Discovering the hikes, pubs and breathtaking castles on the English coast just 20 miles from France Your essential guide to a stress-free getaway: Holidays are exhilarating but if you find preparing for them daunting, follow these top tips from our expertsĮngland - or Middle-earth? Photographer captures magical ancient woodlands in a mesmerising set of imagesĪ Dickensian street and a 'shed' full of roosting chickens: Sweden's Icehotel reveals its amazing new suites for 2022Īs close to 'going abroad' as you can get, without actually doing so. But they depend on being there round the next curve, just when you’re hungry. I can be at my place in the Rockies for three months, fly back late in the day to New York, go shopping for breakfast stuff, and I’ll see more people in one city block at midnight than I saw out west all season.ĭO YOU SHARE YOUR CHARACTER JACK REACHER’S LOVE OF DINERS? To understand the country you have to understand the beautiful emptiness of a lot of it. I have an immigrant’s neutrality - I don’t have a place I was born or grew up - so it’s a level playing field. I also saw Nixon resign on TV, so my visit spanned two administrations. It was a raucous, brutal, high-speed cacophony, allegedly dangerous, but I walked miles through the streets that summer and never had a moment’s trouble. July 1974, New York, and it was love at first sight. And French is the only other language I can speak. I still like those solid, medium-sized French towns. We took the ferry to Granville, on the Cherbourg peninsula. I was rigid with joy.Ī school trip to France, aged 11. Best of all, the steward came round before landing with a platter full of boiled sweets. I remember the steep incline of the aisle because the plane sat tail-down on the grass.

He recalls his first visit to the USA in the 1970s, and more.įlying to Belfast on an unpressurised plane to visit my grandparents when I was three, in 1957.

This week best-selling author Lee Child checks in to our travel Q&A.

Jack reacher lee child