the joy of off-season travel
With the shivering remnants of winter still wrapped around us, a hoar frost imprinted on my retinas, the sudden feeling of warm sand under bare feet was completely trippy. There was a piercing blue sky overhead, a wide, buttery beach stretching to the horizon, slow waves lapping the shore and palms casting perfect spiky shadows. Cold glasses of verdejo had been poured, and plates of Secreto Iberico pork and patatas bravas were being brought over as we shook off the salt after a dip in the Mediterranean. It had all the elements of a summer holiday. But this was January. And I was in Andalusia. Less than three hours from London, where a wild storm was raging.
By contrast, Playa de Sotogrande was mellow, laid-back, the sun drawing out the hibernating freckles on my pale shoulders, the children hooting around, cartwheeling into the near distance and pinging back for sips of Orangina and an illicitly-ordered Coca Cola. It was a gossamer-bright, Piz-Buin scented mirage, and yet, at the same time, it was tangibly, actually happening.
Lifting the lid on the loveliness of southern Spain at the beginning of the year was a revelation – most regard it as a scorching, high-summer-only hangout. The foothills of Sierra Almenara turned candy floss in the late afternoon with the setting sun; the roads were quiet. We could park anywhere we wanted and go out for suppers without having to make a booking weeks in advance.
A few years ago, we travelled to the same off-season tune, chasing the crunchy-leaved fire-kaleidoscope of autumn, not to New England or to Hokkaido in Japan or to the forests of Cumbria and Northumberland. We went to the Austrian Alps at the end of October, in the calendar wilderness between Sound of Music summers and the ski scene kick-off.
There is a curious alchemy in seeing somewhere you expect to be covered in snow overlaid by a carpet of grass. Your sense of place shifts on its axis, bearings ruffled. The top peaks were capped in white, but in the valleys, the land was richly green and the trees, my goodness, the trees were an embarrassment of reds and oranges and yellows, a Vermont postcard transplanted onto the lower slopes of Leogang. It was cold enough that mist billowed from our mouths in the mornings, steam rose from the outdoor pools like a bubbling cooking pot and fires crackled in the lobby at Naturhotel Forsthofgut, where we stayed. But at the top of the cable car, red gingham curtains rippled in the still-warm breeze and tables were laid for sunshine lunches at the mountain restaurants. Everyone was a vision of good health, pink cheeks, sparkling eyes, walking poles cast aside after brisk hikes while tartiflette and crisp walnut-flecked salad feasts were gobbled up. It was wholesome and happy-making, but, even better than that, it felt like we’d stumbled upon an incredible secret.
Snatching those stolen moments is intoxicating. But it doesn’t mean having to go to remote, far flung, off-the-beaten-track hideaways, rootling at the edges of the atlas to seek out an unheard-of escape. It is more about looking at the perhaps wildly obvious and considering it with new focus, new timing. It’s about finding the places that are hidden right there in plain sight.
Issy von Simson
Still strongly tethered to her hometown London, Issy certainly knows what’s groovy in the UK capital. But, lucky for us, her knowledge extends far beyond the reaches of Zone 6. Perpetually drawn to the coast – the brinier the better when it comes to the air – Issy is our go-to for seaside getaways. Opinionated and organised, she’s pretty much our ideal travel companion; you know you’re going to get a perfectly planned trip when Issy’s in charge. So, follow her tips and do as Issy does. You’ll end up in the most gloriously unexpected of places.
