Specialist Travel – Sporting Travel – Luggage Accessories

Cooking and Wine Holidays

Active Gourmet

Specialising in food and wine holidays as well as art and painting, Active Gourmet will take you cooking in Southern Tuscany, Lousada, Italy, Arles or in Provence. You can also choose joint cooking and biking holidays (so that if your travelling companion doesn't want to cook, they can pursue other activities at the same time). Prices are in euros on this site and they offer a currency converter.

Cellar Tours

Cellar Tours offers luxury food and wine vacations throughout Spain, Portugal and Italy, so you can choose from Florence, Portofino and Ferrara, Barcelona, Madrid and Seville or Lisbon or Oporto (and that's just a taste of what's on offer). Their tours focus on wine tastings, traditional and creative cuisine, history, art, and architecture.

Gourmet on Tour

Whether you want half a day or two week break, Gourmet on Tour provide over 80 culinary and wine-appreciation adventures and holidays in countries such as: Italy, France, UK, Ireland, Spain, Morocco, USA, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand with a diverse selection of venues deep in the countryside or in the thick of the city and with accommodation in cozy farm houses or urban designer hotels. So there's lots for you to choose from on this extremely friendly site.

Inntravel

On this easy to get round website you can choose from several very different short break options, as well as the more usual city breaks to places like Bruges and Lille. You can, for example, go on a riding weekend through one of Spain's most spectacular and unspoiled rural areas, relax in an out of the way French county auberge, take a cycling trip through Spain or Italy or learn to cook traditional dishes such as Tarte Tatin in Normandy. There are some very innovative suggestions here and it’s well worth having a look round.

Mary Berry

Not really a holiday, more of a great day out but one not to be missed. Mary Berry holds wonderful Aga cookery days at her lovely house in Penn, Buckinghamshire and if you're the owner of an Aga you'll find it not only a lovely day but also hugely useful. Book as early as you can as she gets extremely booked up.

Tasting Places

Voted by Conde Nast Traveller as one of the best 10 cookery holidays in the World, Tasting Places offer you holidays in Italy, Greece, France, Spain or Thailand where you can improve your cookery skills and relax at the same time. They also offer masterclasses in a top London restaurant such as The Ivy or Nahm or the Manoir aux Quatres Saisons.

Wine Tours

Arblaster and Clarke Wine Tours were started in 1986 by two people with a passion for wine and a love of travelling. They offer more tours and destinations each year and include Opera and Wine tours (and opera holidays), Vinyard Walks, an annual Wine Cruise and visits to explore the vinyards of South Africa, Languedoc Roussillon, Veneto and Cognac amongst others. The website is beautifully clear and the combination, for me particularly, of wine and opera totally irresistible, although obviously wine is the main theme here so ignore the opera if it’s not for you.