The rowdy crowd abruptly parts like the Red Sea and a big bearded bloke runs full pelt out of the darkness straight towards me, his whole head apparently ablaze. On his shoulders he’s carrying a burning beer barrel, and flames flicker ferociously in his wild eyes.
“Oh bollocks!” I yelp, suddenly aware that these eloquent words could be my last. Transfixed by the vision of this demented-looking figure bearing down on me, I’ve left it too late to get out of his path. A wall of over-excited onlookers surrounds me and there’s no gap to duck into. It feels like the running of the bulls, with angry bovines replaced by immolating men. And there’s nowhere left to run.
At the last minute, burning man performs a preposterous pirouette, as elegant as it is unexpected. The inferno intensifies with the oxygen rush that his flourish creates and the spectators let out an appreciative roar. Another man steps forward from the throng and the blazing baton is passed to a new runner, who immediately charges up the street, scattering people asunder and leaving a comet tail of sparks in his wake.
A quick self-check confirms I’m not on fire and – except for a few eyelashes that have disappeared in an acrid-smelling puff of smoke – most of my hair is still where I left it before arriving at Ottery St Mary’s Flaming Tar Barrels festival.
I should have known what to expect, I suppose. There’s a clue or two in the name, to be fair. And the town – normally a sleepy ever-so-English hamlet in the heart of bucolic Devon – has put up more than a few signs warning that tonight will be different. Tonight – like every 5th of November in Ottery – the townsfolk will party like it’s 1699.
Still, I wasn’t expecting the festival to throw off the health-and-safety straitjacket in quite such spectacular fashion. I’m awed. And impressed. And a little bit scared – in roughly equal measures.
Impressed because beardy burning-head dude is proof that you can get away with almost anything in supposedly polite and reserved Britain if history is on your side. The people of this idiosyncratic isle have never shied away from bizarre festivals and events that pose a pretty good threat to limb – life even – so long as there’s a tradition behind it.
This holds true, even if the actual origins of that tradition have long since been forgotten. No one really knows how many years people have been running around with burning barrels in Ottery – or, indeed, why – but it’s thought to date back several centuries (at least as far as the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, and the subsequent execution of Guy Fawkes).
Andy Wade, who’s been involved in the event for 30 years, tells me that many places in England’s south-west used to hold festivals where burning barrels were rolled around. “But one year – a long, long time ago – some bright spark in Ottery obviously decided that things would be a lot more exciting if you picked the barrel up,” Andy says. “And our unique tradition was born.”
For centuries, it was just the good folk of Ottery who enjoyed this festival, but in more recent years it’s achieved international fame – along with other eccentric British events like the one that sees people breaking their legs chasing a wheel of cheese down a steep hill in Gloucestershire, or eating stinging nettles in Dorset. This is the kind of thing people watched before reality TV was invented, and I for one glow with nostalgic appreciation of such sensational spectator sports.
For a few mad minutes, caught up in the combustive energy of the event (and feeling the effect of several courage-laced pints of scrumpy), I feel like I want to do more than just watch – I want to have a go and really glow. Fortunately, however, I can’t. Charging around the streets of a small village lined with thatched cottages and wielding a blazing barrel is an honour reserved exclusively for locals (whose houses are, after all, most at risk).
I must be content with the rush produced by getting as close to the action as possible without actually going up in flames. At the beginning, during the children’s event (yep, there really is a kids’ version – the loads are smaller, but they burn just as hot as the big boys’ barrels), this is relatively easy. As the evening wears on, however, the streets get increasingly crowded and just being here becomes an adrenaline sport.
Actually, the shenanigans aren’t quite as explosively anarchic as they may seem from the outside. “The runners are extremely experienced,” Andy explains. “They come up through the ranks, starting with the kids’ barrels when they’re eight years old, then progressing to the intermediate barrels. Then, if they’re big enough and ugly enough, they move up to the men’s barrels.”
The whole thing clearly creates a real sense of local pride, and the community spends months preparing for one night of fire-starting festivities. Throughout the year, 17 barrels are regularly daubed with tar, part of the priming process for when they’ll be set ablaze during the evening of 5 November.
Traditionally, each barrel is sponsored by a public house, although only four of the town’s original pubs remain – The Lamb and Flag, The Volunteer, The London and the Kings Arms. The barrels are lit outside each of these alehouses to an itinerary published in a little booklet that is available on the night.
Officials then roll the barrel around until the flames really take hold, at which point a designated carrier steps forward and hoists it onto his (or her) shoulders and starts running. There’s no competitive element as such – the challenge is simply to keep hold of the barrel for as long as possible (even when it’s disintegrating around the holder’s ears) and to make sure it stays alight.
Inevitably, every year there are complaints from people who feel the event is unsafe. Andy’s message to them is simple: “The atmosphere is light-hearted, but barrels do get run through the streets. If you don’t like it, please stand back. And don’t touch or interfere with the barrels – the boys really don’t like that.
“Visitors have to remember that we don’t make any money out of this – the collections that take place on the night just about cover costs. Every year getting insurance is a problem. Of course there are injuries, but more of these are caused by factors other than the barrels – like people boozing too much and falling over.”
Although the barrel runners aren’t allowed to drink until they’ve finished, the crowd picks up the slack on the cider-swilling front. The older the night gets, the more boisterous the atmosphere becomes. And if detractors think the event is crazy now, it’s a good job they weren’t here a few years ago, before health and safety became such a big issue.
“It was proper mayhem when I was young,” Andy reminisces fondly. “People used to get cidered-up and there was plenty of fighting over the barrels. Things used to get sorted out on November 5.”
For the people of Ottery, it’s more about the perpetuation of a proud tradition than staging an internationally known spectacle. “Many of these guys come from families that have a connection with the event going back generations,” Andy says. “The fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers of these lads carried barrels. It’s an honour to be a barrel runner. There’s an Ottery-born bloke who comes back from Australia most years to take part.”
And for the rest of us non-Otterians, it’s one hell of a shindig. A free one too. So long as you don’t mind donating a few eyelashes to the cause.
Glasgow’s multifaceted and charmingly rugged West End has moved through an intriguing transition over the past decade. Prior to the recent explosion of hip independents and a burgeoning gastronomic scene, pockets of well-heeled affluence posed amid student clusters, social-housing blocks and culturally diverse districts. Now, while a plethora of cultures, tastes and classes exist independently, the rich milieu has softened around the edges, blending harmoniously and contributing to the vibrant atmosphere that makes Glasgow the city it is.
My mother tells wild tales of her days as a student nurse in the 1970s tearing up the West End in her grandmother’s mink fur coat and burgundy suede platform boots. I love to imagine the chaos caused and exactly how the many hotspots that featured in her paisley-printed escapades looked back then. A surprising number of Mum’s old haunts are still standing, albeit many under their second, third or umpteenth guise. There are shadows of Campus, her favourite Gibson Street dress shop, still visible in the quirky coffee shop Offshore Cafe, where laptops line the bustling window-ledge bar. When Mum visits Glasgow our fondness for a shared glass of wine near an open fire, a dog lazing by the hearth and the authenticity of a coat hook beneath the bar is shared perfectly at the Ubiquitous Chip, a Glasgow institution on Ashton Lane, established in 1971.
Naturally, a great deal has changed cosmetically since that era, although as long as the people of the West End remain, the feel of the neighbourhood will never diminish. For the locals are the true lifeblood of the area. Stretching from the M8 Motorway, which separates the west from Glasgow’s cosmopolitan city centre, the West End spans a relatively vast scale, all the way from Finnieston, perched on the edge of the River Clyde to the north, to Great Western Road where an array of ethnic cultures has settled. Here, it’s possible to sample Eastern cuisine and alternative therapies in the vicinity of many temples of worship. Precisely how far West Glasgow’s West End reaches is debatable. I imagine the boundary to sit where Hyndland’s leafy periphery meanders into Clydebank, a region renowned internationally for its shipbuilding and the one and only Billy Connolly.
Like many districts in the world’s finest cities, Glasgow’s West End is best explored on foot and, for me, this presents the perfect opportunity to venture out of the atelier where I work with a visiting friend, client or simply with my camera, sketchbook and the weekend papers.
Traversing a few blocks to Great Western Road, I like to take a leisurely Saturday morning stroll westward as Indian grocers lay out their wares for the day and a steady stream of weekend brunchers begins trickling into the cafes – including the Cottonrake Bakery – that dot the street all the way to the Botanic Gardens. When you reach the Kibble Palace, be sure to peer in on tangles of colourful plant life under the exquisite glass ceiling.
At George Mewes Cheese pause to breathe in the heady deliciousness and select a ripe little number, then head for an artisan brunch of coffee and eggs royale at Cafezique on Hyndland Street. Locally sourced seasonal produce and freshly baked breads, patisserie and cakes baked at sister eatery Delizique, just one door along, take centre stage here. If seats are few within the cafe, the deli boasts a selection of tables where guests can brunch, lunch or sip coffee among glistening stacks of focaccia, Portuguese tarts, raspberry brownies and monstrous meringues while gazing at the masterful chefs in their open-plan kitchen.
Suitably fuelled, trundle by the farmers’ market (held on the second and fourth Saturday of the month), where local producers present delicacies such as venison medallions, hot smoked salmon and delicious Scottish cheese truckles.
Only 10 minutes’ walk away is the majestic Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, an otherworldly treasure trove of arts and fascinating exhibits (it also stocks signature scarves and interior pieces from our brand portfolio). Gazing at works by the Glasgow Boys – a group of artists, including George Henry and James Guthrie, who practised Impressionist and post-Impressionist painting in the 1880s and 90s – and Scottish Colourists is a joy I will never tire of. Posing for fun shots by the taxidermy exhibits and hopscotching over the impressive expanse of chequerboard floor evokes many cherished childhood memories – most poignantly, the moment I fell in love with painting on a high school art trip. Depart via the rear revolving doors – or perhaps they’re at the front, depending on how you interpret the famous story of the building’s planning history. Legend has it the Kelvingrove was built back to front, leading to the suicide of the architect at the helm.
Head along Kelvin Way, the tree-lined boulevard separating either side of Kelvingrove Park, then journey down Gibson Street under the gaze of the University of Glasgow cathedral, dazzling in the sunlight. Drop by Thistle Gallery on Park Road, which often hosts an exhibition launch on Saturday afternoon. It only opened in late 2014, but already the gallery has become a neighbourhood staple, and I’m honoured to have them represent me as an artist.
By this stage of the afternoon it’s time to wander back to the atelier (Iona Crawford Atelier) for what has become something of a Saturday afternoon ritual. After they’ve toured the garment and interiors showrooms, design studio and gallery space – pausing to try on garments in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror or take measurements for a specially tailored piece – we serve our guests a champagne afternoon tea. Warm game pies, finger sandwiches, scones with jam and clotted cream, lemon drizzle cake and millionaire shortbread are all handmade and freshly baked, either within my father’s butcher shop and bakery or by my dear mother in the farmhouse kitchen where I grew up in the Stirlingshire countryside.
Worth exploring in the afternoon is Finnieston. Within the past five years or so, it has established itself as one of the hippest spots in the West End – indeed, in all of Glasgow. Contemporary bars, restaurants, cafes, chic blow-dry salons, vintage boutiques, independent design firms, art galleries and delicatessens continue to throw open their doors each month. The catalyst – in my eyes – was a restaurant named Crabshakk. Shunning the trend for overcomplicated, overpriced seafood served in stuffy, often dated surrounds, the ’Shakk took a pioneering approach. Whether a stool at their buzzing marble-top bar or around a cosy table on the bijou mezzanine level, every seat in the house is red hot. Guests can turn up, casual as you like, and order anything from moules marinière and mineral water to exquisite fruits de mer and a bottle of the restaurant’s elegant house champagne. Much to the delight of Glasgow’s ’Shakk loving aficionados and the ever expanding army of Finnieston foodie fanatics, Crabshakk launched a sibling in 2012 which, like the Cafezique/Delizique pairing, is situated only a skip and a jump along Argyle Street from the original. Serving small plates of seasonally sourced and exquisitely prepared seafood, Table 11 Oyster Bar is a great place to grab a quick plate and a glass of wine, or settle in for the evening, grazing the inviting menu until late-night pintxos (Spanish snacks) hit the bar. If an end-of-the-eve sing-along takes your fancy, the Ben Nevis is an amble across the road. Here, locals and visitors pile in, instruments in tow, jamming into the wee small hours and sipping malt from the impressive whisky gantry. Although when only cocktails can cut it, nothing beats the Kelvingrove Café’s speakeasy vibe or an exquisite Intermission martini at Porter & Rye.
This is one perplexing country. Its place in history, from Mongol raids to the Russian Enlightenment and on to the twentieth century (with revolution, two World Wars, Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, it wasn’t always kind), is awe-inspiring enough, but in recent years it has become much easier to get your hands on a visa and head to this multifaceted nation.
This is the biggest country in the world, bordering both Europe and Asia, so there’s no end to the landscape that can be explored. Vast areas of the north are part of the Arctic Circle. There are few roads here, but travellers with a taste for adventure can visit nomadic Nenets reindeer herders or indigenous whale hunters on the Bering Sea, albeit only with a specialised tour company. In the country’s far southeast there are even some decent beaches near the city of Vladivostok.
The spirit of the people is one of survival, even if they have had the help of a little vodka. Russia’s recent affluence has meant of cities like Moscow and St Petersburg are suddenly far more cosmopolitan, so along with considerable historical drawcards – the Kremlin and the Hermitage, for example – you’ll also find outposts of Nobu, rooftop bars and velvet-rope nightlife.
Of course, the Trans-Siberian Railway, which travels through the country from Moscow to Vladivostok, is one of those journeys nearly everyone has etched on to their bucket list. More than 30 per cent of Russia’s population uses it, so it’s an amazing way to cover the landscape and meet the locals too.
First, imagine you’re managing some of the biggest bands in the known universe and that, somehow, you’ve been busted – caught up in the midst of a drug deal that involved importing about 18,000 kilograms of marijuana from Colombia to the USA. Then imagine you somehow talked the judge into a pocket-change fine with the promise of using your influence in the world of rock to start an anti-drugs foundation.
It sounds like the sort of storyline fuelling a fantastical comedy movie, but in truth that’s exactly what happened. In 1989 Doc McGhee pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting, copped the US$15,000 penalty and a five-year suspended sentence, and convinced the judge to let him hold his version of Woodstock 20 years later and half a world away. The Moscow Music Peace Festival would take metal to the kids of the USSR and teach them all that drugs are bad. Proceeds from the gig and the accompanying compilation album would pay for doctors from the States to fly to the Soviet Union to train its medical staff in rehabilitation, since electroshock therapy was still one of its preferred options for treating drug addiction.
At the time McGhee was minding the careers of some huge acts – Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, The Scorpions and a Russian group called Gorky Park – and had connections to Ozzy Osbourne and Cinderella. When local acts Nuance and Brigada S were added to the bill, it looked – on paper – to be one of the greatest gigs of all time. All that hair, all that metal, all those riffs, all taking place over two days in a stadium that seated 100,000 people. But this would also be the first rock concert in the USSR where punters would be allowed to stand and inhabit the field area, so an even larger crowd was expected.
But with big names come big egos. Add to what might already be a volatile scenario a load of blokes with well-documented issues with alcohol and drugs (the Crüe were straight out of rehab and, only weeks later, Ozzy would be charged with trying to strangle Sharon after he drank all the miniature bottles of Russian vodka one of the promoters gave him) and you’ve got the makings for a fairly interesting few days.
“It was all bad from the moment we stepped on the plane,” Tommy Lee said in the Mötley Crüe biography The Dirt. “There was a so-called doctor on board, who was plying the bands who weren’t sober with whatever medicine they needed. It was clear this was going to be a monumental festival of hypocrisy.”
Everyone involved in the tour was staying in the only ‘five-star’ hotel in Moscow, which was anything but. One journalist described cockroaches clinging to the walls, cigarette butts floating in the toilet, water that ran brown and prostitutes roaming the halls. Wandering around Red Square the day after arriving, Osbourne was disdainful, recalled Mick Wall in his book Appetite for Destruction: The Mick Wall Interviews. “If I was living here full-time, I’d probably be dead of alcoholism, or sniffing car tyres – anything to get out of it,” said the rocker. “I can understand why there’s an alcohol problem here. There’s nothing else to do.”
It didn’t help that McGhee had been promising every band on the bill the world. Concerned about where the money from proceeds would really end up, Aerosmith had pulled out of the event at the last minute and insisted their contribution on the accompanying album, Stairway to Heaven, Highway to Hell, be removed before the record went on sale. The night before the first show, cut about the fact he’d been moved from third on the bill to fourth – with the Crüe muscling into the space he’d left – Osbourne threatened to go home. So McGhee reshuffled again and Ozzy stayed. Word on the street was most of the bands weren’t particularly stoked Bon Jovi – a band most metal fans considered to be closer to pop than hard rock – was even on the bill, never mind headlining. It’s true to say the guys from Mötley Crüe hated their New Jersey counterparts. When Bon Jovi closed with a fireworks show, which the others had been told wasn’t going to happen to save money, Tommy Lee was so incensed he stormed up to McGhee, punched him in the face and fired him as the band’s manager. Weeks later Bon Jovi did the same thing (minus the sock in the mouth).
For all the agro, the music was an out-and-out success. Each band played six songs, with the Scorpions, who were the only band to have played behind the Iron Curtain (10 sold-out gigs in Leningrad about 18 months earlier), lapping up the fervour of the crowd. Each evening finished with a huge jam, with members of all the bands joining Jason Bonham, son of the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, on stage to finish up with the Zep classic ‘Rock and Roll’.
For Bonham, then 23 years old, it was an emotional time, despite what was going on around him. His father had died in 1980 of a heart attack apparently induced by excessive drinking. “Substance abuse is a very difficult issue because no one likes to admit they have a problem, but if you take it one step too far you can end up dead,” he said in a press conference during the show. “And the sad thing is it’s not just you who is hurt, but the people around you.
“When someone listens to all that great music, it may make them stop and realise what we’ve lost to drugs.”
You know a cave hotel is the real deal when you wake to find ceiling rock crumbling over the bed. Hezen’s elegant rooms have been fashioned out of the ancient caves that pockmark Cappadocia, and you can still very much feel the rocky atmosphere.
Each alcove and shelf has been hand carved with pockets of light accentuating the rock detail. Multiple terraces provide the perfect vantage point for enjoying the dramatic scenery, with views out across Ortahisar Castle. Located out of the tourist hub, this petite hotel has a homely atmosphere and is a Cappadocian experience in itself.
Feel the wind beneath your wings as you scoot around Zurich Airport on a bike or a funky pair of inline skates. The airport hires out gear and helmets to travellers itching to escape outdoors and get the blood flowing back into their legs.
If a red-eye flight has sapped your sense of balance, hire a pair of Nordic walking poles instead and let your feet lead you exploring. If you’d prefer to stay airside, join one of the airport tours, or perhaps treat one of the kids to a birthday party. How many other kids get to have an A380 at their birthday bash, complete with real, live pilots?
It may not be Narnia, but this Swedish camp is every bit as enchanting. And you don’t need a magic wardrobe to get there, just access to a snowmobile.
Constructed in the forest by Lapland’s Råne River and far from light pollution, the camp is the ideal base for admiring the Milky Way and, if you’re lucky, the northern lights. Capture the phenomenon on camera under the guidance of owner and photographer Fredrik Broman, and when the cold gets too much, sink into an armchair by the fire in your teepee-like lavvu tent and defrost your fingers and toes.
During the day in the winter, snowshoe trekking is a mandatory pastime. Otherwise, you can book a husky expedition, go snowmobiling or try your hand at ice fishing. In summer, there’s canoeing, kayaking and nature treks, but best of all are the photography courses run by Broman. The camp is well off the grid and surrounded by the best of Nordic nature. You may not meet Mr Tumnus the faun, but plenty of moose, fox and reindeer hide in the woods, leaving trails for you to follow.
It may look like a typical Swedish house from afar, but the shimmer around Utter Inn ain’t no mirage. Floating on Lake Mälaren, this miniature underwater cottage enables guests to sleep with the fishes, literally. Slip through a hatch in the floor and descend into a watertight bedroom, where your bed wallows three metres below the surface, and wake to the puckered kiss of a pike sucking on the glass by your head at sunrise.
Despite its tiny 25-square-metre size, the cottage squeezes in a fridge, stove and loo. If you suffer cabin fever, make your escape by rowboat and explore the Västerås archipelago, or fish for perch from the shade of the verandah. Happy floating!
Scandinavian architecture meets the great outdoors in the futuristic treehouses at Treehotel. These five unique dwellings feature sleek design suspended among the native pines, blending with the environment so you feel part of the forest itself.
Go incognito in the Mirrorcube, which could easily be mistaken for a Bond villain’s lair, or disappear into the Bird’s Nest, an oversized construction of twigs and branches that manages to pull off looking bizarre and seriously cool at the same time. The Treesauna is the perfect refuge to unwind in. More treerooms are planned for the future, and we can’t wait to see what those look like.
Unveiled in 2006, the Hotel Marqués de Riscal was an opportunity for Frank Gehry to showcase his signature style against an exquisite backdrop – the rolling hills of the Rioja wine region. Looking at the result, you can see why Vanity Fair described Gehry as “the most important architect of our age.”
Gleaming ribbons of titanium almost mimic the undulating surrounds, while the tilted walls and cathedral ceilings contrast with the warmth of wood and canny homely touches found in the 43 rooms and suites. We imagine that sipping tempranillo on the angled terrace while gazing across to the medieval town of Elciego would keep most lovers of wine and design satisfied for quite some time.
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