Author: menata9@gmail.com

The Wicklow mountains are said to be thick with gold. They’re the first thing you see when you fly into Dublin, with the strangely sloping conical head of the Sugar Loaf rearing up majestically in the distance.

The countryside is studded with tiny villages that act like the hearts at the centre of the great arteries that connect the amazing wineries of Languedoc, a kind of Frida Kahlo painting complete with angel topped sparkling fountains and tiny scrolls bearing inscriptions and dedications to viticulture’s long gone great and dead, each more picturesque than the last,

The Celts were a strange lot. Like the Egyptians, they believed the afterlife was a transition to something else, so created elaborate tombs to house their kings and queens.

I remember an old tv show called, The High Chaparral. Until I visited New Mexico, I had no idea what a ‘chaparral’ was. Or what I thought it should be. It so happens that chaparral proper only exists in parts of California and northern Baja

Paris. Fabulous. But the great places are usually very crowded. I like to go in the dead of winter when the trees are all bare and black and shaking again the frigid wind.