Very helpful, responsive and efficient company offering self-catering accommodation in the Lake District. We enjoyed our stay at High Spy in Keswick, a nice flat ideally located for the town and surrounding attractions.

www.lakelandcottages.co.uk

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"A cute 3 bedroom holiday rental cottage in a quiet hamlet just half an hour from Charles Bridge. Sleeps 4-6. From £250 per week."

We stayed for the whole month of August last year (2007). Fantastic time with our two young daughters (7 and 5). Every day doing different things. If it was hot we borrowed canoes and went for paddle on the river, or just hung out in the cottage's pool. On cooler days we went exploring. We had a car with us, but the train stop is just two minutes' walk away so we often went up to Prague for the day or to visit local castles. Beautiful area, very friendly locals in the pub (and cheap food!), and we managed to see a lot of the country. The place was perfect.

But, not recommended for disabled or elderly. There's a sofa bed in the bedroom downstairs, but to reach the two bedrooms upstairs you need to go up fairly steep wooden steps. No problem for agile people like us (!) and the girls didn't have a single fall during our whole stay, but worth bearing in mind. Also, although the cottage has a bathroom inside, the loo is just outside the front door. No problem in the spring or summer, but I wonder what it would be like in the depths of winter! Although it is under the porch.

All in all, a fantastic place, relaxing, in the countryside yet a short (fun!) train ride into the centre of Prague. Recommended!

Oh! Forgot to mention the bikes! Probably the highlight of our stay. We headed off on rides at least three times a week, sometimes taking the bikes on the trains with us. From the cottage itself there are plenty of options- along the river Sazava, upstream or downstream, into the local town, or up into the forests. Great fun!

And the lovely old people in the next door cottage joined us a couple of times for a barbecue in the evenings. We didn't understand very much, but a nice time was had.

Unique qualities: great views, pool, lots of attention to detail (tourist leaflets, dozens of hiking and cycling maps, board games for children, a collection of DVDs etc).

Very comfortable accommodation with nice clean bedding and firm beds. Small but well-equipped kitchen.

Very quiet surroundings - we had deer coming up to the fence at the back of the garden some evenings! And hares and foxes.

Unpredictable weather - ranging from very hot and dry to pretty cool and showery. But always plenty of things to do and places to visit.

Address: Zlenice, near Cercany
Directions: 30mins by car from centre of Prague. M/way in the direction of Brno. Turn off at junction 21. Follow signs. Very easy to find. By train, 1 hour from Prague main station to Cercany. Then change to a tiny train for a couple of stops. Trains run till late.
Web: praguecottage.blogspot.com
Email: praguecottage@telefonica.net

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The best time to visit is between November and March as the temperature will be between 27* - 35* and sunny so it’s the perfect winter sun destination. What also makes it so worthwhile is that it’s incredibly cheap; you can go there for as little as £250 and the most you’re going to pay is £350/400.

You can either stay in the tourist resorts along the coast or the capital, Banjul, but either way, as the country is so small, to get to either place shouldn’t take any more than 20 minutes to get to by taxi. They have specific tourist taxis, which the tour operators recommend, however I caught numerous ‘normal’ taxis and these are completely fine (and cheaper).

The tour operators also recommend that you do all of their activities through them, and while I would certainly recommend some of these, especially the roots tour, which travels up the Gambia river by boat and goes to where the slaves were captured and held before being shipped of to the Americas - I would befriend the locals and get them to take you out; this is what my friends and I did, as there are licensed juice sellers on the beach by the hotel.

After buying juice from them we decided the best way to get to know the Gambia is by letting people that live there show us so we arranged for two locals to take four of us out to dinner in a place they recommended. We also wanted to go on a safari so we got them to organise a Jeep trip to a safari park. We obviously paid for transportation and food and anything else but this would still be cheaper than doing it through the tour operator and it is helping out the local economy.

People in the Gambia are some of the friendliest you would ever meet, in fact an expression I often heard was ‘it’s nice to be nice’, and at no point did I ever feel remotely threatened, even at police stops everyone was extremely courteous.

As an example of how safe it is my friends and I decided to go to a bar about three miles away from our hotel so we decided to go there by foot alone along the beach, by the time we got there it was pitch black so walking along the beach was quite an adventure and when we got to the bar the owner gave us a free lift home.

When you go to the markets you would obviously have to haggle with the price but this is to be expected and is part of the experience but the market sellers are never overly forceful or aggressive.

I had the lucky experience of being on the beach on my last night when the president threw a party to celebrate him being re-elected, so there were local tribes dancing and playing music with lasers and fireworks, it was such a great parting experience. To sum up my experience and the Gambia itself, in order to go into the cordoned-off arena where the President and performers were, I merely asked a soldier if I could go into the area and the solider allowed me to, that is how nice and friendly the people of the Gambia are.

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A very interesting article about driving to Greece by car. If you plan a driving holiday to Greece read it.

www.in2greece.com/blog/2007/09/england-to-greece-by-car.html

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Torquay...surf capital of Australia with RipCurl and other surf companies headquartered there. Just along the Great Ocean Rd is the cozy quiet 'burb of JanJuc and just up the road a bit further is Bells Beach. Bells is the name of a place known to all surfers. Home of Autralian surfing and holiday mecca.

Torquay, about an hours drive SW of Melbourne, at the start of the Great Ocean road and capital of the Surf Coast.

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