Renaissance man
Having opened 14 hotels in seven years, Pablo Carrington, Marugal’s managing director, has now won the contract to build a hotel in the grounds of the Renaissance masterpiece Château de Chambord. Believing that France is “ready for contemporary things”, Carrington has taken on the bold designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte “to create something different”. Carrington is also opening what he hopes will become the Soho Farmhouse of France — the Barn — which will be an hour away from Paris in the forest of Rambouillet and will have 70 rooms, a spa and stables.
Tour de force
Anyone intrigued by the period of the Grand Tour — a time when travelling didn’t involve airlines or the internet, but resulted in glorious watercolours and vivid descriptions — will be sated by reading The Grand Tour: The Golden Age of Travel. Everything about this 616-page tome is grand, including the journeys it depicts, often into previously unexplored areas of the world. The book’s authors, Marc Walter and Sabine Arqué, relive the age of discovery from 1869 to 1939 with rich illustrative material, from an 1890 photograph of the gardens of Hotel du Nil in Cairo and posters advertising great ocean journeys to the Orient Express dinner menu from April 17, 1884. Accounts from the era’s great adventurers, including Jules Verne, complete this lavish journey back in time.
Appy travellers
Travel apps are no longer just emergency helpers for tourists — a new, exclusive breed has landed. Velocity Black (velocity.black) is a digital concierge service. For £2,000 a year and a £700 joining fee, users can access “signature experiences” — from swimming with whales to flying to the edge of space — and chat to experts who’ll book private flights and tickets to sold-out concerts. If you’re looking for the best wine lists in town you can call on Wine Spectator (winespectator.com). Turo (turo.com) has cars to rent ranging from Teslas to Aston Martins, while GetMyBoat (getmyboat.com) offers a collection of yachts for hire. Flyers can find and check in to a lounge using loungebuddy.co.uk, while Flio (flio.com) shows walking times between gates. Or download local UV forecasts and suncream advice at wolframalpha.com.
Like cars, will travel
If you own a vintage car then the Monaco Grand Prix Historique, the biennial event for older race cars, is only a day’s driving away (formula1monaco.com). Taking the glamour stakes up a notch is the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este on Lake Como in Italy. Here you can see some of the world’s finest cars battle it out for Best in Show (concorsodeleganzavilladeste.com). Farther afield, the “Hokkaido on Ice” experience gives you a chance to drive an Aston Martin on ice, with the Japanese island as your backdrop (astonmartinartofliving.com). Or follow the Ho Chi Minh trail with Classic Car Journeys’ tour of Vietnam, an exciting 4x4 adventure (classiccarjourneys.co.uk), with direct flights available to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines (vietnamairlines.com).
Made to measure
In his workshop in north London, the city’s only bespoke ski-maker carves out three pairs of skis a week. James Mechie turned his passion for skiing into a business when he founded Nix Snowsport in 2015 (nixsnowsports.com). “All good skiers have custom boots,” Mechie says. “They think skis are different, but they are not.” For £1,375 buyers can choose the make-up of the ski, from the shape to the sidecut and core materials, then Mechie sends his skis to pros in the Alps for testing. Meanwhile, in Devon, Alen van Rooyen, a boat builder, and Harry Robinson, a sailor, create custom surfboards for their company, Lignum Surfboards. The boards cost from £1,500 and take about six weeks to make (lignumsurf.co.uk).
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Dream ticket
While British Airways has been downsizing many of its first-class cabins, Emirates has been busy building hotels in the sky. In its new first-class cabins each passenger has a 40 sq ft suite with floor-to-ceiling walls and sliding doors. Singapore Airlines is putting double beds in first class and its new business-class cabins will give passengers more space than any other airline. In March Qantas’s new Dreamliner will make its first nonstop journey from Australia to London. To celebrate, there will be a Qantas lounge at Heathrow featuring a gin bar. This being a bit of Oz, one of the varieties will come with green ants in the bottle.