HTSI editor’s letter: run away with me ...
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
What’s the difference between the Travel issue and the Escape issue, you might well ask. At HTSI, we think of travel as being about the more muscular adventures, while escape is a more fleeting experience, more whimsical, and more likely to feature loads of sea. The issue comes out on the cusp of summer, as the school curriculum wraps up another year. It’s all sports days and concerts and camping trips, and heading off on longed-for holidays with loved ones (by which I mean my dog).
I’ve spent the past month travelling near-constantly for work. The places I’ve glanced through have included Avignon, Stockholm, Barcelona and Lake Como, each as alluring as the other. But as spoiling and exciting as they are, I have longed to escape back to my home in north-west London and re-establish some normality in my routine. On my first weekend off for ages, I set off for a hike (this season’s unseasonably dry weather has been kind to those who love to be outside). My ramble took me to West Wycombe, seat of the Dashwood family and the mysterious Hellfire Caves. Only 40 minutes outside London, the seven-mile excursion past cricket pitches and “pleasure palaces” proved the best reset.
Hence I read with interest, and some degree of envy, Grace Cook’s account of a bothy tour across the Cambrian Mountains in Wales. Bothies are tiny shepherd’s huts built on remote hillsides, now tended to by two philanthropic bodies, and mostly free of charge. All you need are some firelighters and a sleeping bag, plus the courage to face whoever else rocks up to stay: David Beckham stayed in a bothy to mark his 50th birthday, recording it via a selfie with his sons. Grace’s journey is by turns meditative, boring and ultimately uplifting – and often some combination of the three.
Were I to nominate a dream house, it would be hard to compete with the Villa Santo Sospir on the Côte d’Azur. The house in which Jean Cocteau holidayed for more than a decade is still covered, wall to wall, in his frescoes. Now, following a very careful renovation, it is available to rent. Few things could be more fantastic – and fantastical – than to wake up with a masterpiece above your head.
Then again, on reading Hester Underhill’s piece on Büyükada, I am intrigued to visit the isle. Described as the “Turkish Capri”, its seaside town provided a refuge for Leon Trotsky as well as high society, who flocked to the discreet resort in the early 20th century. As Hester discovers, the island has lost none of its charm in the intervening decades. She enjoys the best kind of escape – immersion in a bygone age.
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