Jetsettersblog

Open House London this year takes place over the weekend of 19–20 September.

For two days hundreds of buildings will be open to the public for free – from eco-homes to a Hindu temple, from a yacht club to architects’ studios.

There will be a special focus on examples of sustainable design, with the professionals who commission, plan and design the buildings talking about regeneration and urban development and leading some of the site tours.

There will be over 700 architectural activities from talks and tours, visits and debates offering visitors direct access to the teams that construct and regenerate London.

Hundreds of professionals and enthusiasts volunteer their time over the weekend as architectural guides and stewards.

Many of London’s landmarks are open for the weekend, including government buildings, City Hall and Lloyd’s of London.

All events are free.

Full details of buildings and events will be published in the 2009 Guide which will be available from 11 August and can be ordered online.

Open House London, 19–20 September
Website: www.openhouse.org.uk

The 2009 World Stone Skimming Championships will take place on Easdale Island, by Oban, Argyll in Scotland on 27 September.

The competition regularly attracts over 200 entrants. Last year as well as Easdale Islanders, competitors came from elsewhere in Scotland, and from England, Wales, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Kenya, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

In a rival event, the USA World Stone Skipping Championships, entries are judged on the number of times the stone bounces on the water. But in Scotland, although the stone must hit the water at least three times, the winner of the Skimming Championships is whoever skims the stone for the longest distance. Eric Robertson won the 2008 Championships with a skim of 54 metres (177ft).

The day before the event is known as Set Up Saturday and a pre-skim party is held in the village hall.

The Easdale Island village hall was built in 1871 as a drill hall for the island’s volunteer force and recently renovated. It is a unique structure, with a 7-metre (23-ft) high central column supporting a pyramidal slate roof. The column was originally a ship’s mast, generally agreed to be from the sailing ship Norval which sank nearby in 1870 while carrying wood from Montreal to Glasgow.

Easdale Island, by Oban, Argyll, Scotland
Website: www.stoneskimming.com

The inaugural London Restaurant Festival will run from 8 to 13 October.

It will be a citywide celebration of eating out in the capital and will highlight the fact that food, warmth, conversation, nurturing and sociability are as vital to a city as its transport system, education or health service.

Planned events include Gourmet Odysseys on London buses travelling different routes from course to course, a Vietnamese street food festival and a Dragon’s Den open pitch where would-be restaurateurs try to interest industry tycoons in their business ideas.

There are plans for a University Challenge-style quiz with top London chefs competing against New York chefs, a food film festival (‘Eat Film’) that will feature restaurants picked to match film plots and Festival Menus in every kind of restaurant.

The Festival will open with a launch party co-hosted by Vanity Fair magazine at Quaglino’s on 7 October, and end with the London Restaurant Festival Awards at a gala evening on 13 October with food prepared by a team of London’s most inspiring chefs.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, says: ‘London’s restaurant scene is world-class, with a massive 6,000 eateries.

The sheer scale and diversity of the capital’s gastronomic delights is testament to the vibrancy of our city and the many communities living and eating here.

Their importance to the capital’s economy cannot be underestimated as they provide a tasty enticement for people who visit, work and live in our city. So it is timely that this exciting new festival has been launched to celebrate all that is best about London’s restaurants.’ 

London Restaurant Festival 8–13 October
Website: www.londonrestaurantfestival.com

The LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair will be held in a purpose-built marquee in Berkeley Square in London’s Mayfair on 24–27 September.

There will be around 90 exhibitors at the Fair, which is staged by LAPADA, the UK’s largest association of professional art and antiques dealers. On sale will be works of art and objects from all periods to mid-20th century.

There will also be some contemporary art. The Fair will include fine English and European furniture, sculpture, porcelain, statuary, clocks, glass, antiquities and works of art.

Prices will range from around £100 to over £100,000.

All LAPADA members abide by the association’s strict Code of Practice and every piece offered for sale at the Fair is fully vetted by a team of experts.

The LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair, Berkeley Square is one of four important arts fairs taking place in September.

These four have formed the London Art & Antiques Collective to promote London’s cultural buying events.

Berkeley Square is one of London’s most famous squares, immortalised in Eric Maschwitz’s song A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square. Most of the buildings date from the 18th century and No 50 is said to be the most haunted house in Britain.

Websites: www.lapadalondon.com
www.londonartandantiquescollective.com

A new event space opens in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) later this year.

The John Hope Gateway will contain a Gateway Restaurant, the David Douglas Room for VIP events and the Patrick Geddes Room education facility.
The John Hope Gateway will be a demonstration site for promoting sustainability in design and will include many features such as a biomass boiler, rainwater harvesting, a wind turbine, solar collectors and photovoltaic solar panels. The building has a roof garden planted with sedum.

Professor John Hope was a leading 18th-century botanist and teacher. David Douglas was a Scottish botanist who worked at the Botanical Gardens of Glasgow and Sir Patrick Geddes was a biologist and innovative urban planner.

The £15.7-million development project will offer visitors the chance to explore the scientific work that takes place at the garden, which currently welcomes around 660,000 visitors each year and hosts over 700 annual events.

The new restaurant will provide a versatile corporate or private venue for up to 190 guests. Where possible locally sourced food will be served and only biodegradable packaging used.

The timber for the tabletops is from trees felled in the RBGE’s four gardens in Edinburgh, Benmore in Argyll, Logan in Dumfries & Galloway and Dawyck in the Scottish Borders.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh dates back to 1670 when it was Scotland’s first physic garden on a small patch of ground at Holyrood Park no bigger than a tennis court.

The garden moved to Inverleith in 1820. The 28 hectares (70 acres) of landscaped garden are 2km (1 mile) from the city centre. The garden is open daily, admission free.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR
Website: www.rbge.org.uk

To coincide with Homecoming Year in Scotland, the Fairmont St Andrews resort hotel is offering guests an opportunity to explore their Scottish roots with Brian Thomson, the leading Scottish authority on ancestral searches.

The standard Ancestry at Fairmont St Andrews package includes a ‘family tree search taster’ and a copy of photographer Andy Hall’s book of images A Sense of Belonging to Scotland. Guests who wish to delve deeper can request a private meeting at the hotel with Dr Thomson, who will discuss their family history and advise them on a tailor-made search for their ancestors.

Prices start at US$256 per room per night and the package is available until the end of the year.

The recently renovated 209-bedroom hotel is in a 210-hectare (520-acre) estate on the Fife coast of Scotland. It overlooks the St Andrews links where golf has been played since around 1400AD.

Fairmont St Andrews

St Andrews, Scotland KY16 8PN

Tel: +44 1334 837000

Website: www.fairmont.com/stAndrews

Bronllys Castle in mid-Wales has reopened to the public after four months of essential conservation maintenance.

Bronllys Castle is a late-11th or early-12-century motte with a 24-metre (80ft) tower. A motte was a type of fortification that used an artificial mound to support a defensible structure on its summit.

The 16-week conservation project included a range of access improvements, new robust metal access stairs to the tower and improvements to the main entrance. The work is part of the ongoing commitment of Cadw, the Welsh Assembly’s historic environment service, to improve access to and around its sites.

Some internal works to the tower were postponed until late spring to cause minimum disruption to the colony of bats hibernating over the winter in the cellar.
Mial Watkins, Principal Architect with Cadw, says: ‘Due to the amount of conservation work and the need to provide robust low-maintenance access steps at Bronllys Castle it was necessary to close the monument for a considerable amount of time. During this period we have also undertaken selective tree felling to allow views to and from the castle. We hope visitors will appreciate the improvements made on site which now open up the castle like never before.’

Bronllys Castle, Talgarth, Powys

Website: www.cadw.wales.gov.uk

The 4-star London Bridge Hotel has now been fully renovated. The hotel rooms were traditionally styled and have been given an urban and contemporary redesign by interior designer Ann Jordan.

Her design for the hotel’s Londinium restaurant was inspired by a view of London through the eyes of Peter Ackroyd in his book London – The Biography.

The corridor fire doors are covered in artwork by batik artist Annie Phillips.

The hotel has 138 rooms and suites and three two-bedroom apartments fully equipped with kitchen and living/dining room.

Six bedrooms have been adapted for disabled guests. There are four non-smoking floors and the hotel offers free wireless internet.

Five meeting and private rooms can accommodate up to 80 people.

Daily delegate rates start at £85 per person.

The hotel is near the City area, the food-lovers Borough Market and the South Bank on the Thames.

The historic area has been used as a film location for Bridget Jones’s Diary, Entrapment and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

London Bridge Hotel opened in 1998 and was previously a wartime telephone exchange.

Prices from £99 a night (Friday–Sunday) including English breakfast.

London Bridge Hotel, 8–18 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9SG
Tel: +44 20 7855 2200

Website: www.londonbridgehotel.com

Britain’s leading guided walking tours specialist operator, Ramblers Countrywide Holidays is offering a 5 night holiday in Bowness on Windermere in the Lake District – one of the UK’s most stunning destinations.

A walkers paradise, this holiday embraces, the fell country around England’s largest lake, the woodlands of Claife Heights, the seclusion of Little Langdale and Elterwater and the tranquillity of Blelham Tarn and Tarn Hows.

Also featured, are visits to the beautiful Lakeland villages of Coniston and Hawkshead, Orrest Head (which so inspired Alfred Wainwright, arguably the greatest Lakeland walker of them all).

And to cap it all, accommodation for this holiday is at the famous Lindeth Howe Country House Hotel, Bowness on Windermere set in six glorious acres of private gardens with spectacular views over the lake and fells. Orginally built in 1893 and later owned by Beatrix Potter, this is the perfect base for leisurely forays around the sundry hills.

Lake steamer piers are just 20 minutes on foot from the hotel which adds new dimensions to this wide ranging walking holiday.

Prices from - £499 (6 days) includes half-board accommodation at The Lindeth Howe Country House Hotel and the services of a tour leader.

www.RamblersCountrywide.co.uk Tel: 01707 386800

Remote, wild and beautiful, Scotland’s islands offer a wonderful way to escape the hassle of mainland life. With unique character, stunning wildlife and superb landscapes, they are also home to some of Scotland’s most remote and interesting communities.

Working with VisitScotland, we are currently arranging press visits to Scotland’s islands to learn more about island life and to see first hand how perfect they are for a good old fashioned ‘staycation’ or for a life changing move. If you are interested in visiting, please get in touch.

Cocklestrand on Traigh Mhor, Barra
Set in the Outer Hebrides, Traigh Mhor beach is the only beach in the world that doubles as a landing strip for scheduled flights.

Flights from nearby island, Benbecula and from Glasgow Airport can land here, but only when the tide is out. Barra featured in the 1949 Ealing Comedy, Whisky Galore, and the history of its people, its remote landscapes and its famous blackhouses make it one of the most fascinating of Scotland’s islands.

North End, Iona

Painted by many because of distinctive blue sea and stunning white sand, the North end of Iona is a sparkling gem of a spot unknown to many.

This tiny island attracts over half a million visitors a year who cross on the ten minute ferry ride from the Isle of Mull.

But few of them walk the mile beyond the famous and historic Abbey to find this hidden gem.

The birthplace of Christianity in Scotland, Iona represents a personal pilgrimage for many and a holiday hideaway for others.

St Ninians, Shetland

This picture is seen by many on calendars and postcards, but few people ever get the chance to kick of their shoes and curl their toes in this lovely soft white sand. With the UK’s most active tombolo (a narrow strip of sand linking the island) this beach is almost too beautiful to believe.

Nearby, in 1958 a local schoolboy unearthed ‘St Ninian’s Treasure’ simply by lifting a rock marked slab within the sand buried remains of an old church. The treasure includes trinkets and silver dating from as early as 800AD.

Kiloran Bay, Colonsay

With views through the haze towards the lovely Isle of Mull, Kiloran Bay on the tiny island of Colonsay has a wide sweep of golden sand which is usually deserted.

The island offers a real getaway to visitors and includes a great little hotel, The Isle of Colonsay Hotel, plus a few cottages on the island for visitors keen to discover this serious retreat for wilderness lovers.

Port Ellen, Islay

Miles of golden island sand greet the visitor to Islay and on a sunny day, it is true paradise. Islay is well known for its eight whisky distilleries, each of which draws the distinctive flavour of its whisky from the peat, seaspray and seaweed.

This beach will also host this year’s Islay Beach Rugby tournament featuring 20 teams from all over the UK. Sponsored by local distillery, Bruichladdich, this event really puts the remote island of Islay on the international rugby map and offers locals and visitors alike the most unique game of rugby they might ever play.