10 of the best gourmet mini-jaunts for autumn

The olives are ripe in Puglia, the mushrooms are popping up in Normandy and the Rioja is ready to taste. Time for a European foodie break

The continent is awash with brilliant food, all you need is an appetite (Laurence Monneret) If newspapers had aromas, this page would have you drooling. The bouquet would be of herbs and spices, mushrooms, roasting meat and ripening cheese. Now is the time of year when we fancy a short break, and Europe is awash with brilliant food, so we’ve sought out 10 of the best gourmet mini-jaunts for autumn, and beyond. Some are participatory, others will teach you stuff, but all are very, very tasty.

Recently a series af articles offering information about making a gift hamper for christmas have been appearing in various places and many of these suggest picking unusual food specialities from far and wide.  By including some of the delicacies listed below you will be proud to present a gift hamper that you made to soemone who loves food rather than simply ordering Christmas hampers from Marks & Spencer

Gourmet breaks in Italy

Puglia
Why pay to pick olives, any more than you’d shell out for the joys of digging carrots? Simple. Olives are harvested around one of the prettiest five-star hotels in southern Italy. On the Puglia coast, near Brindisi, the Masseria Torre Coccaro is a manorial 16th-century farmstead turned luxury retreat. There’s epic eating and, this year, a chance to join the estate’s olive harvest.

In truth, the harvest element is unpunishing: only part of a morning. It’s followed by a bike outing with the chef to a market for veg and fish, cooking lessons and lunch of the Apulian dish you’ve created. Olive-oil instruction is also included, as is unlimited use of the hotel’s pools and gym. The three-night B&B deal, available from October 28 to March 23, 2011, costs from £505pp. And once you’re done cooking, let the professionals feed you properly. The Masseria restaurants are ace (, masseriatorrecoccaro.com).

The retreat is about 40 miles away from both Brindisi and Bari, each served by Ryanair - avoid Ryanair charges

Tuscany
There’s more to Florentine culture than feeling inadequate in the Uffizi. There is, glory be, Tuscan food and wine. So, for this trip, stash the books about Botticelli and follow a learned guide round the city’s food shops and abundant market. That’s the starter for a personalised gastro-break that will subsequently take you for a day in the chianti vineyards. The guide will be driving, so your thirst for knowledge can be slaked. Later, there will be ample time out in the olive groves.

Icing on the cake (or bolognaise on the pasta) is a morning of cooking instruction from a real Italian lady in her 18th-century Florentine home. The break, including three nights’ B&B in a luxury hotel, is organised by the gourmet specialist Le Baccanti (00 39 055 8065046, lebaccanti.com). As it stands, it’s £952pp, with a 10% discount for Sunday Times readers.

Fly to Florence or go to Pisa (44 miles away);

Spain Gourmet breaks

Mallorca
First time I went to Mallorca, several centuries ago, I ate chips and drank Watneys Red Barrel. Boy, how things have changed: witness the British-owned Reads Hotel.

It’s peaceful beneath the Tramuntana mountains, with top-class tranquillity wafting through the building. As do aromas from the Bacchus restaurant, recently named among Spain’s top 20. Reason enough to nip across for the four-day cookery break with the young German chef Felix Eschrich. In two morning classes, he’ll introduce you to, say, john dory with prawn carpaccio and samphire foam. Also included are four nights’ B&B, a market visit, a 10-course extravaganza in the main restaurant, and a lighter one in the hotel bistro. Plus car hire. And there’s plenty of time left over to undo the damage at the spa. From £1,025pp (00 34-971 140261, readshotel.com).

The hotel is about six miles from Palma airport.

Rioja
I’ve always thought that after paella and America, the parador hotels have been Spain’s greatest discovery. Where else in Iberia can you sleep and dine like a grandee? This year, there’s the added advantage that all paradors (be they former monasteries, castles or palaces) are offering Brief Art of Cooking menus reflecting the local traditions.

There’s a wealth of fab eating available, and the trick is to integrate it into a complementary trip. I’m suggesting the three-day wine route through Navarre and Rioja. You’ll visit the paradors of Calahorra, Olite and the old town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada (look out for the caged poultry in the cathedral).

You will eat brilliantly (lamb stuffed with mushrooms, roast kid) and pass through some of Spain’s finest wine lands, tasting as you go. Believe me, it’s a delight. Half-board accommodation throughout will cost you about £200pp. Keytel, the UK agent for paradors, has the details (020 7953 3020, keytel.co.uk).

Fly to Bilbao

Germany

North Rhine-Westphalia
You reckon German food is all dumplings, sauerkraut and blokes with alphorns blasting an accompaniment? Time for a trip to the Schlosshotel Lerbach at Bergish Gladbach, near Cologne. The old manor house has the swish of 19th-century nobility — and Nils Henkel, Germany’s chef of the year 2009, providing the food for the three-Michelin-star restaurant. It’s light and damnably inventive (how about langoustine royale with horseradish, cress and avocado?). In short, no place for lederhosen.

And you may now get in among it on some cracking gourmet breaks. The most interesting offers two nights’ B&B with the full gastro-works in the main restaurant one night, a lighter session in the brasserie on another. Also included is use of sauna, pool and minibar. From £470pp.

You might build into your stay four-hour cooking lessons with Herr Henkel. They’re £265pp — steep, but you’re with Germany’s best (00 49 2202 2040, www.schlosshotel-lerbach.com).

Fly to Cologne

France for gourmet food breaks

Normandy
Come autumn, every self-respecting French person takes to the forest in search of wild mushrooms. The hitch for neophytes is that having picked the wrong ones, we die an agonising death.

So let me suggest the mushroom breaks at the four-star Le Manoir du Lys, near Bagnoles de l’Orne, in Normandy. From the dignified old manor house — half-timbering and stone without, contemporary sweep within — you’ll make forays into the nearby forest with an expert. He’ll sift the edibles from the killers. You’ll learn how to cook them with the Michelin-starred chef Franck Quinton — and then, of course, eat. The break, including meals, may be booked with the hotel from £306pp (00 33 2 33 37 80 69, hotel-restaurant.manoir-du-lys.fr). VFB offers the same trip, but with a third night, half-board, two lunches and Channel crossing, from £606pp (01452 716842, vfbholidays.co.uk). Access is difficult by air.

Cross the Channel to Caen with Brittany Ferries (brittany-ferries.co.uk) or to Dieppe or Le Havre with LD Lines (ldlines.co.uk).

Languedoc
By the Gardon River gorges north of Nîmes, Collias is a sleepy southern village that looks shut even when it’s open. Which is why the Hostellerie Le Castellas is such a hell of a find.

Tucked away down a tiny street, the 17th-century buildings have stone-built integrity, contemporary comfort and family welcome.

They also boast one of the finest restaurants in the region. I’ve holed up here and emerged two days later, taste buds fairly seething with memories. The chef, Jérôme Nutile, has bagged his second Michelin star and now shares his skills. Thus you may join him as his team prepares lunch — watching, participating and then eating with him. It’s quite an experience, especially if built into a break. This would allow you to walk the gorges, and the nearby Pont du Gard — and then hurry back for more meals. Three nights, half-board, for two, including the cookery course, is from £534 (00 33 4 66 22 88 88, lecastellas.com).

The restaurant is about 15 miles from Nîmes.

Provence
No matter that we protest otherwise, we all know that we really want to be in Provence eating Provençal food. All that fresh fruit, fish, olive oil and rosé wine can make even Englishmen seem sensual. So let’s hie to a classic village there: La Cadière d’Azur, perched above the Med, near Toulon — and into the hands of the Bérard family. Slotted into several old village buildings, the Hostellerie Bérard & Spa beds you down in sumptuous southern style. Then it feeds you up with some of the finest and most imaginative dishes on the French Med coast.

With the sea, and Bandol wines, to hand, that’s enough for me — but René Bérard also runs one of the best and longest-established cookery courses in the south. It provides total immersion in Provençal food culture: five nights’ B&B, four mornings of instruction, lunches, visits (vineyards, markets) and the fun of being with a chap who’s lived it all. From £1,149pp (00 33 4 94 90 11 43, hotel-berard.com).

Fly to Toulon

Alsace
The four-star Chambard hotel stands substantial in the terrific little town of Kaysersberg, above Colmar. With its roof down over its ears, flowers at windows and wrought iron, it promises the apple-cheeked welcome that is the Alsacien trademark.

Should that not be enough to tempt you (it works for me), consider the food. In his Michelin-starred main restaurant, Olivier Nasti, one of the pleasanter chefs in France, gives regional fare a cracking contemporary makeover. (Try the rack of pork cooked in hay with a cumin reduction.) But the hotel also hosts his wood-panelled diner serving the Alsace classics — choucroute, cockerel in riesling — as they should be.

And then, directly opposite, Flamme & Co has a hip take on the traditional flammekueche tart, complete with DJs and late-night music. So you have everything you could possibly need within a few yards. The Chambard offers two-night B&B breaks, with dinners in the gastro-restaurant, from £549 for two. Nasti also gives three-hour cookery classes for £64pp. All that and Alsace, too: what more could you ask (00 33 3 89 47 10 17, lechambard.fr)?

Fly to Basel-Mulhouse

Burgundy
“An alcotest is at your disposal,” says the menu at La Maison d’Olivier Leflaive. How wise. The Grand Tasting menu includes 14 different wines. Okay, they’re tasting measures, but they’ll still irk the local constabulary. So the best bet is to have the menu at dinner, and take one of the Maison’s bedrooms. Then you’re laughing.

We’re in Puligny-Montrachet, a renowned wine village in the heart of the Burgundy vineyard. Volnay, Meursault and Pommard are close by. Leflaive, a wine producer, has converted a dignified 17th-century village house splendidly: the 13 rooms are four-star big and brightly contemporary.

In the rustic restaurant, you’ve got these super tasting menus, Burgundy’s best wines alongside unfussy regional food, with (English) commentary on the plonk.

The trick is to take Leflaive’s package: a morning’s vineyard and winery visit, the tasting extravaganza, a lighter tapas meal and B&B, from £264 for two. Add on extra nights (doubles from £124, room-only) and you’ve got a great base for further Burgundian sallies (00 33 3 80 21 95 27, maison-olivierleflaive.com).

Lyons airport is 90 minutes’ drive from Puligny-Montrachet.

France, India, Mali, Uzbekistan and beyond... these ancient monuments and pilgrimages have been tourist sites for centuries

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, also known as the Way of St James, attracts more than 100,000 pilgrims a year. To qualify for the 1,000-year-old compostela, the traditional Latin certificate of pilgrimage, you must carry the pilgrim passport, have walked or ridden on horseback the previous 62 miles (100km), or ridden 125 miles by bike, and have declared a spiritual or religious motivation (for more details visit www.csj.org.uk).

The Camino Frances, which traditionally starts in St Jean Pied de Port, is the most popular of all the Camino routes and is so busy in July and August that accommodation is in short supply.

Tro Breiz, France

The seven founders of Christianity in Brittany, bishops of the early Celtic church, are venerated in the Tro Breiz - tour of Brittany in Breton. Pilgrims visit the tombs of each saint in their own cathedrals: Samson at Dol, Malo at St Malo, Brioc at Saint-Brieuc, Tugdual at Treguier, Pol-Aurelien at Saint- Pol-de-Leon, Corentin at Quimper and Patern at Vannes.

The route, which is 375 miles long, was popular in the 16th century when it took a month or more and was relaunched in 1994 by Les Chemins de Tro Breiz. Now lovers of hiking and spirituality complete one section of the route each year. The pilgrimage from Vannes to Quimper takes place during the summer each year.

Details: www.tro-breiz.com

Varanasi, India

According to legend, the city on the Ganges was founded by the Hindu deity Shiva, and is one of the most sacred places of pilgrimage, with more than a million devotees a year, many taking long haul flights to India coming for ritual bathing or to throw the ashes of their loved ones into the holy waters. Tourists, lured by the spectacle, take trips along the river at dawn when it seems as if most of the city is performing its ablutions.

Kandy, Sri Lanka

The golden temple of Sri Dalada Maligawa on Kandy Lake is revered as the home of the left upper canine tooth of the Lord Buddha - smuggled into the country in AD300 in the hair of a princess. This relic attracts a daily procession of pilgrims, dressed in white and carrying lotus blossoms. The Esala Perahera festival in August synthesises Buddhist and Hindu beliefs in ten nights of spectacular parades with decorated elephants.

Djenne, Mali

The oldest city in sub-Saharan Africa, was a centre of Islamic learning and pilgrimage and its first mosque was built in 1240 by the sultan Koi Kunboro, who converted to Islam. Now it is a Unesco World Heritage Site and the Grand Mosque is the tallest dried-earth building in the world. The current mosque was built in 1907, with three towers, each topped by an ostrich egg. Every spring it is replastered in a spectacularly messy festival.

Mount Athos, Greece

Mount Athos in Halkidiki is the oldest surviving monastic community in the world, still out of bounds to any woman other than the Virgin Mary. There are 20 monasteries, which can be visited by outsiders for a maximum of four days. Visitors receive free basic board and lodging and the freedom to travel around the peninsula. There is a daily quota of 120 Orthodox pilgrims and 10 non-Orthodox, but the admission process is long and complicated.

Details: www.ouranoupoli.com

Bukhara, Uzbekistan

With hundreds of mosques and madrassas, this is the most complete example of a medieval city in Central Asia. Since the 14th century it has been the home of Sufism, a mystical brand of Islam, and pilgrims flock to the birthplace and tomb complex of the Sufi saint Bahauddin Naqshbandi. It was reopened in 1989 after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Jerusalem, Israel

The Western Wall (or Wailing Wall), the holiest of Jewish prayer sites, is a major part of the line that separates the Old City’s Jewish and Muslim quarters. It doubles as an outdoor synagogue with separate prayer areas for men and women. You don’t need to be Jewish to pray at the wall, but you do need to meet Orthodox dress requirements - paper skullcaps are on hand.

Pared-down chic, riad-style retreat or starry old-timer – here are southern Spain’s juiciest hotels

Hotel Alfonso XIII, Seville

The Hotel Alfonso XIII is one of Europe's grandest dames on dimensions alone (Handout) Hospes Las Casas de Rey de Baeza

In Seville, oranges are the only fruit, and this calm hotel, an urban nod to 17th-century Andalucía rústica, uses them to full effect: they dangle from trees in the drive, lie squashed by the tyres of arriving BMWs, flow from vases and tumble out of baskets. Unintentionally, their ubiquity has a slow comic effect, like one of those ‘Can you spot…?’ kids’ games. The potted baby spider plants are even funnier, edging the main staircase in long, descending files, like spiky-haired schoolkids heading off for a new term. This non-branded vernacular style (fused with a five-star professionalism from knowledgeable staff who feel like new best friends) is the hotel’s key charm: pebbly courtyards brim with banana palms, ferns and age-old millstones propped against white walls; distressed-leather furnishings submit to your backside with a sigh; and somewhere amid the public spaces a bird sings in a Moorish domed cage. The bedrooms make your stay as meditative as a spell in a mission – enhanced by pale-on-tobacco tones and bare to the point of no rugs – and the Casa does tranquillity to a tee, with the woo-woo of pigeons through the window and, from beyond the rooftop pool, the occasional peal of bells.

Hotel Alfonso XIII is a real movie-star hotel – a place that evokes nothing so much as Gloria Swanson playing creaky old Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Catapulted to fame after opening in 1928, rambling Hotel Alfonso XIII now basks forgetfully in grounds of exotic foliage while the younger competition flies into the 21st century. There’s a dodderiness about the old dear: on this visit the bathtub (a plug-on-chain number) took so long to fill, it might have been quicker spooning hot water from the sink; and twice a maid walked in on us as we cowered in bed. It’s polishing itself up, mind: a major renovation and a spa are on the cards next year. For now, the place ranks among Europe’s grandest dames on dimensions alone: endless marble in epic corridors, and lofty rooms that romp from madly tiled Moorish to ancestral Spanish (check out those Maid Marian-style X-frame chairs). As a refuge from roasting summer Seville, the place has no peer, with its LA-mansion blue pool and calm greenery screening off passing crowds. And with the likes of Madonna and Tom Cruise recently in residence, its star shows no sign of waning.
www.hotel-alfonsoxiii.com/

Casa Romana Hotel Boutique

From insalubrious beginnings sprout great things. Only a few years ago, the area around this hotel was off the visitor’s map (read: grimy). Now, the tarmac’d promenade that is the Alameda de Hércules is one of the trendiest parts of Seville, and Casa Romana, on an unassuming stretch between the Alameda and the main shopping streets, has been flying the boutique flag for the city since 2004. The ‘romana’ part of the ‘casa’ may, technically be a misnomer – the building is an 18th-century house, and the classical statues and friezes in the stairwell and along the patio aren’t real. Yet the ‘boutique’ label is well earned. There are just 26 rooms, and the feel is more akin to a Moroccan riad. Bedrooms – with buttery and beige palettes – look over a communal courtyard with original Moorish tiled fountain. The real treat is the roof, an immaculately dressed, tiled sundeck, with monochrome cushions and loungers on the lower part, as well as a miniature pool raised above it. The view may have more satellite dishes than snaky alleyways, but a dip in the water, champagne in hand, should dilute any feelings of cultural heresy.
www.hotelcasaromana.com

And the best of the rest

Hotel Posada del Lucero
This 16th-century building – a central find – has turned itself into monochrome boutique digs. Rooms mix www.hotelposadadellucero.es

Hotel Dona Maria
The old-school Doña María may not be as trendy as the EME (below), but the views of the cathedral from the rooftop bar are just as spectacular.
www.hdmaria.com

EME Catedral Hotel
Squashed amid the plastic menus of Cathedral Square, the EME has ultra-hip rooms, slinky public areas and a rooftop bar, restaurant and pool area.
www.emecatedralhotel.com

Hacienda Benazuza
Superchef Ferran Adrià’s Moorish farmhouse (pictured), 22km outside of town, has spacious rooms, florid decor and blowout meals. (Six a day: what the guests really come for.)
www.elbullihotel.com