Opinion

Travel with David Ellis

Champion sparkling wine from an unlikely place

Posted: 16 May 12 | WHEN a bubbly from England’s South Downs, in County Sussex, won the title of World’s Best Sparkling Wine at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in 2005, screams of horror could be heard from some in Champagne across the Channel in France, while others shrugged it off as little more than an aberration. |

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Champion sparkling wine from an unlikely place

Posted: 15 May 12 | WHEN a bubbly from England’s South Downs, in County Sussex, won the title of World’s Best Sparkling Wine at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in 2005, screams of horror could be heard from some in Champagne across the Channel in France, while others shrugged it off as little more than an aberration. |

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American river cruise churns up history

Posted: 08 May 12 | THE newest thing in cruise holidaying in America is in fact the oldest, with the re-launch this month of the 436-passenger American Queen, a sternwheeler that had been laid-up on the banks of the Mississippi River since her previous owners shut down the engines and walked away broke in 2008. |

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Airport hotels - from the best to the bizarre

Posted: 01 May 12 | ONCE was a time when the prospects of a stay at an airport hotel sent shivers down the spines of even the most-seasoned travellers: pokey rooms, planes roaring overhead like they were about to come through the walls, rattling windows at every take-off and landing, non-existent lounges or bars in which to escape, and restaurants whose offerings were best forgotten. |

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Caribbean B&Bs are an easy cell

Posted: 24 Apr 12 | WHEN the people of the little island of Saba in the Caribbean’s Netherlands Antilles asked authorities in the 1940s for a road to link their scattered farms and hamlets with their tiny port township, officials in The Hague agreed it appeared a reasonable enough request. |

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Your choice: bangers and mash, or snail porridge

Posted: 17 Apr 12 | THE GUIDEBOOKS will tell you that Bray, about an hour’s drive west of London, is the archetypal English rural village. |

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Fractious young officer unsung Titanic hero

Posted: 10 Apr 12 | A TRAVEL writer mate, Malcolm Andrews, has just published a ripper of a book about a little-known Australian adventurer, Sir Hubert Wilkins who, among other things, was a war hero, explorer, the first person to fly over both polar icecaps, only member of the Australian media ever to win a military medal for gallantry, and for good measure a secret agent at different times for Britain and the United States. |

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Having the Mob around at your wedding

Posted: 03 Apr 12 | IT seems that getting married in a drive-through chapel with a queue of others in open-top Cadillacs, maybe having an Elvis look-alike escort you down the aisle, or even being driven into church on His and Her’s Harley-Davidsons, is no longer good enough in Las Vegas - America’s capital of where Everything’s Possible. |

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Bundanoon is Brigadoon - and a 'reel' hoot

Posted: 27 Mar 12 | IF marvelling at brawny blokes tossing around what appear to be scaled-down power poles with nary a wince is your thing, or equally so watching them lift great round stones that weigh as much (or more) than they do, then come April 21 little Bundanoon - half-way between Sydney and Canberra in the NSW Southern Highlands - is the place to be. |

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Biddy Mason - America’s philanthropic slave

Posted: 20 Mar 12 | CHANCES are you know nothing of a remarkable 19th century African-American woman named Biddy Mason. But crammed away in the concrete canyons of Downtown Los Angles is a tiny park that pays homage to Biddy - a slave forced to walk over 3000kms in the wagon-train tracks of her master from Mississippi to Utah Territory, and who extraordinarily went on to become the wealthiest black woman in her time in LA. |

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Cheers to a ripper pub guide - bar none

Posted: 13 Mar 12 | LIKE all good journos, Lee Mylne isn’t averse to a quiet drink on a warm day. Or a cold day for that matter. Maybe even a wet one. And despite many other scribe’s creditations, she’s just out-manoeuvred them all in the art of drinking-man’s one-upmanship - she got herself paid to go on a six months pub crawl. |

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Passengers’ bizarre deaths in Caribbean sinking

Posted: 06 Mar 12 | BIZARRE as it sounds, when a Royal Mail Ship, Rhone, smashed on to rocks in the Caribbean’s British Virgin Islands in 1867, more than 200 passengers died - because they’d been tied into their bunks by the crew. |

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Taking the helm into Britain’s history

Posted: 28 Feb 12 | WE’VE a colleague who as a travel writer knows as much about driving a boat as we know about the driving force behind the mating ritual of the Tanzanian Bwango Mango Tsetse Fly. |

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What tales these hotel walls could tell

Posted: 22 Feb 12 | IF its walls could talk, what tales could they tell of the romantic encounters consummated within the centuries-old bosoms of Venice’s Hotel Danieli - a grand hostelry created by bringing together no less than three one-time, side-by-palaces. |

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Towering effort - bridge that stopped a president

Posted: 15 Feb 12 | WHEN British businessman Sir Chay Blyth decided in 1997 to organise a rowing race across the Atlantic from England to America, he thought he’d publicise it by having some of the participants row up the River Thames to St Katherine’s Dock, including passing under the iconic Tower Bridge. |

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Ed and Helen, life’s about bridging oceans

Posted: 08 Feb 12 | THERE’s probably nothing too unusual about a bloke deciding that he’s going to celebrate his next big milestone birthday by taking his wife on a world cruise. |

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Adding new meaning to Chinese takeaway

Posted: 31 Jan 12 | THAMES Town looks as jolly British as its name implies: walk its streets and you quickly learn the traps of cobblestones, fashion boutiques rub shoulders with a pub that pumps real ale, the houses and villas are classic Georgian and Victorian, the town square sports a statue paying tribute to Sir Winston Churchill, and if you’ve forgotten your mobile phone there are enough red phone boxes to make that urgent call home. |

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