AMESE

British Airways to resume A380 services, with passengers able to book SHORT-HAUL trips from November on the superjumbo to Madrid and Frankfurt

• A travel site says it was sent documents confirming BA’s A380s are returning 
• The A380 European services will begin on November 8, long-haul in December 
• Qatar Airways, meanwhile, is also resuming A380 services 

By Ted Thornhill, Mailonline Travel Editor and Reuters

Published: 10:50 EDT, 5 October 2021 | Updated: 11:31 EDT, 5 October 2021

Roger Federer commenced it when he took a selfie with a modest, grinning marsupial and posted it to his 31 million social media followers. Then fellow tennis star Rafael Nadal did the exact same point last yr and suddenly the globe went bonkers for quokkas.

But having a quokka selfie is less complicated explained than carried out. First, you have to uncover a biddable quokka.

These spherical furballs, about the measurement of an about-fed domestic cat, roam freely on Rottnest Island, a guarded nature reserve off the coast of Perth, Western Australia. With no pure predators on the island, they are endearingly tame. But not all of them acquired the memo on social-media etiquette.

The very first one I sidled up to appeared at me oddly, then wandered off. A 2nd was much too distracted by his mates (clearly a teen) to glimpse at the camera. But the third quokka turned out to be the Kate Moss of the marsupial world, smiling broadly as I lay on the ground next to her, snapping away on my Iphone. She smiled, she gurned, she turned her head from left to correct, but in no way once missing eye-make contact with with the camera. What a star!

Quokkas, which are indigenous to Rottnest, have managed to place an island that no a single outside Australia had at any time listened to of firmly on the tourist trail. But when you’re there, you surprise why it took so very long.

‘Rotto’, as the locals connect with it, has every little thing you could possibly want in a getaway location, crunched into just seven square miles of coastal bushland. No vehicles are allowed on the island, so anyone bombs all over on pushbikes and e-bikes, stopping to location illustrations of the 50 indigenous fowl species or go for a swim at a person of the 63 shorelines, all so ridiculously rather they search as if they have been lifted from a Disney version of Treasure Island.

As Rafael Nadal demonstrated when he emerged dripping from the sea to millions of Instagram likes, this h2o is a thing else. Fringed by coral reefs and teeming with tropical fish, it is the Indian Ocean blue of a Curacao cocktail.

But it was Rottnest’s grim past as a prison island for aboriginal males in the 1840s and afterwards as an internment camp through both equally planet wars that held it in the dim for so several a long time.

It wasn’t right up until following Planet War II, when essential bungalow lodging was constructed for regional family members, that it commenced its reinvention as a getaway island.

Now, with a new memorial recognising the 1000’s of aboriginal life shed there, Rottnest is placing its darkish days behind it to emerge as a place in shape for the 800,000 global travelers who spill off the ferries each 12 months.

As there is quite minimal overnight accommodation on Rottnest (while the 5-star, 80-space Samphire Rottnest opened past October as the island’s initial new resort hotel in 30 yrs), most vacationers consider the 25-minute ferry from Fremantle, close to Perth, there and again in a working day.

But I managed to seize a mattress at recently opened Discovery Rottnest Island, a cluster of posh eco-tents with good beds, ensuite bogs, a swimming pool and on-internet site restaurant. Oh, and a quokka waiting for you with a smile on your non-public sundeck every single morning.

With this influx of intercontinental people arrives a new swathe of what the vacationer business likes to phone ‘experiences’. You can wander all-around the island with a botanist or commit a glorious day, as I did, on a Wild Seafood Expertise Cruise, which rather significantly does what it suggests on the tin.

You soar aboard a boat that normally takes you around the island, stopping to haul in lobsters, which are barbecued on board and served with mountains of coconut rice, oysters, barramundi and a bottomless source of Margaret River chardonnay.

What is also desirable about this crazy Aussie summertime decadence is that it is now only 16 hours absent from wintery Britain. I hopped on the immediate Qantas London-to-Perth flight in sleet and hopped off in dazzling 34c sunshine.

Though Perth utilized to be acknowledged as a pit-quit on your way to somewhere else, it has morphed into the form of motion-packed destination that could try to eat up your full holiday allowance.

Just after landing, Perth’s town centre is certainly deserving of a night or two. E-book a strolling tour around the city to explore the secret laneways covered in wild and beautiful avenue art, whisky speakeasies concealed in basements and the tiny restaurant you would under no circumstances ordinarily find which serves the ideal pizza in city (The Cheeky Sparrow).

The West Australian Museum has just reopened immediately after a £200 million refurbishment and features a blue whale skeleton the size of a college bus.

Leap in a taxi and head to Perth’s grandest town seaside, Cottesloe, where you can swim in the surf, sunbathe on the lawns, then walk up to The Shorehouse for a lunch of blue swimmer crab and prawn linguine.

The most direct ferry to Rottnest leaves from Fremantle, a port city just south of Perth, but this fairly cluster of restored Federation houses and outlets is a spot in by itself.

I stayed at a person of the superbly renovated outdated boozers, The Countrywide Resort, with wraparound wrought-iron verandahs, in which you can sip a gin cocktail on the roof terrace instead than sink a Foster’s on a sawdust floor.

With Australia established to reopen its borders in mid-2022, it’s about time the Aussies shared this very little gem with solar-starved Brits. But get there swift in advance of the quokkas break the net once more.

Back in 1995, a Texan tourism report declared that Newcastle was the eighth-best party city – on the planet.

After a recent stay with a chum at the brand-new Innside Newcastle hotel on the historic Quayside, I can confirm that this mighty north-eastern citadel has lost none of its joie de vivre.

The evidence? For starters, during our dinner in the hotel’s swanky Gino D’Acampo Quayside restaurant, some of the guests treated the venue as a disco, twirling around to their heart’s content to party-tune remixes pumping through the speakers courtesy of a DJ in the bar area.

We had to lean towards each other to hear what was being said, the noise levels boosted by spontaneous whoops of delight from spectating diners.

And it was only 8.15pm.

I’m curious as to how posh a restaurant must be for Newcastle denizens to refrain from dancing. I’d wager that any establishment below two-Michelin-star level and it would be a case of ‘hold the amuse bouche, crank up the rumbustious fuzz pedal, we’ve got shapes to throw’.

By contrast, we were petering out fast, having earlier been on an epic 77-mile (123km) Hadrian’s-wall-themed bike ride into Northumberland National Park, with local cycling enthusiast and history expert Carlton Reid as our tour guide.

Carlton showed us how the Unesco-listed Wall and associated archaeological Roman treasures could be seen amid Newcastle’s modern-day housings estates, roads – and even at a petrol station.

On the way out to the breathtaking vistas west of the city, we diverted off the A186 to look at the remains of Benwell Roman Temple, built around AD 178–80 to honour the British deity Antenociticus. 

Today it sits on Broomridge Avenue, among red-bricked bungalows and semis.

Next, we wheeled two roads over to Denhill Park, a residential area built around another remarkable Roman structure – Benwell Vallum Crossing (AD 130). The vallum was a defensive ditch that the Romans built to the south of the Wall. In Denhill Park lie the remains of a gateway and one of the stone causeways that led through it and over the vallum to Benwell fort, which bisected the Wall. 

Further west, Carlton alerted us to a small section of the actual Wall jutting out of a Jet petrol station forecourt by the A186 and we lingered at Denton Hall Turret, an impressive, ruined fortification alongside a 65m (213ft) length of the Wall, right next to the A69. 

It wasn’t long before we left the city limits behind.

The historical highlights of our pedal-powered perusal of the countryside included the Temple of Mithras, built in AD 200 and now a ruin off the B6318 (careful if you ride to this, I wheelspinned in some sheep droppings and, as I was clipped in, fell over sideways), and a hidden dell strewn with huge stones that Roman soldiers carved up and used to build the Wall a short distance away.

Markings made by the soldiers can still be seen.

After six hours or so of riding, we trundled along a riverside path, under the strapping King Edward VII railway bridge, right up to the outer edge of Gino D’Acampo’s al fresco seating.

We’d had a feast for the eyes as well as the mind, cycling under bruised skies along mesmerising rolling Roman roads through a landscape that took the breath away almost as much as some of the climbs. We rode past Sycamore Gap – you’ll know it from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – glided along deserted twisting lanes and cruised through idyllic villages.

Now it was time for a feast for the stomach.

We’d snacked on energy bars, had a wrap and pasta at the excellent Vallum Farm tearoom, a few miles from the village of Corbridge, and had a refreshing pint of chocolate-flavoured raw milk at Bays Leap Organic Dairy Farm.

But my energy levels were sapped – Gino and his Italian fodder were calling.

I had just enough left in the tank to shower and hold a pre-restaurant/disco pint of Moretti in the bar while ruminating on what sort of job the designers of the 161-room hotel – Newcastle and Vancouver-based Faulknerbrowns Architects – had done. 

A good one, it transpires.

Sensibly, they’ve made views of the River Tyne, which flows mere yards away, and some of its epic bridges the priority.

We had a stunning view (even from the shower) of the river from our superb Studio Twin, along with the 120ft-tall High Level Bridge (a road and railway bridge), the Tyne Bridge, the Swing Bridge and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

And on the open-plan ground floor – home to the lobby/reception, bar and Quayside restaurant – there are floor-to-ceiling windows throughout, so the river is easy to spot, even from the lobby at the road end of the building.

These windows, along with the double-level atrium design of the bar, give the downstairs space a wonderfully light and airy ambience.

The décor, meanwhile, is smart and modern, with a splash of hipster – there’s a ‘cloud’ of filament lights hanging from the ceiling in the bar and long wooden communal tables.

Every member of staff we met was bright and helpful and the service purposeful. A little too purposeful in the restaurant, where we decided to dine Italian style, with a pasta dish before a main grill course. The staff brought these out together. Perhaps they noticed how hungry we looked.

Each of the menu items includes a little description by Gino, which I thought was a cute touch.

We worked our way through a serving of cicchetti bar snacks (£21) – ‘unique to Venezia and great for sharing’ – linguine with lobster (£27.25) – ‘people often ask me what I would choose for my last supper, this is it!’ – veal chop (£29.95) – ‘this is my idea of rustic’ – and pork belly (£17.50) – ‘a classic Piemontese recipe’.

For dessert we had chocolate fondant (£6.95) – ‘my son Rocco’s favourite dessert’. I could see why.

My chum Colin – the wine buyer for the Vagabond wine bar chain – declared that the wine list was ‘solid’ and opted for a bottle of extremely quaffable Pra Otto Soave to wash it all down with.

Too tired – and old, frankly – to go drinking in the city’s famous Bigg Market, we chose instead to walk around it before turning in.

It was the same old vortex of hedonism it always has been.

In the morning, we gazed along the Tyne from our room and watched as a jet-skier took the party to the water, pulling ‘doughnuts’ around one of the enormous columns of the High Level Bridge.

The final chapter of our weekend odyssey was a Metro trip to beautiful Tynemouth, where we met an old mutual friend for lunch at Riley’s Fish Shack on the seafront. 

It was sensational.

The ‘shack’, which houses the bar and kitchen, is right by the beach in a perfectly formed little bay.

We sat on pre-booked deckchairs (with a table and umbrella) as humorous waitresses delivered the freshest of Lindisfarne oysters (£3.65 each) and hugely satisfying portions of salted fish (£25) served with sourdough, caper butter, salad and potatoes (potentially the option for my last supper).

Carlton said Riley’s was ‘world famous’. I’m not sure about that – but it should be.

We sat in a contented daze on the zippy LNER service back home to London.

Innside Newcastle had been smart, comfy and fun and a great base for exploring some of Britain’s finest landscapes, most fascinating historical sights – and for reeling in some of the best seafood in the land.

But next time, I’ll bring my dancing shoes, as well as my cycling ones. 

Many of us have fallen in love again with British hospitality. With overseas travel almost impossible for so long, hotels in the UK have swung open their doors — and we like what we see. 

Here at the Good Hotel Guide, we pride ourselves on selecting those small, individually owned properties that offer a truly personal service — the kind of place where guests are automatically given tea and cakes on arrival, where they feel immediately at home and can enjoy good food and wine. We are particularly proud of our César award-winners this year, which include a Scandi-chic thatched hotel on the Isle of Wight and a guesthouse in Scotland that has only three rooms. Revealed exclusively in the Daily Mail, here are The Good Hotel Guide’s top ten deserving winners…

B&B OF THE YEAR

Reserve one of the three bedrooms at Newbegin House in Beverley and you will be treated like old friends at Walter and Nuala Sweeney’s Georgian townhouse, with its interiors filled with artwork and antiques. The welcome starts with a large pot of tea in the sitting room. Thoughtful extras in the bedrooms include sherry, fresh milk and flowers.

A generous spread at breakfast ranges from poached eggs with prosciutto to pancakes and a full Yorkshire.

Don’t miss: A guided tour of the walled garden.

Details: B&B doubles from £90 (newbeginhousebbbeverley.co.uk).

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR

Italian foodie flair goes hand in hand with West Country charm at Locanda on the Weir, an uber-stylish restaurant with rooms where Exmoor meets the sea, at Porlock Weir. 

Chef Pio Catemario di Quadri makes as much as possible from scratch in his set five-course menus, from focaccia to creamy ricotta cheese. Meanwhile, co-owner Cindy Siu creates eclectic, appealing interiors with Italian and English antiques, classic and contemporary art and plenty of fresh flowers.

Don’t miss: The Doone Valley circuit on Exmoor.

Details:   B&B doubles from £195 (locandaontheweir.co.uk).

ISLAND HOTEL

The thatched cottage of Hillside in Ventnor, on the Island of Wight, looks classically English from the outside, its terraced gardens tumbling down the slope.

Within, though, is a world of Scandi-chic created by owner Gert Bach. 

Stripped-back, pale interiors are highlighted by colourful abstract art canvases, and there are great views out to sea. 

Vegetables from the gardens supply the kitchen, which creates simple, superb dishes.

Don’t miss: Walks along the coast to Steephill Cove.

Details: B&B doubles from £133 (hillsideventnor.co.uk).

WELSH INN

When the River Monnow flooded and flowed through the ground floor of The Bell at Skenfrith, its owners took the opportunity to give the former coaching inn a thorough refurb.

Now it’s looking all spruced up, with a fresh, contemporary feel despite the oak beams and antiques. Westies, whippets and wellies are all welcome in the Dog and Boot bar after a walk along the river in this lovely part of Monmouthshire.

Don’t miss: Order a picnic and head out for a day’s fishing on the Monnow.

Details: B&B doubles from £150 (thebellatskenfrith.co.uk).

COUNTRY HOUSE

It all sounds grand at Askham Hall in Penrith, with its 17th-century pele tower, family heirlooms, French drawing room, and a Michelin-starred restaurant to boot. But Charles Lowther’s comfortably cluttered ancestral pile couldn’t be more relaxed; dogs and children are welcome.

Explore the grade-II listed gardens with their 230 ft herbaceous border and enjoy fresh produce in the cafe.

Don’t miss: Visit the family’s original home, Lowther Castle, with 130 acres of gardens.

Details: B&B doubles from £180 (askhamhall.co.uk).

SMALL HOTEL

The menus at Plantation House in Ermington change every night, featuring local Devonshire produce and food from the kitchen garden. Chef patron Richard Hendey cooks as much as possible on the small hotel’s premises, from bread to truffles.

You will find home-made cakes and biscuits in the comfortable bedrooms, and breakfast can include everything from smoked haddock to bubble and squeak.

Don’t miss: Book an in-room massage; £65 for 80 minutes.

Details: B&B doubles from £170 (plantationhousehotel.co.uk). 

SCOTTISH WINNER

Although there are only three rooms in Perth’s Woodcroft House, you can order delicious meals in advance from extensive menus, including venison from the owners’ deer park, and a ‘free from’ and plant-based menu. You can take your own wine, too, with no corkage fee.

The best room in this Arts and Crafts-style Victorian guest house is a suite with an iron slipper bath and seats in the turret.

Don’t miss: Scotland’s oldest working distillery, Glenturret, in nearby Crieff.

Details: B&B doubles from £190 (woodcroft-house.com).

INN OF THE YEAR

A quirky pub-with-rooms on an organic farm, Helen Browning’s Royal Oak in Bishopstone, near Swindon, prides itself on being fun. The rooms are named after fields and everything, from the milk to the meat, is supplied from the 1,500 acres of farmland. Activities include foraging and wildflower painting.

Don’t miss: The in-meadow bath in the wild campsite, where you sleep on straw in pig arks.

Details: B&B doubles from £95 (helenbrowningsorganic.co.uk).

ECCENTRIC HOTEL 

The entire nine-course meal served on the Titanic the night she sank is replicated by chef patron Conor McClelland on certain nights at Rayanne House in Holywood, Northern Ireland, served in the beautiful period dining room with views of Belfast Lough from where the doomed ship sailed in 1912.

Don’t miss: Golfers should book the Rory McIlroy bedroom; they get discounted green fees at nearby Holywood Golf Club.

Details: B&B doubles from £150 (rayannehouse.com).

FAMILY-FRIENDLY 

Four generations of the Fletcher-Brewer family have worked to make Porth Tocyn, near Abersoch in Wales, a relaxed place to stay, and parents who visited as children now return with their own families. There is no charge for children sharing their parents’ room; and the hotel has everything from a games room to baby-listening devices. High tea is served to children so adults can dine child-free in the dining room.

Don’t miss: The Wales Coast Path runs by the hotel.

Details: B&B doubles from £130 (porthtocynhotel.co.uk).