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A journey into Steinbeck country
Plus a welcoming city in northern Spain and Fair Isle’s magnificent migrants
John Steinbeck grew up among the fertile fields and mountains of Monterey County, California – a landscape he “vividly” described in his novels.
Fans who wish to explore his “beloved homeland” could start at his childhood home (now a restaurant) in Salinas, said Jacqui Agate in The Telegraph. At the nearby National Steinbeck Centre, you can see Rocinante, his camper truck.
Next, take the River Road Wine Trail through “a Steinbeckian swoop of sun-baked hills” to Pinnacles National Park, with its “tawny” crags and canyons. You could also visit the V6 Ranch in Parkfield – a cattle ranch that’s “about as close to Steinbeck’s agrarian beginnings as you can get” – and the coastal Post Ranch Inn, now a luxury resort, where he worked as a ranch hand in the 1920s.
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It’s not a “fashionable” place, but I love the city of León in northern Spain, said Annie Bennett in The Sunday Telegraph.
As a key point on the pilgrimage route to Santiago, it has a long history of “welcoming” visitors, and has some glorious architecture, including a gothic cathedral that is among the most “magnificent” in Spain, and the Basílica de San Isidoro, a Romanesque masterpiece with dazzling 12th-century frescoes depicting bible stories and scenes of rural life.
But it’s León’s tapas bars, more than anything, that “keep luring me back”. A glass of wine costs about €2.50 and is always served with a snack – perhaps a local speciality such as croquetas with local cured beef and Valdeón blue cheese. And the Parador de León is a gem – a former 16th-century pilgrims’ hostel, including a “sumptuous” breakfast.
Fair Isle’s magnificent migrants
Fair Isle is the UK’s most remote inhabited island – part of Shetland, but isolated from the rest of the archipelago, lying as it does 25 miles to the south of the main island of Mainland.
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With sea cliffs up to 200 metres high, it is wild and spectacular, said Mike MacEacheran in The Times – and, thanks to its unique position, it’s a dream for birdwatchers, particularly during the autumn migration.
On a nine-night (two spent on the ferry) trip with Naturetrek, I stayed at the Fair Isle Bird Observatory, in a “cosy” room with “terrific sandy bay views”. Our guide, ornithologist Nick Boyd, was excellent, and we saw dozens of species, including a common rosefinch, a rare Fair Isle wren, and a buff-bellied pipit, “blown thousands of miles off course from North America” – a “once-in-a-decade sighting” that left me feeling “ecstatic”.
