End of an Era

At the beginning of May, we gave notice to end our collaboration with Slow Travel specialists Inntravel. It wasn’t an easy decision as it’s difficult to let go of something that has given us great joy and satisfaction over the years. But circumstances change, and we’ve known for some time it was the right thing to do.

It was a relationship that wouldn’t have got off the ground had it been up to me. We regularly received emails from people and organisations looking to mine our specialist knowledge of the Canary Islands for free, TV companies were some of the worst offenders. I dismissed an email from Inntravel as one of them. Thankfully, Andy had a good feeling about it and responded. That was in 2012. Since then, the collaboration has taken us to numerous off the beaten track parts of Europe to create Slow Travel holidays, notching up the most incredible experiences along the way.

Sometimes these were quirky, sometimes they were magical, and sometimes they were because of things going wrong. There are zillions I could mention, but these are the first ten that popped into my head.

No bus in Kaiserstuhl

After catching a supposedly connecting train, and despite having checked with our hotel’s receptionist there were buses on a Sunday, we found ourselves sitting on a pavement in a deserted Braisach with no public transport to take us to the proposed starting point for our final walk. It was the last day of a two week mission to pull together a walking holiday in Germany’s Black Forest. In a way, this type of situation often ended up giving the most satisfaction. Maps were scoured and an alternative plan was hatched, resulting in an impromptu circular walk which took in sunken lanes, bee-eaters, charming villages, and hüttes with views over vineyards which looked as if they’d been created by Escher.

Drinking washing-up liquid

One of the most challenging holidays to pull together was on La Palma, where only the combined specialist knowledge of ourselves and our friend and work colleague James resulted in Slow Travel experiences on La Isla Bonita that other UK walking companies are unlikely to match. It also involved sitting on a pavement, scratching heads and poring over maps. At one point, we were invited into the oficina diplomática of a man who owned rural accommodation. This ‘office’ was basically a shed full of quirky items. But it also had a leg of jamón, from which our host cut wafer-thin slices which he served with a green liquid from a washing-up bottle. Thankfully, it was a liqueur. The bottle was meant to fool his wife.

The surreal

I’d wanted to visit France’s Camargue ever since reading Alistair MacLean’s Caravan to Vaccarès. It didn’t disappoint. There were no spies, but there were gypsies, black bulls, and white horses. Highlight of an area which inspired The Gypsy Kings and a song by Bob Dylan was sitting on a church roof enjoying views across the rooftops of Saintes Maries de la Mer.

Being models in the Pyrenees

Occasionally, our work involved more than route-finding and researching for guides, like the time we spent a few days in the Spanish Pyrenees as models for some promo material. We were, to put it bluntly, shite. We couldn’t even act walking. And as for cycling … awful. But we did laugh a lot, even if poor filmmaker Bob C didn’t. To make matters worse, on the eve of the first shoot, as we tucked into an al fresco dinner in Santa Pau, I was bitten on the face by a tiger mosquito. By the following morning, a huge red disc covered most of one cheek. It was a short-lived career.

A WTF moment

While attending to a problem with a walking route in a remote area of the Minho in Portugal, we spotted a couple coming toward us with what looked like walking directions in their hand. It wasn’t an area where there were many (any) British holidaymakers prior to the walking holiday we’d helped create there, so it was a reasonable assumption they were Inntravel customers. It was no surprise when we asked, ‘Are you with Inntravel?’ and one of them replied, ‘Yes.’ What floored us was the follow-up, ‘Are you Jack and Andy Montgomery?’ It turned out they were related to a woman both of us worked with in Stockport many years ago and had been following our writing since our Tenerife days.

Out of character

When the result of the Brexit referendum was announced, we were staying in a mountain village on Corsica. Our evening meals were in a restaurant run by a trio we called ‘the bad boys of Olmi-Cappella’. These were gruff individuals who looked as though they’d be more at home wearing leathers and revving Harley-Davidsons. They didn’t respond well to the outcome of the referendum, something we deftly sidestepped by pointing out I was Scottish, while Andy used her Irish heritage to deflect their obvious irritation at the foolish Brits. We saw another side to them when the restaurant’s pet tortoise went missing and these three hard guys spent ages anxiously scouring the undergrowth, talking in the sort of voices people use to talk to babies.

Going local

Immersive travel means never saying no … within reason. This approach led to us enjoying a family Easter dinner with our hosts on Andros – a sumptuous feast of Greek cuisine where none of the family members spoke a word of English. I’ll never forget being asked if I wanted to take photos of the centrepiece lamb, cooked in a pit in the traditional way, and then being presented with an unidentifiable lump completely covered in aluminium foil.

Having doubts

Off the beaten track can be an over-used term. I’ve seen it applied to places that are anything but. Yet, many of the locations we visited were deserving of the title. So much so, that on occasions it prompted a debate about the ethics of bringing holidaymakers to unspoiled areas. As we walked through a village in Portugal’s Peneda-Gerês National Park, we spotted a couple of elderly women leaning out their windows, watching us with curious eyes. Foreign walkers were clearly not a sight they were used to. Knowing it would become more common in a few months sowed seeds of doubt about what we were doing. And then we spotted a big dog beside the path which wasn’t a big dog at all, it was a wolf, and all concerns about the ethics of travel vanished.

On the other hand…

Walking the Camino de Santiago from Spain’s border with Portugal during COVID threw up all manner of unusual and unique experiences. Two especially packed an emotional punch. One was the joyous cries of ‘Pelegrinos! Pelegrinos!’ from schoolchildren when they saw us passing. We started walking on the day the border between Spain and Portugal opened; pilgrims had been absent for a long time. More emotional was the woman who stopped her car when she saw us and gushed in Spanish, ‘How happy I am to see pilgrims again.’ Both made us realise how important to some areas this type of tourism is. Plus, there was the added impact of our presence being a sign of a possible return to normality.

Surprise, it’s Tenerife

One of the holidays I’m most proud of is a discovery of Tenerife. It was originally called Valleys, Vines, and Volcanoes, but has undergone a name change to something instantly forgettable to appease the gods of SEO. It took us a couple of years to convince our colleagues at Inntravel they weren’t fully tapping into Tenerife’s potential. The trouble with Tenerife is its ‘fly and flop reputation’ overshadows the reality of what the island is all about – one of the reasons we launched our The Real Tenerife website back in 2006. We knew that if the right package was put together it would be a winner. Every so often, I read glowing reviews from customers who are surprised and delighted, many of them first-time visitors. Being able to show a completely different side to a destination many think they know is one of the most satisfying achievements of our work with Inntravel.

And now it is over … but the Slow Travel experiences aren’t. With perfect timing to remind us of this, we’ve just returned from one of the most enjoyable travel adventures in years – a real voyage of discovery in a part of Italy where there were few tourists and English wasn’t widely spoken. It was fun, challenging, and packed with memories that will last as long as the ones above.