It has felt like a long time to be deprived of the richness and fulfilment travel brings - exploring new places, spending a night at your favourite hotel, unwinding in a spa, or enjoying an afternoon tea in a beautiful garden. While we might have forgotten how good this all feels, our desire to travel has not been lost. This issue is all about health, wellness and meaningful travel – ‘slow travel’ (as it has recently been dubbed). So, if you’re looking for an unforgettable trip, to be enjoyed at your own pace, then we hope you will find plenty of inspiration within our summer features. Our top ten life-affirming Health Breaks, are guaranteed to reboot the body and mind, while our Best Tall Ship and Sailing Adventures, offer the ultimate active escapism. The brand-new collection curated National Trust experiences, are not to be missed, and our Top Eco-Attractions, showcase the very best of our natural world. Wishing you safe and magical, extraordinary summer of staycations!
“ New meadmakers
“ New meadmakers position the world’s oldest drink as a contemporary choice, a traditional drink brought up to date, in the same way as craft beer ” all drinking occasions. Many factors inspire a thirst for mead: whether it’s a desire for local produce with a sense of terroir (mead is made all over the UK), an appreciation of the work of bees and beekeepers, a taste for a natural product, a taste for heritage, or simply the urge to try something new to you. And it’s as varied and versatile as wine. Rod Marsh, who runs the Cider Barn at Middle Farm (middlefarm.com), a fun-packed working family farm near the South Downs in East Sussex, which sells 92 bottled and 18 draught meads, says: “one could readily fashion a meal with a mead for each course, followed by mead liqueur, and even a distilled mead nightcap!” He has seen the drink’s popularity rise in recent years: “When we started selling mead the only customers were local white witch covens and re-enactment societies. It has definitely gone mainstream over the last 10 years. Growing public awareness of the plight of bees worldwide and a desperate need to find some national identity not associated with empire have both played a part. The historical association of it being widely renowned as an aphrodisiac has also, no doubt, had some effect.” For most people, mead may still be associated with mythical, mistsof-time images of Vikings and mediaeval monks – or even Game of Thrones – but new meadmakers position the world’s oldest drink as a contemporary choice, a traditional drink brought up to date, in the same way as craft beer. One of the crop of contemporary meadmakers is Gosnells of London Meadery (gosnells.co.uk), whose base in Peckham, south London, couldn’t be further from the flowery meadows that may come to mind when imagining mead-making. The company has a range of alestrength canned meads (4%), with innovative limited editions, such as coffee or blueberry and plantain, along with more traditional bottled meads. Founder Tom Gosnell says: “Our intention is to create elegant meads, more akin to sparkling wines or artisan ciders. They are lighter in colour than most high-alcohol meads, sparkling, fresh and vibrant. They show the subtlety of honey.” 20 BritishTravelJournal.com
