Tenerife music festival cancelled at the last minute

Posted on 17/05/2012 by admin

RockCoast festival logoA major blow to music fans and the Canary Islands.

The Rock Coast Festival 2012 had been heavily promoted as a huge music event for the Canary Islands and was only a week away, but yesterday the organisers, L M Productions, published a statement on the festival website cancelling the event and blaming the the financial crisis, lack of institutional commitment and the possible financial impact of going ahead on their company as the reason for withdrawing.

The festival, due to run from May 24th – 26th in the coastal town of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, was headlining some of the biggest names in rock including Iggy & The Stooges, Marilyn Manson, Ben Harper, The Smashing Pumpkins, Evanescence, Lenny Kravitz & Fatboy Slim, and around 40 national and local bands.

Set up in a huge amusement park, the festival was also going to feature a variety of exhibitions, video art & new artistic trends, sports events in dedicated sports area, delicious food spots to sample the local cusine, a children’s area for families, and much more. It had been viewed not only a music festival but also a major cultural event promoting Tenerife and the Canaries, so the decision to cancel has come as shock to everyone involved. For example, here in the UK it had been promoted by MTV, the Guardian and The Times. Only two days ago UK tour operators such as Sovereign were promoting holiday packages to Tenerife based on the event.

The Canaries are not left entirely devoid of premiere division musical performances.

According the the Canary Islands’ online English language newspaper, Island Connections, “the Boss”, Bruce Springstein rocked almost 30,000 delighted fans at his concert on Tuesday night in the football stadium in Las Palmas.

Posted in Events | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Family holiday activities don’t get much more ‘upmarket’ than this

Posted on 16/05/2012 by admin

underwater treasure promoFrégate, the private island resort in the Seychelles, is encouraging famlies to search for lost pirate treasure this summer, only you’ll need your own treasure or fat City bonus, to join the hunt!

The exclusive luxury hideaway is a three-km square island offering 16 luxurious villas, which are arranged so that privacy is guaranteed and the island’s seven beaches can be experienced in total seclusion.

If ‘austerity’ is not effecting you too much, you and your kids can search for the island’s legendary long lost pirate treasure – the Royal Portuguese Golden Cross, which has eluded bounty hunters for 250 years. It could be anywhere on the island from the jungle trails that wind up to the peak of Glacis Serf, to the kaleidoscopic submarine world beneath the encircling waves.

According to legend, the ruthless French pirate La Buse stole the Royal Portuguese Golden Cross as it journeyed from India to Portugal, before burying it on Frégate – then a wild, jungle-covered hideaway for buccaneering brigands. While there is no X to mark the spot, the Seychelles National Archives are home to a mysterious scroll purporting to be the last will and testament of La Buse, which the pirate is said to have thrown from the gallows with his last words, “Find it for me!”

While grown-ups can indulge their castaway fantasies – with private infinity pools and picture-postcard beaches of powdery white sand all to themselves – kids are transported to a mystical lost world of prehistoric giant tortoises, towering banyan trees and, of course, legendary pirate treasures.

What will it cost for your kids to join in?

Well, luxury specialists, Scott Dunn, are offering seven night family summer holidays at Frégate Island Private, from £21,920 per family of four. Price includes seven nights villa accommodation for the price of six, for two adults and two children under 11yrs sharing on a full board basis; two hours’ babysitting per day; return economy flights from London Heathrow with Emirates; helicopter transfers; tax and service.

Posted in Travel (Destinations) | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Driving in France? Take your own breathalyser!

Posted on 25/02/2012 by admin

Driving onto a car ferry

It turns out there are more tricksy things for Brits to think about if they go driving in France this summer.

I’ve just come back from a short driving trip across the Channel, the first I’d made for a few years. I knew, as I was planning it, that I already had the obligatory hazard warning triangle and a first aid kit from previous trips, and that I’d have to ‘top up’ with new deflector lens for the headlights and a new GB sticker, but I double-checked for any new requirements and found two things I hadn’t expected.

Firstly, these days you have to have a high visibility vest, and what’s more you can’t keep it in the boot. It has to be in the passenger compartment so, when you break down, you can put it on before stepping outside to retrieve your warning triangle from the boot and then trudge down the road to set it up. “What about passengers?” you ask. Well, exactly. There has to be one for everyone who gets out of the car. You could have just one and swop it around, but that’s not very practical. So knowing I had 2 passengers I needed 3 vests.

And then there are spare bulbs. Now these are not “obligitoire”, but if a bulb ‘went’ on the car and you were pulled over, you would be fined and not allowed to drive on. You’d have to leave the car to go and find one.

So, for me it was fairly straight-forward I went off to the local Halfords (£) store, and probably because it was very first thing on a Sat morning (before the stress levels kicked in), the staff were entirely brilliant and helped me find all the various bulbs I needed plus the other bits & pieces (headlamp lens deflectors, GB sign, High vis jackets), which came to just under £40.

But wait! There’s more!

Probably spurred on by Halfords ;) the French have upped the rules.

As of 1st July all cars in France must carry a breathalyser kit. The French are clamping down on over-the-limit drivers (the limit is quite low in France: 50mg alcohol per 100ml of blood. It’s 80mg in the UK) and this new legislation is designed to undermine any mitigating “I didn’t know” arguments.

The French police will fine you €11 if you don’t have one, although they are likely to be discretionary till Nov 2012.

It’s best to keep your eye on the French because they have a habit of ‘upping’ the rules. I only discovered after my last trip that another rule was introduced with the New Year. You can now be fined up to €1500 in France if you have a satellite navigation system in the car that shows the location of speed cameras. I don’t think my old & basic Tom Tom does, but my Waze app on my smartphone certainly does! EEK!

(Declaration: No this is NOT a sponsored post, but I have put an affiliate link in it. That’s  because I did use Halfords, they were very helpful, and as it happens, I do have an affiliate relationship with them because I list them in my travel equipment retailers lists.)

Posted in Travel (Destinations) | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Valentine’s Day? Bah Humbug!

Posted on 10/02/2012 by admin

Valentines card

Now is the season… to receive endless, endless, Valentines Day themed press releases and special offers.

They started with the New Year (actually a few even appeared before then) and they have been rising to a crescendo. My email client goes away to check my email accounts every 11 mins or so, and returns with a fresh batch of them for me to instantly dump into the trash folder.

I’m just not interested in the quasi marketing events of the greetings card industry. Send me a Mothers, Fathers, Valentines or Halloween themed press release and you are simply wasting your time and filling up my digital trash bin.

…and doing so faster than a speeding bullet! My first line of defense is an automated message filter that spots those keywords in the subject line and puts them straight in the trash. I don’t even see them :)

I am happy to receive emailed press releases about real holidays: half-terms, Christmas, New Year, Easter, Bank Holidays… even the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee extended half-term break (so long as there’s no royal sycophancy in sight).

Image: kdavidclark

Posted in Travel Journalism | Leave a comment

The Captain and crew of the Costa Concordia are heroes

Posted on 14/01/2012 by admin

Costa Concordia

Until proved otherwise.

You know, social media is a wonderful thing, but frankly I’m not sure we deserve it. The “with great power comes great responsibility” line comes to mind.

I’ve seen endless brain-dead and prejudiced views in the media, all over the comments columns, and on FB & twitter. The standard view, particularly from America I’m sad to say (take a look at CNN comments), is that Italians are incompetent, they screwed up the evacuation and they should never have been so close to land in the first place.

Most people don’t have a clue about maritime matters, but even the thickest reporter/commentator should have been able to see what had happened the moment the sun came up.

Q. Where was the ship going? A. It was on the first leg of its normal cruise itinerary from Rome (Civitavecchia) to Savona, Italy. So…. come on Mr shit-for-brains commentator, which way would that be? Yes! NORTH!

Q. Which direction is it pointing now? A. (You could use Google maps for this one or just take one look at which side of the ship is illuminated in the morning sun) …. still waiting… yes! That’s right! SOUTH!

So now, what do you think happened? …. C’mon you genii… Yes! The ship WASN’T sailing so irresponsibly near the shore. It was probably in the channel between the island & the mainland when it hit something. It wound up within yards of the shore right off a harbour because….? Yes, the Captain deliberately turned his ship round through 180 degrees (they don’t turn on a sixpence these things, he was probably 3-4 nautical miles offshore) and brought her right up onto the coast to the nearest harbour entrance. He probably hoped he might still be afloat there, but even if he ran aground again, or the ship settled in the water, he wouldn’t sink giving his passengers the best chance of survival and rescue.

And we don’t know if he even had engine power. Costa Concordia is one of the new generation of azimuth pod-driven ships. If she lost power, without a rudder she would be very difficult to steer.

So, getting his ship to shore was pretty heroic I’d say.

Was the evacuation chaotic and disorganised?

Well, what do you think? The power goes out at night and the ship starts listing heavily. You think the passengers and crew were the model of self-discipline and fully organised? This is real life (& death) at sea. Not a queue for the January sales! And yet, the reports are that while some passengers panicked, and many felt they weren’t given enough information/instruction… others report moderate calm and steady progress getting lifeboats away and passengers off the ship.

So far three tragic deaths and around 70 missing, but the majority (hopefully all) of the missing are thought to be accounting errors – people who have wandered away on shore, not been counted, ended up on the mainland not the island, weren’t on board in the first place.

Now I’d say that is an amazing heroic achievement! A ship with 4,200 passengers & crew on board! I would be proud to be a member of a crew, or a company, or a nation that had achieved that. (I don’t want to be callous, but what is the average number of ‘normal’ deaths per cruise on a ship that size?)

The only thing that has worried me is a report that the ship never sent out a Mayday call. They should have done that, even if they knew there was a rescue response from the shore a matter of yards away… but then, maybe a technical problem.

Either way, let’s start from the position that this has been a successful ‘disaster’ and that the captain, crew and company are judged heroically innocent until proved guilty of something.

Image: Il Fatto Quotidiano

Posted in Events | Tagged , , | 7 Comments