Travel

You’re never going to see Venice quite like this again. Usually swarming with tourists – not to mention the enormous cruise ships that dock in its waters ­– the city has been given a serious breather by the coronavirus pandemic. Those lengthy queues to get into its most famous hotspots have disappeared; the picturesque back streets lie empty and a dramatic fall in water traffic has seen the sediment in its 150 canals settle, allowing their vibrant colour to return. La Serenissima – much to many of the locals’ relief – has become serene once more.

I started my visit to Japan’s north country deep in the mountains, in hot water in a bath the size of a swimming pool. Quietly simmering, I was intrigued to notice that the glass which formed the outside wall was not misted up, though the water was steaming. Through the darkness I could make out trees, bushes and the glint of the lake below. I waded over and reached out my hand, only to discover that there was no wall. One side of the bath was entirely open to the air. For the Japanese no journey, particularly to the north, is complete without soaking in as many hot springs as possible. The mineral-rich waters are the upside of the geological turbulence that brought about the devastating tsunami of March 2011. Today everyone knows the name ‘Fukushima’.

It was not an auspicious start. Arriving at JFK the specified three hours before my departure to Athens I was met with a check-in line stretching out the door. The man behind me, in traditional dress and with a shocking amount of luggage for a single traveler, kept shouting ‘Senegal!’ Two hours later, check-in for my flight was closing. I was still at least half an hour away from the desk and so I shamelessly cut the line, earning myself a tongue-lashing from a dyspeptic German but also a boarding document one minute before the flight closed.

Hiking toward the Spanish border on my second day after setting off from Bayonne, I set down my backpack on a grassy patch beside a beach. It was bloody hot — August in the southwest of France — and the sight of beachgoers taking a shower had a cooling appeal. I stripped to my underwear and enjoyed the bracing shower burst. Then I looked down. Water was cascading over what looked like leprosy, breaking out over the right side of my chest. Feeling self-conscious, I got dressed and plodded on. Twenty-five miles later, at the sparkling city of San Sebastián, the pain proved too much. I lifted my shirt to two Portuguese pharmacists — and they pointed me toward the nearest hospital. I had herpes zoster, commonly known as shingles.

'You can get away from everything,’ said Harold Wilson of the Isles of Scilly, ‘not only in distance but also in time’. During the parliamentary recess, Wilson would frequently catch the sleeper from Paddington to Penzance before making the notoriously choppy crossing to Britain’s most westerly archipelago. There he would unwind in his cottage on St Mary’s. This family of five islands 28 miles off the nose of Land’s End has always enjoyed a somewhat secretive coterie of admirers — Jude Law and Michael Morpurgo to name but two. Deserted beaches with a Caribbean palette are surely part of the draw, as are hedgerows festooned with wild garlic, pink bells and exotic aeoniums.