501 Places

Disturbing wolf, Lille Zoo

Imagine coming face to face with this creature? I was calmly munching on my baguette when I turned round and caught sight of this monster lurking in the bushes. Well, I was so shocked I almost dropped my delicious snack. When you’re in France for a day trip you should be prepared for almost anything. But this? Welcome to the eerie, slightly unnerving and utterly splendid cardboard zoo of Lille.

Le Parc Zoologique de Lille is a very impressive municipal zoo and easily reached by a 15 minute walk from the city’s main square. It does have some real animals too; in fact I’ve paid to enter zoos that are considerably smaller. The red pandas at the entrance are a crowd pleaser, and the American and African sections provide a selection of alpacas, llamas, rhino, zebras and gazelle-shaped creatures (not all mixed together obviously).

Levitating lynx

But it’s the cardboard animals that caught our imagination. They are scattered around the park, sometimes occupying enclosures where you’d normally expect a living and breathing animal to be pacing around. It’s startlingly easy to follow the logic of the zoo owners. They sat down when designing a zoo and decided what animals they wanted. Maybe they even let a bunch of kids draw up the list. And then they set about acquiring those animals. Any that they couldn’t get their hands on (the polar bears must have been  out of stock), they merely created a cut out and hoped no-one would notice. A brilliant plan.

Look at the picture above for example. The lynx looks real enough, but if you look closely you’ll see the wooden sticks that betray him as a fake. And once you know about this one, you start to wonder about the zebra behind it (it’s real I can assure you).

Red panda - this time I know it's for real

Wandering around the zoo, stopping to admire the polar bears peeling in the midday sun and looking yellow with age, it did make me think: maybe this is a glimpse of the future? How many of these species will be around in 50 years? Perhaps the zoo of the future will only have cardboard cut-outs to show the curious children what tigers or sharks used to look like? Maybe they will add in CGI and sound effects to create a more ‘real’ feel to a zoo without animals? Although feeding time at the aquarium is going to be a tough one to pull off using a wooden dolphin.

Lille Zoo

Or perhaps it is the keeping of animals in captivity that will become a thing of the past as the next generation rejects such habits in favour of virtual interactions with the world’s most exotic species. Why stare at a crocodile on the other side of a fence in the zoo when you can fight one in mortal combat using just a set of goggles? If it turns out to be the future, the Lille zoo may just be remembered as a trail-blazer of its time. Cardboard koalas may yet be here to stay.

This week’s guest post is written by Juan Otero Rionda. I spent several days with Juan on my recent blog trip to Valencia, and during that time he described how he owns and manages a couple of rural guest houses in the beautiful countryside of Asturias in northern Spain. His passion for his home region and the restoration work he has done to restore his houses to their full glory shone through whenever we chatted. So I asked Juan to share his story on 501 Places:

The village of Antrialgo

More than fifteen years ago my family had a cottage in a sunny village called Antrialgo in the Council of Piloña, Asturias. This cottage used to be rented from time to time but it was not prepared to receive many people. We have always liked the countryside, and thinking about restoring a typical Asturian house with its wood and stones was an important challenge which would make us work in a different way.

The house during construction

We thought about making the two houses into one to avoid a very uneven piece of land and we aimed to build a typical Asturian rural house, while considering the design of a hotel. A long time ago rural tourism meant that your parents sent you to your family village during the summer, but now setting up a business in the countryside is part of an important economy run by entrepreneurs who do not necessarily live in a rural environment.

The house is finished and ready for guests

When we started to restore the house all the family worked on it, and even during the weekend we worked hard to be able to have it opened for the summer. When building a house for renting it is important to take into account that August is the peak season and it must be ready to welcome customers at this time.

Even harder than building the property was finding the name of a website in order to be visible on the internet which, although slowly at first, was starting to be used by many holidaymakers. The name we chose was that of the area where the house is settled; Campón de Antrialgo (www.campondeantrialgo.es). At that time many hotels did not have their own website and their email addresses were hosted on hotmail, which made them look bad in front of the customer.

Inside the house

We worked hard to create a quality brand although we realized that intangible things were not the key for customers to come to us. Our main worry was to be able to pay the loan we had asked for in order to mend the house, and to gauge our business to make sure we could get full occupancy during the busy days.

Inside the house

We met a lot of people: rural tourism allows you to be nearer to your customers and they even become our friends. Our tourists were and still are mainly domestic, and we have always thought that the real challenge is to make us well known in other countries. Every time we have German, Dutch or British customers we realize that there is still hard work to be done in order to sell our product in Europe.

We have been like this now for ten years, until by chance we were offered a chance to be part of what is known as Huerta San Benito. This has become one of the most important businesses in Asturias, being in several interior decoration magazines and being one of the 180 charming houses classified by the prestigious “Guia El País Aguilar”.

Currently we have a new focus, which is the conversation derived from social media. Being in rural surroundings does not mean that you can’t use the internet in a professional way with your customers, but it does mean that you must talk to them in order to foster your brand. Many of these customers have their own blogs, Twitter or Facebook accounts and they speak highly of us through these channels. Our business, although settled in the small community of Rural Tourism, has and uses the same online resources as any other firm.

Juan Otero Rionda was born in nearby Arriondas, and used to work for a large multi-national business before turning his passion to developing and managing the rural houses.

As well as looking after the growing business Juan also founded Ruralvalue, the first franchise of Rural Tourism in Spain and is the founder of Turismo.as, a forum to discuss Tourism and Technology that had its first meeting in Oviedo in April 2010.

When he is not working hard Juan can be found travelling around Asturias, constantly learning more about this region while enjoying its diverse gastronomy and beautiful landscapes. You can follow Juan on Twitter.

Lord's: the spritual home of cricket on a gloomy day

Cricket has a hard time selling itself to non-believers. In its original form (test match cricket) a game can last for five days, with each day lasting for around seven hours including breaks. And at the end of those five days? More than 1 in 3 finish as a draw.

The game stops when it’s raining, and also when the light is poor. So you might pay £40 for a ticket to one day of a five day game and spend an hour or two staring at an empty field while the players sit indoors waiting for the clouds to lift enough to satisfy the umpires that play can resume. See what I mean?

Yet if you’ve never been to a game and you happen to be passing through a major cricket country (India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, England or the Caribbean) I would recommend a day at the cricket to see one of the world’s oldest sports and learn what is it about the game that so many of the local people find so fascinating.

Cricket: a statistician's dream

Cricket attracts a passionate following in its heartlands. In India and Australia crowds approaching 100,000 can squeeze into the huge stadiums to watch their national side. In England, trying to secure a ticket for an Ashes game against Australia (more on that later) is very difficult, and usually involves entering an over-subscribed lottery and hoping for the best.

People are willing to pay large sums of money to come to a game which is weather dependent (in England!) with the risk that they may see little play if the sun decides to take a day off. What is is about this strange game that captures the imagination?

England's batsmen emerge after a lunch break

Cricket on one level is a statistician’s dream. Batting and bowling averages, countless records, fifties, hundreds: there’s some milestone passed pretty much every hour of play. “These two batsmen have just passed the highest fourth wicket partnership for England against Bangladesh at Edgbaston” might be heard over the loudspeakers on a typical day.

Then there’s the intrigue of a five day game. A classic test match will change from one side being in the ascendancy to the other and back again several times before the end. Small incidents in an otherwise quiet period of play can influence the outcome of a match. A captain’s decision over where to place a fielder or who should bowl at a crucial time can swing the balance of a game decisively. I wonder if there are more subtleties and complex strategies in a Garndmaster chess match.

Haute cuisine is part of a day at the cricket

Spending a day at the cricket has developed into a peculiar ritual in recent years. Ask many supporters and they will list three main components of a good day’s cricket: beer, fast food and fancy dress. The beer starts to flow from early morning, and as the day wears on you’ll notice the singing levels increase, the inevitable Mexican wave circling the ground and some drunken idiot deciding that a 20ft high snake of empty beer glasses (plastic) is a good idea. The banter between opposing fans does however remain friendly and unthreatening.

There are always plenty of over-priced concession stands selling fish and chips, burgers, kebabs, and when the opposition are India or Pakistan, large vats of curry. And the fancy dress? It’s not uncommon to find troops of scantily-clad nuns, policewomen, Supermen or English knights among the crowd. I don’t know why; it’s just become part of the game in recent years.

T20: the sexed up version of cricket

Cricket has attempted to capture a wider audience by introducing a shorter three hour version of the game, aimed at TV audiences and part of a ridiculous attempt at wooing the American market (often denied). This T20 format of the game is particularly popular in India, where billions have been pumped into cricket’s equivalent of football’s Premier League.

Yet arguably the biggest occasion in the sport is known as the Ashes, when England take on Australia. Traditionally fierce rivals, the England team and the English media talk of little else for the four years between the times that the two sides play their contests. In recent years Australia has been dominant although their world domination appears to be over, and England will head to Australia later this year armed with their usual misplaced confidence. The atmosphere, the banter and beer-swilling always steps up a notch during an Ashes summer.

For me the five day game still emboddies what is best about cricket. There is something about watching even a day of a five day game, where no-one is in a hurry yet the game can take a dramatic turn at any point, that makes this a sport like no other. The happy acceptance of an unclear outcome, of weather delays or curtailment, and even moments where the crowd prays for rain to stop the game and prevent an impending defeat; cricket is certainly an acquired taste.

So if you are unfamiliar with the game and find yourself travelling through a cricket playing nation, why not take the chance to see a game for yourself? I would suggest that you tag along with a local who can explain what’s going on and guide you through the many rules of this historic sport. Oh, and don’t forget your umbrella.

It often ends up like this. Washed out and deserted

Rooftop waterfall - SHA Wellness Clinic

It was almost 9 years ago that I stopped frequenting fast food joints. Yet after my first night at the plush SHA Wellness Clinic in southern Spain the thought of a McBreakfast did briefly enter my head. How could this make any sense? We had just spent a night at one of the most luxurious places I’ve ever had the pleasure to visit. The setting could not have been further from that of a greasy fast food joint if it had been on the other side of the moon. Let me explain…

On the rooftop

SHA is located above the town of Albir, around 60 km from Alicante and only a short drive from Benidorm. In fact you can see the skyscrapers of the popular holiday resort rise from the morning mist as you lounge on the rooftop. SHA has the obligatory infinity pool which comes complete with a waterfall, and also on the roof you’ll find a putting green, another pool and a view down to an adjacent tennis court. And the next to these, the highly prestigious restaurant.

The view from the SHA roof toward Benidorm

Ok, we’re getting back to food again. One of SHA’s unique features is the importance it puts on healthy eating. Alfredo Bataller, the founder of the resort, was converted to the school of macrobiotic diets when he was seriously ill and found no respite from traditional western medicine. In a short time, a change in his diet following macrobiotic principles produced a rapid recovery. He decided to build SHA to offer these benefits to others.

So there we were, on the first leg of a press trip to the Valencia, in care of Alfredo’s son Alejandro who recalled this story as we sat down to our first meal. The evening meal was superb. Various combinations of vegatables, root-based soups and a delicious tuna steak. For dessert the ginger ice-cream was so delicious that I could have sneaked into the kitchen, tied up the chef and devoured the entire stock of this home-made marvel. And as for the chocolate cake? One spoon into its heart and a dark molten chocolate oozed from its centre. The sublime taste is not something that I will forget in a hurry.

It was the breakfast was a shock to my system. There were steamed vegatables, miso soup and even small cakes on offer. There was however a lack of any trace of dairy produce. No cheese, and more importantly, no milk. Well, that’s not quite true. Have you ever tried your cornflakes soaked in almond milk or rice milk? Perhaps it takes some getting used to. I decided that this healthy living could be hard going.

SHA Wellness Clinic in bloom

It was set in this context that when 30 minutes later we drove past those ubiquitous golden arches in the town, for a fleeting moment I had a pang. I did not succumb and it soon passed, but the episode confirmed to me that I have some way to go before I can embrace a macrobiotic diet and the lack of meat and diary products that it entails.

As for the resort itself, if you’re after a total escape from everyday life the SHA is hard to beat. Spacious bedrooms, walkways with soothing music and tinkling waterfalls and a room that had surely been treated to a generous helping of feng shui. I felt utterly at peace during the 20 minutes we had between our arrival back at the hotel and our departure for dinner.

The attention to detail of the designers is evident in every feature of the guest rooms and of the public areas. They have succeeded in creating an environment of peace, calm and relaxation. In fact, it could be a setting in one of those weird sci-fi movies, set in the future and representing a utopia where each of the life’s causes of misery and discomfort has been eliminated. But then again, I wasn’t paying the bill.

The infinity pool and beyond

It is one of those places that was a real shame to leave behind after only two nights. It might not be the type of place I would choose for a personal holiday (it is, after all, more used to hosting the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Naomi Campbell). But if you are looking for a few days of healthy indulgence and total relaxation and are prepared to shell out a few euros to be pampered in the most tranquil surroundings, the SHA Wellness Clinic is hard to beat.

For my stay at SHA Wellness Clinic I was a guest of Land of Valencia, the Valencia Region Tourist Board as part of their #blogtripf1 event, with flights organised by the Spanish Tourist Office.

In the latest guest post on 501 Places, well-known travel blogger Darren Cronian shares with us a love of his native Leeds and offers insider tips for those visiting his home city.

For many people, when you mention the city of Leeds, they associate it with being a great place for nightlife and shopping, but as a local I know that there’s much more to the city than bars and boutique shops. Whenever you see Leeds mentioned on the television they always refer back to its industrial past, and some in the media even like to still portray that it is grim up north.

Here are a few reasons why I love Leeds:

Parks and open spaces

Canal Gardens at Roundhay Park, Leeds

It does not matter if you are staying in the city centre or in the suburbs, Leeds has tons of open spaces and parks that are well looked after. Temple Newsam and Roundhay Park are popular with locals for relaxing in the sunshine (yes, it is sunny occasionally!) or for letting the kids run around to burn off some energy. Within the city centre you can eat your lunch and people-watch at various open spaces like Millennium Square, Queens Park or City Square.

The waterfront

Leeds and Liverpool Canal

Many people visit the city without even realising that we have a waterfront. In the summer this is my favourite part of the city to socialise, relax and walk. Brewery Wharf has loads of restaurants and bars nearby, whereas Clarence Dock is home to the Royal Armouries. Head to Granary Wharf and you’ll find the Sky Bar in the City Inn hotel with great views of the city from the 13th floor.

Popular annual Leeds events

Party in the Park and Opera in the Park are the biggest free music events held in the UK, with over 100,000 people heading to Temple Newsam to listen to the pop and opera artists. The German Christmas market at Millennium Square is also popular with locals, with its market stalls, huge beer tent and Oompah band.

Recommended bars in Leeds

View from City Inn Hotel Sky Bar

I know I mentioned earlier that there’s more to Leeds than the nightlife, and there is. But I couldn’t write a guide about things I love about Leeds without mentioning my favourite bars. The North bar imports beers from around the world, and Midnight Bell has a great selection of real ale from the local brewery.

Darren Cronian has written about the issues that consumers have with travel for the last five years on his now famous Travel Rants blog. In 2009, frustrated at the lack of attention cities like Leeds receive in the media, he launched a website to highlight the many great things that Leeds has to offer. You can read more about places to visit and stay in Leeds on My Life in Leeds, a locally written guide to the city. You can also follow Darren on Twitter.