouting a mosaic on my holidays,” says Jenny. “It’s quirky, but also very upmarket. ‘Holiday Village’ doesn’t do it justice – it’s far more stylish shabby-chic than most coastal resorts.”

Strangely, I also have no experience of holiday mosaic grouting. It’s tempting, but I plump for something perhaps equally bizarre: goat herding. I’m visiting Guillaume Portal, a laconic, roll-up smoking producer of award-winning cheeses. But you, or more likely your children, can help lead the goats out from the steep pastures for milking – the fuel for Guillaume’s fabulous fromage.

It’s a schizophrenic world. One minute I’m in the goat shed, with more flies than the Aussie outback, the next I’m wearing a plastic coat and shoe covers, standing in a startlingly hygienic production plant, learning about intestinal enzymes. It is, however, safe to say few people return from holiday knowing how to stimulate a mushroom crust on a three-kilogramme goat’s cheese.

Later I’m using the stuff to make Languedoc tapas. Dany from Saint-Laurent demonstrates, while her winemaker son provides translation, tasty vino and a heartfelt testimony to Les Jardins. “It has the spirit of our village,” Arnaud says. “It’s good for my generation’s future.”

That will be music to Espada’s ears. Les Jardins, Garrigae’s third opening, has attracted large regional government subsidies, and massive interest from the French press. “We really believe we’re pioneering a unique model of sustainable tourism,” he says. “This will become the norm in a few years. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll end up buying all those traditional holiday villages.”

Essentials

A one-bedroom house (sleeping two) at Les Jardins de Saint Benoît (0871 2187066; garrigaeresorts.com) costs from £145 a night (seven-night stays from £716). Larger houses available. Activities cost extra: cheesemaking and goatherding €26, trout tickling €43, wine blending €34, and a full-scale boar hunt €128. Rail Europe (0844 8484070; raileurope.co.uk) has returns to Narbonne from £105. Avis (08445 818181; avis.co.uk) offers seven days’ car hire from £242.

More ways to enjoy the best of rural France

Walking in Corcsica

There’s no better way to experience Corsica than on foot. Headwater (01606 720199; headwater.com) offers an eight-day “Contrasts of Corsica” independent walking holiday, which starts in Piana and takes in stunning coastal paths, lemon groves, pine-clad forests and mountain streams. Two nights are spent in Corte, the historic old capital in the mountainous heart of the island, famous for its spectacular citadel, which is perched precariously on a large craggy outcrop.

• From £869 in August, including five hotels, most meals, route notes and luggage transfers. Fly from Gatwick to Ajaccio in Corsica with Easyjet (easyjet.com).

Lavender Festival in Montelimar

From next Saturday, the town of Montélimar in the Rhône-Alpes region is holding its annual two-day lavender festival (montelimar-tourisme.com). There’ll be flower arranging, traditional lavender distilling, flower-decorated horse-drawn carriages and the chance to stock up on lavender byproducts, such as honey and candles.

• Fly Gatwick-Marseille with Easyjet (easyjet.com) and hire a car through Auto Europe (auto-europe.co.uk) for the 170km drive to Montélimar. For places to stay visit montelimar-tourisme.com.

A chalet in the Alps

Summer is a great time to visit an Alpine ski resort: the crowds have gone and the pistes are transformed into glorious green hills. Just France (020 8780 4463; justfrance.co.uk) offers chalet holidays throughout the French Alps. The Chalet Chavannes, just above the resort of Les Gets, sleeps six and has an open garden with a stream running through it and a large balcony with a sauna and relaxation area. Visit the adventure park and lake just 15 minutes’ walk away, and Lake Geneva and the spa towns of Evian and Thonon-les-Bains are a short drive away.

• From £784 for a seven-night stay for six people in July/August, including return ferry crossing from Dover to Calais.

Wine & canal cruise in the Loire Valley

Sample your way through the Loire Valley on Le Boat’s Wine Lovers’ Cruise (0844 463 3577; leboat.co.uk). The round-trip cruise departs from Chatillon-sur-Loire and takes in Nevers and Sancerre, where you can learn all about the region’s vineyards at the Maison des Sancerre, a 15th-century house dedicated to the art of wine-making.

• A seven-night tour for up to eight people in August costs from £2,255. Fuel costs extra. Fly to Paris with Easyjet (as before), then take the train (one-and-a-half hours) to Chatillon-sur-Loire.

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Ferrara as fabulous as Florence

June 28th, 2009 | No Comments

Author Sarah Dunant set her latest novel in Ferrara, a town that captivated her with its rich history – especially that of its grand medieval convents

The first problem I had when I started writing a novel set in a 16th-century convent in Ferrara was that my spellchecker kept trying to turn the city into a car. It was one of many realisations that this history-rich place on the banks of the River Po is one of Italy’s hidden treasures.

We’ll get inside the convent later – first, Ferrara itself. I arrived there early one summer morning on a train from Florence. My walk to Florence station had been an obstacle course of cars and crocodile files of sweating tourists so busy adjusting their commentary earphones that they barely managed to lift their eyes to see what particular Renaissance wonder the guide was instructing them to appreciate.

An hour and a half later, hopping on a bus from Ferrara station, which is situated outside the massive, crumbling medieval walls, I found myself in a well-nigh perfectly preserved medieval and Renaissance city, with barely a car or a tourist to be seen and with a prevailing soundtrack of bells – the bass ones coming from the churches and the upper register from the hundreds of bicycles that are the lifeline of transport for the modern Ferrarese.

For those with the time and energy to travel outside the accepted tourist trail of Florence, Venice and Rome, north-east Italy is a goldmine. Padua, Verona and Mantua are each treasures in their way, but for my money Ferrara is the best of them all. An energetic, aggressive city state until the Papal States gobbled it up in 1597, it was run for centuries by the d’Este clan, who started out as barely concealed thugs but morphed into sophisticated Renaissance patrons, with an eye for town planning and an ear for fabulous music. The buildings you can still see; the music takes a bit more imagining.

A great boulevard divides the medieval quarter from the Renaissance side, conceived and built in the early 16th century by Duke Ercole d’Este. In the Renaissance city all is space and dignity: parks, palazzi and grand houses. In the medieval quarter the humble Ferrarese brick (one of the many wonders of this city is that much of it is built from warm brick rather than the colder glory of marble or stone) lights up a criss-cross of tiny jumbled roads, packed with churches, cloisters, old palaces and ordinary houses. The variety and ingenuity of their arches, windows and grilles are worth a small slideshow of photos in their own right.

In the middle of the divide stands the outrageous d’Este castle: half palace, half fortress, even down to its surrounding moat. Inside, under baroque sweetness lies a history of naked power. It was here, in 1425, in the marital bedchamber and the dungeons, that Niccolò d’Este had his second wife and her lover – his own son, Ugo – murdered for an alleged affair. This venting of medieval righteous anger is perhaps understandable until you learn that he himself boasted of sleeping with 800 women and that the chroniclers of the time talked of how, “left and right of the river Po, everywhere there are children by Niccolò”.

Luckily, visitors to Ferrara can now find safer places to rest their heads. Writers, of course, travel on pathetic budgets, but one can still nose out a little style. Suite Duomo on Corso Porta Reno is slap-bang in the middle of town: if you ask nicely they will give you a room with a view of the cathedral facade and you can breakfast on a terrace that overlooks the grand piazza in front. On my second day I woke to find the market in full swing, as it would have been for centuries. Amazingly, the grand cathedral had shops built into its side, and while the majority of the cheap clothes on sale now may come from China, the vegetables, meats and cheeses still roll in from the surrounding countryside.

How you spend the rest of your days (and I would recommend at least a long weekend) will depend on whether your taste leans towards ostentatious art or more humble secret architecture. By my third visit, the writer in me was already in a convent in my head, so I no longer had any time for the splendid decadence of the Palazzo Schifanoia – its name roughly translates as “avoiding boredom” – with its salon of frescoes by 15th-century Ferrarese masters depicting peasants and gods at work and at play (I leave you to guess which are doing what).

Instead, I was sticking my nose inside churches and cloisters. Casa Romeo is a beautifully restored 14th-century merchant’s house that once abutted an old convent, its central courtyard silent and serene. An equally perfect and even sweeter example of medieval cloister architecture is to be found at the entrance to the cathedral museum, right in the middle of the city’s most thriving modern thoroughfare. Opposite is a popular local wine bar where the quality of the wine is as high as the prices are low. Somewhere off that same street I found a great secondhand clothes shop (had I had one or two fewer glasses of wine I might have remembered the exact address, but at least it gives the visitor something to aim for), where I bought a leather jacket so fine I am considering being buried in it.

Which brings me to the churches. And the convents. Five hundred years ago, Ferrara, like all other Italian cities, was so nervous about female sexuality that as soon as respectable women reached the age of menstruation they were either married off or – more likely, given how expensive dowries were by this time – incarcerated in convents. “Christ is the only son-in-law who doesn’t cause me any trouble,” wrote the great Ferrarese Renaissance patron Isabella d’Este, after walling up two of her own daughters for safety.

But while no one can deny the appalling unfairness of the practice, it was not all terrible. Sisters, nieces, aunts and cousins within a family would all have been nuns – and, bearing in mind the forced marriages, abusive husbands, lack of birth control and death toll from childbirth outside the walls, convents could be sanctuaries as well as prisons. Those nuns with fine voices could use them daily (convent choirs were a source of great glory to a city like Ferrara); others played instruments and even in some cases composed music or wrote plays. The more you dig, the more a portrait emerges of small republics of women with their own dramatic ebb and flow of power.

Most Italian convents were disbanded after Napoleon invaded but among the glories of Ferrara two working ones still exist, both of them rich in history. Corpus Domini is famous both for its visionary 15th-century nun and for the tomb of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, who married into the Ferrarese royal family in 1502 and produced a crop of heirs.

The other, Sant’Antonio in Polesine, on which I based my novel Sacred Hearts, is even more special. Originally a thriving Benedictine convent for noblewomen, it now sits serene and secluded at the edge of the city wall, home to just 17 elderly nuns.

Like the nuns of Corpus Domini they are enclosed, but if you visit between certain hours and ring the bell, a sister will talk to you through the grille, then crack open the door and guide you to the inner chapel, the walls of which are filled with wonderful, delicate frescoes from the time of Giotto.

Later you can sit in the outer church and listen while those 17 nuns sing public vespers on the other side of the altar grille. Their ageing voices are cracked and desperately sad compared with the great choir that would have enthralled the city’s dignitaries 500 years ago, but like so much in Ferrara, the experience is a reminder of the unexpected delights that this jewel of a city has to offer the more intrepid tourist.

Essentials

Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Edinburgh, Birmingham and Stansted to Bologna, 35 miles from Ferrara. Suite Duomo (00 39 0532 793888; suiteduomo.it) has doubles from €80. The Monastero di San Antonio in Polesine (leabbazie.it/emilia_romagna/ferrara) is open from 3.15pm-5pm on weekdays. The Monastero di Corpus Domini is currently closed for restoration but check the website above for opening hours. Further tourist information from ferraraterraeacqua.it.

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