Yosemite slam: This is Big Country and you’ll want to reveal your hunter-gatherer.
Lake McClure at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is where to pitch tent.
And get out and fish the lake and get your heartpumping at the Exchequer Mountain Bike Park.
Before heading to Yosemite to take in the giant Sequoias.
Camping spaces can be hard to get in Yosemite National Park and that’s where Indian Flat Campground near the gates comes in.
You’ll strike gold too at the Mariposa County Fairgrounds just a mile from the Gold Rush town. See www.mariposa.com.
Norfolk Broads
Let’s cosy up in the tent
Hickling Campsite, Hickling, Norfolk (https://www.hicklingcampsite.co.uk): Of course for many of us there’s nothing better than snuggling up next to your loved one.
And here’s one we prepared earlier from Norfolk in England’s East Anglia.
You’ll get to stay in a self-contained hut.
The Norfolk Broads are one of England’s natural delights while further afield you can explore secluded beach walks and boat trips.
Chicago some time in between. #DontCancelPostpone.
While there’s St Helena, Napoleon’s final refuge, squeezed between. #DontCancelPostpone.
And New England for this year’s Mayflower celebrations #DontCancelPostpone.
And a number of other planned adventures… #DontCancelPostpone.
#DontCancelPostpone is the Travel industry’s response to the worst possible thing that can happen to it… the suspension of Travel.
And it is a mantra that I and my fellow Travel scribes will be taking up.
Because for anybody who has stepped out their door (something we no longer take for granted) then there has been a Travel provider there to hold your hand.
So this is what we’ll do… our friends in the Travel industry will keep sending me their destinations and we’ll make a pinkie promise to advise people #DontCancelPostpone
St Helena, for those who didn’t get their atlases out at school, is off the coast of South Africa and my trip to the second most inhabitable island in the world will involve…
So, this is where Marilyn finally found her rest from the lascivious attentions of the manipulative men who hounded her to her death.
Unsignposted and in an unassuming square at the back of a Los Angeles office block lies the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
But who’s this lying next to her?
Norma Jean
Only Playboy owner Hugh Hefner who bought the drawer next door for $75,000… he was surely the last man she would have wanted to spend eternity with.
Marilyn and Hefner had history.
It was Hefner who bought the nude pictures that she had posed for in her sallow youth before she became famous for just $500 and put them on his first cover of Playboy.
She never got a dime.
Stars align
Marilyn doesn’t deserve this company.
She should be shining brightest in a galaxy of stars.
And on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, she is.
The actress is one of 2,600 famous characters, human, animal, animated, immortalised on a mile and a half of sidewalk along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street.
Her hands and feet are outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with the imprints of a century of Hollywood celebrities.
Hers are worn out from the millions who have wanted to touch a bit of her.
If you feel her presence on the stairs of the Dolby Theatre where the Oscars are held then her spirit is playing tricks on you as her only appearance was at the nearby Pantages Theatre.
Still we all pose for a diva’s shot in homage to her anyway.
Marilyn seems to be everywhere I turn. I see her looking down, smiling from out of a window on Venice Beach.
And I’m wearing Bandanas by Murty
Brightly dressed and warm as the sun. We lift our heads from our catch of the day in Larry’s diner off the boardwalk, in my case the lightest calamari, and smile back.
Jim Morrison is all swagger on the other wall.
Today’s Venice Beach though has its own characters, a rasta artist on rollerblades playing guitar, an old man who wheels his grand piano up the strand to tinkle the ivories.
And a random Latino Conor McGregor who is punching and kicking the hell out of a punchbag in the square.
In Southern California, or SoCal, it is all about the image, the Body Beautiful.
My kicks on Route 66: The end in Venice Beach
And this is where Californian body builders come to work out, at the outdoors Muscle Beach Gym, once the home of Arnold Schwarzenegger and ‘The Hulk’ Lou Ferrigno.
There’s always a show on, even if it is only the tourists posing by a muscleman mannequin on the boardwalk. Guilty!
Up the road in Santa Monica the busy pier gives little clue that this is the beach used for Baywatch.
All these nuggets and more are at the fingertips of our driver Chris from Starline Tours provided by our hosts Attraction Tickets Direct.
Muscle man
He tells us of a loose association with David Hasselhoff and a girl who was the Hoff’s Proms date.
I would be more impressed if Chris had dated Sandy… well, we do pass Rydell High.
And he shows us too the site of the party hotel, the Garden of Allah where Joni Mitchell hung out, and ‘they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.’
You’ll find today’s Hollywood celebrities hanging out in West Hollywood, so where better to bunk down?
Aye, aye Cap’n
The La Peer Hotel, just a couple of blocks down from Beverly Hills, its cop shop and Rodeo Drive, is a Kimpton.
It is a boutique hotel which is much more than that as befits West Hollywood, with its heated outdoors swimming pool as an extension of the bar.
The hotel’s restaurant Viale dei Romani serves up the best Italian food if you want to stay inhouse.
And I’d also recommend the Wood Grilled Octopus and its garden of warm potato salad, oil cured olives, preserved lemon and saffron aioli.
Hollywood party
But there are no shortage of great restaurants too to sample in West Hollywood where best of all you can also indulge in the favourite pastime of celeb-spotting.
And so we also visited Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump’s eponymous lounge and restaurant PUMP.
Where Lady Gaga made the news a few years back after falling outside on the sidewalk.
Lisa is there the night we dine on truffle mushroom chicken (well, you would, wouldn’t you?)
Now where’s that cop? Beverly Hills
Though no sign of Gaga. Perhaps the gay icon will be back the following week for Pride.
West Hollywood is already putting out the bunting for Pride when up to 200,000 will take to the streets.
Although, in truth, it is always in a state of readiness with its rainbow zebra crossings.
I’d recommend a night in one of the many friendly gay clubs, I even managed to walk, rather than fall out of.
Old LA
Although a bulky cop, or I think he was, reminded me that I couldn’t drink on the sidewalk.
If you want to get closer to the stars, get onto the right tours and get on the sets of the TV shows and movies we watch.
Our hosts Attraction Tickets Direct will help with pre-booking which will save precious time and money.
They will take you to Warner Studios where you can sit in the very same couch used in Central Perk in Friends or visit the Ellen set.
A day in Universal Studios Hollywood will immerse you in movie history and the future now.
We take a coach tour through the sets of Pyscho, Jaws, a Mexican town and through a tunnel where a scene from Fast and Furious is simulated all around us. Great fun.
Psycho anyone?
Great fun too the Kung Fu Panda: The Emperor’s Quest cinema show with vibrating seats and water mist effects,.
While fans of rollercoaster rides will love The Simpsons and Harry Potter rollercoasters.
I prefer to sit back and watch others take the heat although I didn’t expect to see a stuntswomam set on fire in the Special Effects show.
All your favourite animated and sci-fi characters are here and all in great form, all happy to pose up.
No, he hasn’t a Scooby either
Shrek, Scooby-Doo, the Transformers, a dinosaur, no, not me, but a ‘real’ T-Rex which is trailing Jurassic World – The Ride.
We all have our favourites but it is the Boy Wizard who will always cast a spell on me.
Muggles, myself included, are besides themselves at the prospect of Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure storycoaster in the sister resort in Orlando.
Universal Hollywood’s Potter experience feels smaller than its Orlando world but it is still intimate and enchanting.
And its Dark Arts light show is a thundering good jape with a cascade of creepy crawlies climbing up to attack a crumbling Hogwarts Castle in the dead of night.
Magical: The Potter show
Only for the forces of good to prevail, all against a heart-pounding musical score and moral message.
And that it seems is Hollywood and the LA story in a nutshell, an aspirational, illusory dream sequence.
Where you can stand in the Hollywood Hills, and you can hike up to the Griffith Observatory and view the iconic letters.
Or take a waitering job and hope to serve a Steven Spielberg.
Or get your star on the Walk of Fame.
A couple of proper Charlies
It’s a rollercoaster journey all right and you can’t pick who you’re next too but I did spot four stars unfilled…
And I reckon I’d be a more than deserving candidate for one of them.
I’ve been an angel
HOW TO GET THERE
Jim flew with Aer Lingus from Dublin Airport with pre-clearance to LAX.
WHERE TO STAY
La Peer Hotel is quintessentially West Hollywood with bright, funky finishings, spacious and comfortable bedrooms and fine and filling food. As well as a heated swimming pool and fitness centre. Doubles from approximately €315 per night. Visit www.lapeerhotel.com.
She vants to be alone
ACTIVITIES
Deluxe Grand City Tour with Starline from €73pp.
Hollywood Hills guided hike – departing from the Greek Theatre. It’s a 2.5 hour gentle hike, offering mountain and city views and photo opportunities of the Hollywood sign. The tour ends at the Griffith Park Observatory (admission included). From €46pp.
Starlight Dinner Cruise from Marina Del Rey’s. From €107pp (not including drinks).
Universal Studios Hollywood – one-day admission ticket from €96pp/Express Pass from €167pp/VIP Experience from €305pp.
Anne Frank, Amsterdam: ‘Nothing is off limits,’ a former newspaper colleague chimed in when I tried to steer morning conference back from an insensitive area.
And a lot of journalists like to paint themselves as hard-bitten and cynical… as if detaching yourself from feeling will help you present the story!!!
The words of the young Anne from her diary of life i. Hiding in an Amsterdam attic and her idealistic dream that she might one day become a journalist choked me.
Judy Murray, Quinta do Lago, Portugal: Now, I wouldn’t swap my Irish mum for anybody but if I had had a Scottish mum I’d have wanted her to be Judy Murray.
Of course that would age her and Judy, as well as being as athletic as a teenager she is also just as mischievous.
The tennis coach was quick to say that we weren’t to ask about her famous sons Andy and Judy…
Marilyn Monroe, Los Angeles: Who wouldn’t have wanted to lie with Marilyn.., though maybe not now.
Although Hugh Hefner had no such qualms (funny that) and bought the drawer next to Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles so he could rest with her in perpetuity.
Javelins have their place… partly because of bonkers Tessa Sanderson who I interviewed in my first job and the force of nature that is Fatima Whitbread.
They could make it even better if they were to time it to when the long-distance runners were on the track.
Long jump? Nothing exciting has happened since Bob Beamon jumped out of the pit.
And high jump? Since Dick Fosbury flopped over the bar in the Sixties.
And you’ll be able to roll up at the bar and then into the pool which I might just have tried out.
Celebrity spotting is an everyday pastime in SoCal, Southern California.
And I was fortunate enough to see and meet a host of them at the American Travel Fair www.ipw.com which was being hosted by Anaheim www.visitanaheim.org.
Natasha Bedingfield, Jason Derulo, the Beach Boys, Snoop Dogg…
The biggest stars for me though in La La Land are the living legends, those who will never die.
Such as Marilyn Monroe who still parades the Walk of Fame near her star and hand prints…
Lying with Marilyn
I spent a weekend with Marilyn: in Venice Beach and at her last resting place in LA where a very unwelcome neighbour moved in.
And stood in the sand back in the crystal waters of the Caribbean deep in the sea in Tobago It’s Robinson Crusoe’s very own Tobago limin’ with other revellers.
Symbols have always been at the very heart of sport:
The colours and designs of strips or uniforms, club badges or crests and buttons.
Although sometimes they can land you in trouble.
And the players in the Celtic and Rangers Catholic and Protestant divide know it.
Whether they grew up in the West of Scotland or bought into it.
Mo Johnston controversially crossed the divide and himself (well at least when he was at Celtic, the Catholic gesture particularly provocative to Rangers fans).
While Paul Gascoigne gullibly responded to the egging-on from Rangers fans by mocking a flute player.
Another incendiary action in Glasgow’s religious tribalism, conjuring up the Protestant King William of Orange’s victory over the Catholic King James II.
That flute is OK
Sometimes even the football forces its way into the argument.
The debate du jour in English football is whether players and teams should walk off if they are racially abused from the crowd.
I never had to encounter being either physically or verbally abused over the colour of my skin.
But I was spat at on a bus by religious bigots in Glasgow as a child because of the colour of my uniform.
Which is why I was so drawn to Rosa Parks’ sit-down protest on the bus in the Deep South.
And was so humbled by the sacrifices made by black (and white) Civil Rights protesters.
No such discussion is had regarding religious bigotry in Glasgow despite they’re being on average one murder surrounding the Old Firm game every time the two meet.
