Liverpool’s year as Capital of Culture Sir Paul McCartney (left) will perform in his home city as part of Liverpool’s celebrations as Europe’s Capital of Culture. McCartney and his band will play in a Liverpool Sound concert in front of a crowd of 30,000 at Anfield Football Stadium on 1 June 2008.

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This will be the last concert to be staged at the historic home of Liverpool Football Club, before it relocates to its new stadium at Stanley Park. The City of Liverpool will officially open its year as European Capital of Culture with a three-day weekend of public events and concerts. The celebrations begin on Friday 11 January with a free open-air show on St George’s Plateau featuring another ex-Beatle, Ringo Starr.

On 12 January Ringo pops up again, with Eurythmic Dave Stewart, to open the new Liverpool Echo Arena with Liverpool The Musical. Other performers include the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, No Fakin DJ’s, Echo and the Bunnymen, Pete Wylie, Ian Broudie, Shack and The Christians, plus a cast of poets, singers, aerialists, comedians, construction workers, gardeners and sailors. Along with specially commissioned film and rare archive footage, Liverpool The Musical will feature music composed by Elgar, John Newton, The Real Thing, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Beatles, The La’s, The Wombats, The Farm, The Zutons, Stravinsky and Space, rearranged for the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in collaboration with No Fakin DJ’s and conducted by Vasily Petrenko.

Website: www.liverpool08.com Tour Scotland on three wheels Scotland’s innovative Trike Tours offers chauffeured tours on motorised tricycles with 1600cc engines.

Passengers are offered helmets with integrated headsets that enable them to talk to each other or listen to music of their choice. New for 2008 are Trike Tours Golf Packages.

The chauffeur-driven trikes can each carry two passengers and two sets of golf clubs on the back. Visitors are picked up from their hotel and can be driven to a golf driving range, or can play three holes at three different courses.

There are tours available in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perthshire, Stirling and the Trossachs, Loch Lomond, St Andrews, Ayr, Dumfries, Inverness and the Isle of Mull. Passengers are provided with helmets, leather jackets, gloves and, if necessary, waterproof clothing.

Each tour includes a hot drink and a miniature of whisky or liqueur and Scottish shortbread. In winter hot chocolate, thermal fleeces and balaclavas are supplied for the trip.

Website: www.triketoursscotland.com The Tate celebrates Blake’s vision The 250th anniversary of the visionary poet, painter and engraver William Blake is being celebrated at Tate Britain with an exhibition opening on 3 November.

It contains the best of the gallery’s collection of his work, and includes a selection of Blake’s most important illustrated books from the British Museum as well as the full set of his famous colour prints.

The exhibition, entitled ‘I still go on till the Heavens and Earth are gone’, also explores the artist’s shifting reputation over the last two and a half centuries. William Blake (1757–1827) was a Londoner.

His unorthodox visual style brought him little recognition in his lifetime, but his art and his poetry have influenced later generations. In 1916 Sir Hubert Parry set Blake’s poem Jerusalem to music for a meeting of the women’s suffrage movement, and today it is often sung as an alternative English national anthem.

The exhibition runs until 1 June in Tate Britain’s Room 8, admission free. Tate Britain is open every day (except 24 – 26 December), 10am–5.50pm, and remains open until 10pm on the first Friday of every month.

Website: www.tate.org.uk York welcomes Norse invaders The 23rd Jorvik Viking Festival will be held from 13 to 17 February, when ‘Vikings’ from all over the world will come to York to celebrate the city’s heritage. The original Vikings were Scandinavian seaborne raiders of the early medieval period.

The festival includes re-enactments of Viking battles and more than 100 specially organized arts, music, drama and action events. Each day of the festival has a different theme: Family Day, Combat Day, Viking Arts Day, Invasion Day and International Day.

Events are centered on the Jorvik Viking Centre (Jorvik was the Vikings’ word for York) with its reconstructions of streets as they would have been around AD 975. There are also Viking events all around the city.

Everything in the Jorvik Viking Centre is based on archaeological evidence unearthed during the Coppergate excavations in York by the York Archaeological Trust in 1979–81. Jorvik Viking Centre is open every day (except 24–26 December) 10am–5pm in summer and 10am–4pm in winter.

Scotland’s snowdrop festival In the early 19th century the Romantic poet Wordsworth celebrated a small white flower: ‘Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring, And pensive monitor of fleeting years!’ The snowdrop is one of the earliest bulbs to flower in the UK, which is probably why so many Britons – gardeners and non-gardeners alike – love this tiny flowering bulb. Cultivated snowdrops date back to medieval times when they were known as the Candlemas Bells and considered to be an emblem of purity.

It is thought that snowdrops may have been popularised by British soldiers who found them in the battlefields by the Black Sea during the Crimean War (1853–1856) and brought bulbs home to plant in their gardens. VisitScotland has identified 51 locations in Scotland where visitors can see drifts of snowdrops in early spring next year.

They include castles, stately homes, country estates and natural woodland. The snowdrop festival includes special exhibitions and talks.

Find the list of locations and events taking places between 1 February and 16 March on the VisitScotland website. To many people, one snowdrop might seem very similar to another but there are endless varieties.

The Grumpy snowdrop is named for its cross-looking face found under a white ‘petticoat’ of petals.

There’s also a Tiny Tim, a small late-flowering single snowdrop, and Wendy’s Gold, a white flower with yellow markings.

Website: www.visitscotland.com/snowdrops Health and beauty in Berkshire The Donnington Valley Hotel and Spa in Berkshire has opened a new Health Club and Spa, featuring an 18-metre swimming pool,steam room, sauna, aromatherapy room and monsoon shower. There is also a poolside lounge and a large, air-conditioned gym.

The hotel has doubled in size following a £14-million refurbishment in 2006. All the 111 bedrooms were redesigned and have views over the 18-hole golf course and clubhouse.

In September this year, the privately owned four-star hotel was named as the AA’s Hotel of the Year.

Donnington Valley Hotel and Spa Recollections of Coleridge The Old House at Nether Stowey in Somerset was a favourite place of the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

When the house was owned by Thomas Poole in the early 1800s, Coleridge often stayed with his friend, and spent many hours in the Book Room, where it is believed he wrote his Recollections of Love.

Now the Old House has been upgraded by its new owners and offers stylish Bed and Breakfast and additional self-catering cottages.

B&B guests can stay in the spacious Book Room, which has been renamed the Coleridge Suite.

There are also three self-catering holiday homes – a cottage sleeping four in the former stables, a one-bedroom cottage with a beamed sitting-room in the Garden Wing and the former Housekeeper’s Quarters for four guests on the top floor of the Old House.

Nether Stowey village, where Coleridge later lived in his own cottage, is 6 km (4 miles) from the sea on the edge of the Quantock Hills.

Visitors can follow the Coleridge Way, a 60-km (36-mile) route from Nether Stowey across the Brendon Hills to the coast at Porlock in Exmoor National Park.

Prices for B&B at The Old House start at £75 per room per night for two sharing; the cottages are priced from £295 per week for two in the Garden Wing.

Website: www.theoldhouse-quantocks.co.uk A luxury spa in Co. Antrim Galgorm Resort & Spa in Northern Ireland has concluded its multimillion-pound redevelopment with the opening of a luxury spa which features an infinity hydrotherapy pool, outdoor hot-tub, five individual climate rooms and thermal heated stone loungers.

There are 11 wet and dry treatment rooms. The redevelopment of the hotel has added 52 new bedrooms and suites.

The resort also has a tiered 62-seat auditorium and a restaurant. The Galgorm Resort & Spa is a 30-minute drive from Belfast, overlooking the River Maine in 38 hectares (96 acres) of parkland and forest.

Website: www.galgorm.com

Heathrow’s new terminal opens soon Terminal 5 at Heathrow will open on 27 March 2008. It will be the biggest freestanding building in the UK and will be used for arrivals and departures for British Airways flights.

The building will have 30,000 square metres of glass, coated with a film that controls the amount of sunlight entering the building.

The lighting is programmable to different settings according to season, time of day and weather conditions.

The terminal will have 96 self-service check-in kiosks and 140 customer service desks, including 96 fast bag drop facilities.

The baggage system will be the biggest single-terminal baggage handling system in Europe.

There will be 144 stores and restaurants and Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsey is opening his first airport-based restaurant in Terminal 5.

Once the terminal is opened, the next big project will be Heathrow East, which will replace Terminals 1 and 2.

By 2012 almost the entire airport will have been rebuilt, refurbished or redesigned.

Website: www.heathrowairport.com/terminal5 Bargain bedrooms in Bayswater A new hotel in London’s Bayswater area is hoping to set new standards for budget hotels in Europe. The three-star Umi Hotel has a concierge, a coffee shop serving fair-trade coffees and teas, a cocktail bar sponsored by Absolut Vodka and a massage therapy service.

There are 117 bedrooms, all with wi-fi and plasma screen TVs.

Some of the budget rooms have dormitory-style bunk beds to keep costs down.

The hotel has a small boardroom-style meeting room and a larger function room that can be divided into three spaces or used as one room accommodating events for up to 100 people. A double room costs from £30 per person.

Website: www.umihotels.co.uk Premier facilities at Chelsea FC Chelsea Football Club has increased the range of event facilities at its home ground, Stamford Bridge in west London. Bluewing, Chelsea’s hospitality and conference venue, has had a multi-million-pound makeover and now, on non-match days, can accommodate events from meetings for two to a reception for 1,500 people.

There are now 21 function rooms and 60 syndicate rooms, including the Great Hall (above), one of the largest function spaces in London. The West Stand function rooms have been designed for meetings and events, and the East Stand has 12 executive boxes and function rooms that include the Champions’ Club and Executive Club lounges.

Millennium Suites, each with their own private kitchen and bar, have balconies overlooking the famous Stamford Bridge pitch.

The club also offers accommodation at the newly refurbished Millennium and Copthorne hotels, drinks in the sports bar Blues, dinner at either 55 or Marco, and a health club and spa.

Website: www.chelseafc.com/bluewing Dog-sledding on the Yorkshire Moors Raven Hall Country House Hotel, in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, offers visitors, guests and conference groups an unusual teambuilding activity – husky sledding.

Thanks to the Pawtrekker, a two-wheeled scooter, it is now possible to experience husky sledding without snow.

The hotel is working with the nearby Pesky Husky Centre who have six trainers working with Siberian huskies – one of the friendliest and hardiest breeds of dog.

Raven Hall, which overlooks Robin Hood’s Bay, was built in 1774 and was once a retreat of King George III.

The hotel provides a range of teambuilding services, has meeting suites for up to 150 day delegates, and can accommodate 100 residentially.

Websites: www.ravenhall.co.uk www.peskyhusky.co.uk News in brief The gathering of the clans The Gathering 2009 will be held in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh on 25–26 July 2009.

The event aims to be the largest international gathering of the Scottish clans ever held, and is one of the key events of the major Homecoming Scotland festival in 2009.

The Gathering will take the form of a classic highland games – the largest ever held in Scotland – with traditional sports, music and dance.

It will also feature a clan parade along the Royal Mile followed by a commemorative clan pageant on the Edinburgh Castle esplanade.

It is estimated that there will be over 80 clan tents at the Gathering, with around 7,500 clan and Scottish association members from around the world.

Website: www.thegathering2009.com

Small is beautiful Red Carnation Hotels have received the AA’s new award for Small Hotel Groups. Red Carnation is a family-owned international collection of 11 luxury hotels with six properties in England.

Red Carnation hotels in London are the Milestone Hotel opposite Kensington Palace, the 41 Hotel overlooking the Royal Mews, the Egerton House Hotel, the Rubens at the Palace, the Montague in Bloomsbury and the Chesterfield Mayfair.

Red Carnation’s Summer Lodge hotel is in Dorset in the west of England.

Website: www.redcarnationhotels.com

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