I sit here looking out the window at the rain falling steadily as a fog rolls in over the hills. As I watch the drops falling into my birdbath I sigh, remembering a week spent on a dive boat in the Maldives back in February 2013. A perfectly blissful week of saltwater and sunshine, candy-coloured fish, and the softest deep white sand. Suddenly I am back there looking out over the vastness of the Indian ocean, punctuated with islands scattered carelessly across its surface lik

Whole fish with garlic butter sauce, chargrilled prawns, pasta with tomatoes and cream, mussels in garlic and white wine sauce, served with an ever changing backdrop of blue-green water, purple islands and white and gold stone towns. Once, in a magazine, I read the words: “If you go to Croatia for no other reason – go for the food.” What good advice that was, although it was not the only reason I went to Croatia. Surprisingly it was a nun who recommended I take a sailing trip

"Can you swim?" the Swiss woman asked me. "Like a fish," I replied, as I stood frozen on the ladder, looking down at the bright yellow sea kayak below. "Then what does it matter if you fall in?” she asked, no doubt keen to keep the line moving so she could take her turn. It was the kind of brusque encouragement I needed, and I clasped the hand of my guide and stepped from the ladder of our escort boat into the bobbing kayak. Surprisingly, I managed not to tip us both into Pha