Abroad

Saturday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Long vacations are the worst

“Is there ever a holiday so heavenly that one is not counting down the days?” a friend texted me last summer, homesick in the Loire Valley. Another French friend messaged me from Montréal on day five of a holiday which, she was now regretting, she’d booked to last for nine days. She too was counting down. Having recently returned from two weeks in Cambodia with four extra days in Hanoi tacked on at the end, I counted down in sympathy. Those final four days, from Saturday morning till her flight back home on Tuesday night, seemed to drag on for ever, over a desolate weekend – and I wasn’t even there in the characterless Airbnb flat among the skyscrapers and crack addicts. “I’m longing to see that tray of food in the plane,” she texted.

Tuesday

Marianna Hunt

Six places in Britain that make you feel like you’re abroad

Even when lockdown ends in Britain it may be a while longer before international borders begin to reopen. But not being able to hop on a flight doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy an exotic escape. There are plenty of beautiful spots across the British Isles that make you feel as though you’re hundreds of miles from home. Here is our pick of the best. Somerset Lavender Farm, Somerset Sipping a coffee al fresco and gazing over the lilacy haze of fields at this family-run farm, you’d think you were in deepest Provence. In fact you’re just 10 miles from the UNESCO world heritage city of Bath and right on the fringes of the Cotswold Hills. The working farm has around 50,000 plants, including five acres of different types of lavender and a rose garden.