Marseille is heaven for seafood fans. As well as the many fresh fish dishes you can choose between various versions of the traditional fish soup, bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse du Ravi and Bouillabaisse du Pecheur are variations commonly served in the city’s restaurants. Ravi (‘delighted’) features six different fish while the Bouillabaisse du Pecher (‘fisherman’) has three.
‘Moules marinier’, another staple seafood dish of Provence, combines mussels with Provencal herbs and finely diced onion. Eat in the Vieux Port (the old port) looking out over the Mediterranean and you’ll see the bustling harbour at work. Alternatively, go into the quieter streets of the Quai de Rive Neuve. The dry local white wines suit fish and seafood very well but many people choose a rose wine – ‘pink’ somehow seems right in the heat of the Provencal summer.

Many holiday makers combine a visit to Marseille with visits to other towns on the Mediterranean coast. St-Tropez, Cannes, Cassis, Sainte-Maxime, Frejus, Antibes, Nice, Cap Ferrat and Monte Carlo all have distinct characters and charm. With their beaches and glamour they will definitely appeal to the committed hedonist.

Inland, the towns of Aix-en-Provence, Arles and Avignon will appeal to culture vultures. In particular you may want to visit the summer theatre festival in Avignon and the exhibition in Arles of Roman antiquities. The latter is on until mid-September 2010 and features a bust of Caesar and many artefacts excavated from the river bed of the Rhone.

In Marseille, some major sights to see are the 5th century Abbaye de St-Victor, the Old Port, the Romanesque Basilique Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, the former prison of the Chateau d’If, the famous street known as La Canebiere, the historical ruins in the Jardin des Vestiges, the old town square Estienne d’Orves and the 17th century building La Vieille Charite, now an exhibition centre. Museums not to miss are the Musee d’Histoire de Marseille, Musee de la Marine, Musee des Docks Romains (a Roman warehouse), the art Museum (Musee Grobet-Labadie) and the Musee d’Histoire Naturelle.

High-speed trains (TGVs) run frequently between Paris and Marseille and take just three hours. The local airport, Marignane, serves destinations around Europe and in Africa.
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The Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France is the most northerly region in the country, and it borders Belgium. This is the place to enjoy beaches and countryside, fine cuisine and unique shopping, local markets and unique architecture. This is a major port, and those traveling by ferry from the U.K. land here.

To visit France’’s northernmost region is to discover a universe where sea and earth are intimately linked. In the past ten years, Nord-Pas de Calais has been transformed by the Channel Tunnel––a project accomplished in May 1994 but contemplated by Napoleon two centuries earlier. Another asset is the TGV train service from Paris to Lille, the region’s capital, a non-stop 150-mile trip that takes 59 minutes in railway cars whose comfort equals that of a first-class airliners, minus the airport delays and weather turbulence.

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I’m here for the ski and snowboard test camp jointly run by tour operator MountainSun and ski and board hire company Edge 2 Edge. Part of the vast Espace Killy ski area which is also home to Val d’Isère, the Grande Motte glacier above Tignes hosts skiing almost all year round, and, after its three-week autumn closure, the 25 guests gathering on the last weekend of September for a pre-dinner drink in the chalet hotel’s snug bar are its first visitors of this winter. Running until 13 December, the camp has an eye-catching price tag – the standard package of three nights’ catered accommodation, three-day lift pass, airport transfers and use of new-season boards, bindings, skis and boots by top brands starts at £99.

I’m not first on the slopes, possibly because of chef and hotel manager Roger’s generosity with the Talisker single malt after dinner. But my timing is good. At 10.30am I board the funicular railway, which bores 3.5km through the mountain before emerging into swirling grey cloud. Thankfully, it has evaporated by the time the Grande Motte cable car carries me to 3,456m and the glacier’s highest skiable point.

Tignes’ out-of-season skiing can offer up to 20km of piste – I share five open runs with a couple of kids’ teams on race training and around 50 other downhillers. A couple of snowfalls have dusted the glacier, but it still has a grey palour. Still, this is unmistakably an Alp, and a mighty one. Unsweetened by their more familiar winterwear of several million tons of whiteness, the raw, angular ridges and peaks of Grande Casse, Mont Pourri and the Mont Blanc range layer into a stupefying panorama. And, it occurs to me as I make my first carves, I could blow the cost of this whole trip in four hours on Tamworth SnowDome’s 170m of indoor, man-made snow.

The last time I was at Tamworth, I don’t remember having brand-new, high-end kit chucked my way either. The Edge 2 Edge team are pioneers of a new service that lets you order or be fitted in the UK then have your equipment delivered to resorts in the Tarentaise region, bringing to the camp new-season boards, skis and boots by Burton, Head, Salomon, Scott, Atomic and more. Thanks to them, I finally get to ride Lib Tech’s Skate Banana snowboard, whose radical “reverse camber” construction made such an impact it was near impossible to lay hands on one for its first two seasons. The seven points of contact provided by its subtly bumpy outline give amazing control and make breezy work of Grand Motte’s crunchy-then-mushy covering. Before I know it, I’m being chased down the mountain by ski patrol, the last man down. “I know,” grins ski tech Matt when I swap my Banana for a Burton at the end of the day. “It feels like you’re cheating, doesn’t it?’” .

Down in the valley too, the camp punches above its weight. A ten-minute shuttle ride from the main base station (and linked during heavier snow by the Les Boisses lift to Espace Killy’s 300km of runs), Les Mélèzes is a simple, spotlessly clean 20-room chalet hotel with the usual alpine extras like hot tub, sun terrace and sauna plus a Wii, Wi-Fi and Sky TV. Served in a dining room whose large windows reveal spectacular views of the valley, Roger’s food is, for the price, frankly astounding. Dinners include whole poussin with orange zest gravy, herb-crusted rack of lamb with dauphinoise gratin and roasted veg, and seared fillet of pork with wholegrain mustard and mushroom sauce. And the throng who fill the bar, many pre-bonded by previous trips with MountainSun (its repeat rate for guests averages about 60%) variously enjoy relaxed and borderline riotous evenings, side by side. The prices help – here a pint of beer will cost you €4.50 against the valley average of €6. This trip’s only reminders of in-season fiscal realities are at the Panoramic mountain restaurant, the only one open at this time of year, where coffee costs €3.60.

On this, the inaugural outing of the three-year-old camp’s 2009 run, there’s even the opportunity to trade in my last afternoon’s skiing for Franceraft Savoie’s final white water rafting excursion of the season out of Bourg Saint Maurice (for a €60 supplement). Surrounded by flitting birds, dappled sunshine and the dramatic cliffs of the La Pucelle gorge, the 22km, rapids-studded stretch of the Isère river adds another satisfying snowsports holiday first to the tally. And with my bags waiting for me in the MountainSun transfer bus at the end, that run back to the airport is neatly snapped into two palatable halves.

The Drôme Valley has been of strategic importance for centuries due to trade routes from southern France to Italy through the Alps. These routes were defended even in pre-Roman times but the origins of the castle in Crest are mostly traced back to a written reference in a papal letter of 1120. The castle was built in several stages and a massive fortress was already in place by 1419 when Château de Crest became a royal property.

During the seventeenth century, French King Louis XIII and his chancellor Cardinal Richelieu gave orders that the castle in Crest, like many others in France, had to be demolished. Destruction started in 1633 and only the keep, which served as jail up to 1873, survived. The jail in Crest saw service during the French wars of religion and famously held Republican prisoners who opposed the imperial rule of Emperor Napoleon III.

Today, only the marvelous keep of Crest Castle survived. The tower is 52 m high, 32 m long and 20 m wide. From a distance, the donjon of Crest oddly resembles a misplaced medieval skyscraper standing a bit alone and forlorn on a small hill above the town Crest and the Drôme River. Up close, the medieval tower looks the part with walls up to 4 m thick and without unnecessary decorative elements.

Inside the Crest castle tower is rather bare making it easy to enjoy the visit even with small children in tow. The purpose of some rooms are explained but the number of items exhibited is limited and not of particular importance. Some graffiti by prisoners survived too. Scale models helpfully explain the development of the castle as well as some architectural elements of medieval castle construction in general.

The most fun is scaling the steep stairs to the top of the castle. Note the thick wooden beams – sometimes cut into triangles to save wood. The wooden stairs up to the third level, where the living quarters are, are wide but from here upwards, mostly very narrow, one-way stone stair cases are used.

From the main bedroom with two-seater toilet facilities – formerly popular for social interaction – take the narrow staircases to the roof with an ingenious water catching system. From here, external staircases lead to the top of the donjon and marvelous views of Crest, the Drôme Valley, and mountain peaks. Although not as dry as the Ardeche and Provencal landscapes further to the south, the Drôme Valley is clearly warmer and drier than the Isère Valley, one mountain range further to the north.

La Tour de Crest is open daily from mid-February to end October from 2 to 6 pm with longer hours from 10 am to 7 pm from May to mid-September. The rest of the year, the keep is generally open weekend afternoons only but daily during local school holidays.
Visiting the tower involve a huge number of stairs right from the start making touring the castle totally impossible for wheelchair users and the infirm.
Individuals can abseil from the top of the donjon on Saturday afternoons in July and August. For groups, abseiling from La Tour de Crest is possible any day by prior reservation. The minimum age for abseiling from Crest Tower is six years.
Parking is available at the back of the castle – follow the signs to La Tour de Crest from the town center through the suburbs. Hikers can follow more direct trails from the old town.