Norway four ways
Fancy a life-changing experience you can complete in a week? Then sign up for a four-discipline race across the Norwegian wilderness with IGO Adventures. After two days of in-country training, you will compete against fellow nutcases on a 15-mile ski-touring course, followed on subsequent days by 26 miles each of fat-biking, cross-country skiing and running. The pricy package also includes pre-race advice on nutrition, exercise and psychology from experts at Surrey Sports Park, and — if you can still stand up — an end-of-race party. The N60 (named after its latitude) takes place in March.
Hot new goggles
A face-hugging pair of goggles makes for safer skiing or snowboarding, as your peripheral vision isn’t impeded by the frame, but the tight fit means they fog up more easily. No longer: Oakley’s battery-powered Prizm Inferno Line Miners contain a “power module” that warms up the goggles to stop fog forming on the inside of the lens. The company claims that the temperature never gets high enough to feel uncomfortable, and the goggles are the same weight as a regular pair. The module is detachable and can be recharged via USB. From £185; uk.oakley.com; £8,995pp; igoadventures.comhttp://igoadventures.com/
Come to Papa
Ernest Hemingway was no stranger to high living, so the old devil would surely have approved of this seven-day luxury yacht charter operating out of Marina Hemingway, in Havana. A local crew, chef and guide will sail you around the northern coast of Cuba, setting you ashore by dinghy for tours of Papa’s house, a tobacco plantation and old Havana; you’ll re-embark each night for sundowners or a spot of snorkelling. The boat has five double cabins and the deal includes all meals and drinks on board. It’s anchors aweigh from March.
From £3,038pp, based on 10 sharing; moorings.co.uk
Sweeter dreams
The overnight sleeper train from London to Penzance, in Cornwall — one of just two such services still running in Britain — is getting a revamp next year as part of a £7.5bn investment by Great Western Railway. The carriages will have shiny new interiors, improved cabins and more space to stow bikes — and, of course, surfboards. In exciting nightcap news, a cocktail bar will also be added. The date of the relaunch and any changes to ticket prices have yet to be announced. The other overnight service still operating is the Caledonian Sleeper, from London Euston to various stations in Scotland.
Tickets currently start at £98pp for a twin cabin, one-way; gwr.com
Cézanne bowls into town
Clear a space in your fancy diary: the blockbuster art show of 2017 has just been announced. Cézanne Portraits brings together more than 50 works by the post-impressionist master — a good quarter of his lifetime output in the genre — sourced from museums and galleries around the world, and you can see it first in Paris. It opens at the Musée d’Orsay in June before heading to the National Portrait Gallery, in London, from October 26, then the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, in March 2018. Among the works on show will be his Self-Portrait in a Bowler Hat (1885-86).
musee-orsay.fr