You know these best kept travel secrets

[Crackle]

Well they're not are they. Not if they've been published in the paper. I absolutely hate reading that my favourite spot has just become a 'secret gem'. 'You absolute d!ck of a writer', I think. If I could reach you I'd quite cheerfully strangle you.

Now I'm quite willing to dispense advice, tell a few people about favourite spots but I'm coy about telling all and sundry, after all enough people know already, anymore and it might spoil it. I'm thinking, Bugger off and find your own favourite things you mindless bloody sheep.

Am i mean spirited do you think. Do you keep your favourite spots to yourself?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I don't like newspaper travel writing at all and I know exactly what you mean about the way they pretend that the places they recommend are 'exclusively for everyone'... But on the other hand there is no point in pretending that you 'discovered' a place no-one else ever did - you didn't!

 

[ComedyPilot]

There have been some truly beautiful places utterly trashed by tourists: Costa Del Sol, Ibiza, Corfu, Rhodes, Crete, Goa, Bali and now Turkey is being inundated with people searching for the 'secret treasure' holiday location.

The nice places used to be that when they were hard to get to, cheap air travel has made them easily accessible to the 'Sun' newspaper and 'Full English Breakfast' brigade.

Don't worry there are loads of beautiful 'undiscovered' places. You just need to be a bit more adventurous to find them.

 

[PaulB]

Why not be one of the hundreds of thousands of people seeking peaceful solitude in the English Lakes?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

The reason I like going solo canoeing is that you reach places where other people aren't. When you are gliding across a lake like clear glass as the sun rises, it is as if you are the first person ever to see this.

Big Trout Lake

It is an extraordinary feeling. But you know too that hundreds of other people have had exactly the same feeling. That's not a bad thing. The bad thing is when, as Comedy Pilot suggests, the qualities that made places attractive in the first place are destroyed by too many people trying to enjoy those qualities. I reckon Bhutan has the right idea (that suits the place and its culture) - they keep a strict limit the number of tourists allowed into the country every year.

As CP says, the key is in the effort. Most people just can't be bothered, and if you can, you'll always find something wonderful.

 

[Globalti]

They can publish as much as they like about Scotland, the world's best kept travel secret but people won't go there as long as this little varmint carries on biting them:

 

[Dayvo]

Do you keep your favourite spots to yourself?

Not telling you!

 

[Melvil]

They can publish as much as they like about Scotland, the world's best kept travel secret but people won't go there as long as this little varmint carries on biting them:

You are so right there! A two week stay in Achiltibuie in August/September gave a short, sharp lesson in how to make your skin look like the surface of mars..

 

[Crackle]

As CP says, the key is in the effort. Most people just can't be bothered, and if you can, you'll always find something wonderful.

Indeed you will. Adventure is relative is it not. One man's trip to France is another man's equivalent of going to the corner shop. Anothers ascent of Snowdon is a 2 hour training run for someone else. The adventure is the unknown, it's the overcoming of difficulties, the embrace of different.

Of course there are things I know I'm never likely to do and for those things I enjoy reading and marvelling at something like the history of the North Face of The Eiger. I'm never likely to do more than stare at it through a telescope but I can experience it through others tales.

However a Guardian travel writer is fairly unlikely to stretch my comfort zone and so should be strangled Q.E.D.

 

[Crackle]

You are so right there! A two week stay in Achiltibuie in August/September gave a short, sharp lesson in how to make your skin look like the surface of mars..

Gorgeous place though. Cycled there once and took my walking boots with me.

Image quality is not so good, it's a scanned slide I've never done any work on.

 

[snorri]

They can publish as much as they like about Scotland, the world's best kept travel secret but people won't go there as long as this little varmint carries on biting them:

Now I know why people grossly exaggerate the midge problem, they want to keep their favourite holiday place to themselves.