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Byline: Helen Pickles You may not so much have sniffed a mince pie yet but it's never too soon to consider the inevitable extra inches that will follow the festive [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles To discover the secret of a happy life head to Trieste, the Italian port tucked inside the Slovenian border. The Triestini embrace life with a passion that [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Owning a smartphone is no longer enough; you need a matching smartwatch. Or so Samsung wants us to believe. Its latest shiny, must-have gizmo, on sale later [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles and Lee Beaumann AMAPRIMA Passenger capacity 164 Number of cabins 82 Experience rating **** The sister ship to AmaCerto, which launched last year, AmaWaterways' newest river cruiser, [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Around 15 minutes' walk north of the cruise-ship mooring by the Steenplein on Antwerp's quayside are several massive, black iron bollards. Nothing unusual about that: Antwerp is [...]

Byline: Gill Charlton, Richard Dawood, Anne Hanley and Helen Pickles We are both in our late sixties and would like to take a holiday around Lake Garda, staying for about [...]

Byline: Gill Charlton, Richard Dawood, Anne Hanley and Helen Pickles After many years of promising my wife we would visit the Edinburgh Tattoo, I have finally organised the tickets, plus [...]

Byline: Gill Charlton, Richard Dawood, Anne Hanley and Helen Pickles I recently reserved two separate rental cars for collection in Kimberley and Cape Town, South Africa, through the car hire [...]

Byline: Gill Charlton, Richard Dawood, Anne Hanley and Helen Pickles My daughter is going to Bangkok and travelling to Chiang Mai in August. She has contacted her GP who says [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Ride-on mowers are sometimes misunderstood. 'People see them as just a lawnmower,' says Andrew Lees, product portfolio manager for Husqvarna. 'They aren't. They have pretty much all-year-round [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles What was the Algarve like before resorts, golf courses and Irish pubs sprang up along this coast with its year-round sunshine and golden beaches? Head east (rather [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles You don't need to live in a medieval castle or Queen Anne mansion to be the owner of a listed property. Barn conversions, basement flats and Victorian [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles People have the wrong idea about Northumberland. They think it's along way away - it's less than three-and-ahalf hours from London; they assume it's all Romans, ruins [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Imagine standing on a beach, not a soul in sight and with each end framed by the distant outline of a craggy castle. Or visualise walking through [...]

Byline: Helen Pickless How do you like your beach? Firm and flat for sand-castles? Wild and windswept for rugged walks? Curved and cosy for picnics and paddling? Or maybe backed [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Weekends, for me, are all about food: lazy breakfasts, Sunday brunches and Saturday suppers with friends; the emphasis on informality and generosity - generous quantities, generous conversation [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles It was raining. We had planned a trip around Northumberland – beaches, castles, Hadrian's Wall, plus the odd tea room – so things were not looking good. [...]

Byline: Helen Pickless Be honest: do you look at your neighbours' lawns and have bad thoughts? A desire to let loose a colony of moles, for instance? Don't worry, you're [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Simon Stiles, 54, and his wife, Elaine, both deputy head teachers, live in a village near Lincoln. Keen gardeners, they have a three–quarter acre garden, two Newfoundland [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Be careful before you sit on a Husqvarna ride–on mower: you might find you think you've got into your car. The design is so thoughtful – from [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles In August, Edinburgh will be heaving like a giant bouncy castle with the world's largest arts festival. It's a terrific event – but if you would rather [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles The grass needs cutting. Again. You're spending so much time at work, or having Mends round for dinner, or ferrying children around, that you never get the [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles You can usually tell a capital city: larger-than-life, in a hurry, full of its own importance. Except in Switzerland. Berne is so small and charming - all [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles The ideal way to approach Mantua - Mantova in Italian - is down the River Mincio from Lake Garda. Failing that, stand on the bridge near Porta [...]

A DRUG that can slow early-stage Alzheimer's by up to 60% was hailed by scientists yesterday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Byline: Helen Pickles We were teetering on the side of a volcanic crater, its edges scalloped like a doily, its sides slipping down in black, grey and cream stripes of [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Living close to Venice has its disadvantages. One gets ignored. On the flip side, it means visitors to Padua, just 25 miles away, can enjoy the city's [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Drawing back the curtains, I found morning sunlight glinting off the bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore and the pale dome of Santa Maria della Salute while, [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Edinburgh is electrifying at Festival time, but many would argue that the lull between Festival fun and Hogmanay's high jinks is when the city comes into its [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles This year, England could be witnessing the biggest Roman invasion since, well, since Hadrian built his wall. Yesterday saw the opening of the epic adventure film The [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Even if you have never been, York seems familiar; its mighty walls, lofty Minster and cobbled streets are well–known from photographs. But seeing the city in the [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles So, 2011 is here. And this is the one: the year you're going to get to grips with that skill, sport, language, makeover, or whatever it is [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Gaudy and brash or soft and twinkling, Christmas lights bring a touch of magic to our city centres and high streets. But imagine these festive lights given [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Do not think of visiting Cologne's Christmas markets if eating outdoors standing up, messily, between meals, when you are already full (one or all of the above) [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles Stroll through an indoor forest, enjoy a river-cruise dinner through a post-industrial landscape, hit the floor in a breakdance workshop or see your heartbeat in lights. This [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles In front of me there is the soft shurshurring of waves lapping the shore, around me the gentle sigh of the wind, while high above floats the [...]

Byline: Helen Pickles It's big, it's bold, it's the best-known frontier in the world (the Roman world, that is) - and it's here in England. Although built almost 2,000 years [...]

Roasting chestnuts and spicy gingerbread; cold fingers around a hot gluhwein; saucer-eyed children gazing at a real Father Christmas. Not your average Christmas shopping experience, is it? Christmas shopping has [...]

Why go? Where Edinburgh has elegance and urbanity, Glasgow has edginess and bravura. Modern, glass-fronted structures rub shoulders with grand Georgian and Victorian buildings. Art collections are eclectic and free; [...]

Why go? Less polished than Provencal neighbours to the east, but cosier than culture-crammed Montpellier and Toulouse to the west, Nimes mixes Mediterranean charm with a down-to-earth attitude. A flagship [...]

Why go? Most holidaymakers to Portugal's Algarve arrive at Faro and turn right to join the sunbathing bodies among the high-rise hotels of Albufeira, Vilamoura et al. Turn left, however, [...]

Why go? For history, culture, kick-back beaches and eye-aching prettiness. La Rochelle's sheltered harbour made it a major Atlantic trading port, and its history is reflected in its fortifications and [...]