One of the entertaining things you can do in Istanbul is to sit in a street café and count the number of different things people come along trying to sell you while you sip your cup of “chai”. They peddle postcards, umbrellas, even socks. No socks, please, we’re British! I lived to regret saying no to the enterprising sock vendor. A couple of days after we arrived in Istanbul, it started snowing. I ended up having to buy some thermal socks in a shop.

If someone suggested going on a Spring break somewhere relaxing, where you could enjoy, sunshine, fresh air, flowers, picturesque towns, green mountains and quality local wines, what destination would come into your mind? France, Spain, Greece? Madeira, Majorca? Turkey? Maybe Germany would not be your first answer, yet all of those things can be enjoyed in Western Germany, which is closer to us than the Costa Brava. South of the industrial area, there is a spacious rural and wine-growing country, through which wind the rivers Rhine, Moselle and their tributaries. It’s a great place to relax without getting bored.

From my own experience, Ross Clark’s description in this week’s (7 August 2010) Spectator ‘Train a Grande Vexation’ of her travels across France by rail sleeper from Paris to Bourg St Maurice are not typical for most travellers. Her argument that France’s investment in its growing TGV network is some enormous vanity project does not bear up to scrutiny. Countries throughout the world, including Britain have witnessed the enormous economic development and environmental benefits of investing in such high-speed rail projects. However, due to delays caused by our pathetic ‘Nimby’ dominated planning system, it is likely that even countries, such as Russia and China, will have completed large sections of their high-speed express networks before Britain has laid its first rail.

The little town of Soller in northern Mallorca looks like just the sort of place you’d go for a quiet holiday. Green hills covered with orange and lemon trees, shady gardens where bougainvillea trails across trellises, a short tram ride down to a beach with palm trees and some surprisingly perfect (imported) sand. It is close to Deia, the glorious mountain village where Robert Graves retired, and where Bob Geldof, Jason Donovan and that sort of crowd are now rumoured to hang around. It’s definitely not the sort of place where you’d find rowdy British package-holidaymakers of the “earwig” type, getting drunk and raising hell. On the contrary, all the rowdiness and bingeing here in Soller is done by the locals who, though usually calm and phlegmatic, go wild during their annual fiesta. We had no idea about this when we booked. It was pure chance that we found ourselves there on 24th August, the festival of St. Bartholomew.

The first thing you see as you approach Sark on the boat - the first building or landmark of any kind - is the Pont Robert lighthouse, white with an octagonal tower, halfway up the green craggy slope, looking like one of those chapels or monasteries the Greeks usually build in the most inaccessible spots on remote islands and mountains. The tower looks a bit like a belfry and a little balcony runs all the way round it to give access to the light itself. Everybody snaps it with their cameras. A few minutes later, the boat docks at the Maseline Harbour, a tractor with a trailer arrives to carry you to the top of the hill and all the sensible people go to stay in comfortable hotels like the Harbour Inn or a rented cottage.

The last time I went to Corsica, two years ago, I heard that a new, super-duper high-speed railway was being built from Bastia on the East coast to Ajaccio on the West. The signs of it were plain to see in Ajaccio where the old station had been extended into the town to make space for it. Actually I’m rather fond of the existing, older trains, and I’m not the only one. The new line seemed pretty pointless to me since there is already a railway line linking the two towns, neither of them very large, and it has been there for well over a hundred years.

It’s amazing how hard being a tourist is. Take Oxford. Most day trips out of London only allow their paying customers just an hour to see the sights. That is the city of ‘dreaming spires’, its famous university and the locations where their favourite films like Harry Potter or Inspector Morse or Lewis where shot. Then they are off to some other tourist attraction like Stratford to see the Shakespeare. As a local, one feels sorry for such visitors. Oxford needs more than just one hour to look round its ancient university, see the sights and have a chance to have a real taste of the Oxford experience.