For everyone who dreaming of the snow:

It might be a touch odd, but as we are all here quivering away in subprime temperatures, holiday makers are streaming off to ever colder places, spurred on by the desire to slide down great mountains attached to a couple of planks of wood.

I’m talking, of course, about the famed ski trip. And if you’ve signed yourself up to one of these glorious jaunts and are already getting excitable in the office, then I propose that you watch this little video, which should put you in just the right mood.

Tags: Britain, France, Lifestyle by Peter Moore
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With the credit crunch beginning to bite, John Hillman offers us all with a touch of advice about how P&O Ferries can help out with the post Christmas blues

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A January shopping binge is essential to our wellbeing as northern Europeans so don’t let the global financial crisis stop you.

Shady characters with sub-prime morals may have done their best to ruin it, but in these times of crisis we can still rely on our British maritime traditions to get us out of trouble.

Cross the straights of Dover with P&O Ferries and you will find a treasure trove of booty so cheap you’ll feel like your thieving pirate ancestors must have done, as you load it all into your car whilst cackling with hearty laughter.

Prices really are so good that the cost of a day-trip will still allow you to return home quids in, with the added satisfaction that British supermarket bosses and their recession proof infinity-pounds-a-minute profits won’t be coming from you this year.

But even if you prefer British supermarkets, you’ll still find all the major ones in Calais offering you everything you need for a touch of bargain shoppery. For example, Champagne and wine is between 50% - 70% less expensive than supermarket prices in the UK.

Choice is another reason to use P&O Ferries as your 2009 credit-crunch crusher.

Calais is so much more than a place for Brits to buy cheap booze; with as many French and Belgians heading to the huge shopping facilities around the city, you’ll find an enormously choice of goodies on offer to satisfy the gourmet in you. Stock up on cheeses, fois-gras and other wonderful delicacies that would normally cost you an arm and a leg back in the UK.

Those of you really interested in good local produce should take advantage of the regular weekly markets, which often sell organic food straight from the farmers themselves.

Place d’Armes on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, and Place Crevecoeur on Thursday and Saturdays, are excellent markets; places where you can browse past stall after stall of intersecting colours and aromas. Shop ‘till lunch then enjoy some of the finest seafood in a traditional Gallic eatery.

Some good advice is to try and go in the week if you can as Saturdays can be extremely busy, although the bustling Saturday atmosphere is probably a bit more fun if you’ve got the energy for it!

Indeed, although many people see Calais as either a place to buy cheap alcohol or somewhere you drive through on your way to your holiday home, there really is no reason why you can’t make a bit more of it.

Although the city was pretty much destroyed during World War II, there are still some interesting sights to take a look at while you are there. The renaissance style hotel de Ville is about as impressive as town halls come and the nearby statue of the ‘six burghers of Calais’ is well worth a look too.

Tags: Britain, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman reports on news of the latest Hollywood historical epic

It’s looking like the story of the most famous Channel crossing in history is finally going to get the Hollywood treatment.

1066 and the epic battle of Hastings is having three separate feature films made about it next year; all of them carry heavyweight tinsel-town backing.

Nearly 1000 years have passed since William the Conqueror fought his way into England, and it still remains one of the most important events in European history. The death of Edward the Confessor caused a bitter split between Harold and William, and led to the invasion of England and the changing of our country forever.

Producers and writers behind films like Elizabeth: The Golden Years, Gladiator and Trainspotting are competing to be behind the biggest and best release of the film, with most of them choosing to focus on the relationship between the two warrior Kings, who were once good friends.

The epic battles and the arduous Channel crossings seem to be tailor made for some serious CGI action and I for one cannot wait for this belated arrival to the pantheon of sword and sandal epics.

Hopefully at least one of the films will attempt to bring alive what it must have been like to transport a medieval army across the Channel in some pretty rudimentary ships, when in all probability a large proportion of the soldiers had never even seen the sea. I imagine it was complete chaos; just the perfect topic for the cinema.

Tags: Britain by John Hillman
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John Hillman laments the continental view of Albion

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Next time you head over to Rotterdam with P&O you might want to find out why on earth they think that the English are responsible for their bad weather.

Apparently a common enough slang for grey miserable rainy days is Engels Weer, English weather, which, when you consider that we get about half the annual rainfall that Holland does, is ever so slightly galling. We may as well start refereeing to our balmy summer evenings as Irish sunsets if we’re going to play by those rules.

Strange how much of a mistaken view of the English still exists on the continent, notably that we all eat bad food which, having lived in Europe myself, is another deeply irritating falsehood that you get fed up with hearing.

Even the tiniest village in the English countryside has a top quality Anglo-Indian restaurant and our supermarkets have more choice in them than any other I’ve been to from Berlin to Hawaii. The trouble is that we picked up a bad reputation about 100 years ago and can’t seem to shake it off.

There are few places in the world where you can experience as much gastronomic eclecticism as you can in England. For a nation that invented the pie, the steamed pudding and real ale to have such a bad culinary reputation represents a serious miscarriage of justice.

Tags: Belgium, Britain, France, Lifestyle, Netherlands, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman ponders over the cliffs of England and a perfectly preserved snapshot of the past that might just gives us a glimpse into our future

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The Bouldnor Cliff on the Isle of Wight is the site of some pretty interesting underwater archeology, including an 8,000-year-old submerged Mesolithic village, but it is the answers to the effects of climate change that have scientists interested the most.

Travel back in time to 6,500 BC and the cliff becomes the highest point in a chalk ridge, surrounded by a lush forest, a far cry from the watery playground that it is today.

Underneath the Solent, hidden away from all those pleasure boaters, are root systems and tree stumps, as well as flints, wood and other organic material, which makes Bouldnor Cliff one of the most important archeological sites in the UK.

Preserved by a seabed of peat this site is proving to be invaluable to researchers and climate scientists who are able to study 8,000 years of coastal erosion, giving them a unique insight into the rate at which sea levels have changed and their subsequent impact on the shoreline. This helps to gain some idea of how it will all react in the future, which is becoming increasingly important as the process of climate change begins to speed up.

Southampton University’s Oceanography Centre is involved in a three year study, along with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Trust for Maritime Archeology, to use the area surrounding Bouldnor Cliff to predict the effects of climate change, using both archeological and geotechnical techniques.
Thanks to the unique nature of Bouldnor Cliff scientists believe that they are now in a position to apply the data, gained from the site, to future environmental management plans around the whole of the British Isles.

Although most of us reside inland, there are millions of us living along the British coast or on any one of our 1000, or so, surrounding islands, so our exposure to the sea makes the work being done on the Isle of Wight crucially important as we move towards a future of more dramatic and dangerous climatic events.

The coast has always been subjected to a constant battering by the sea, and it is this that creates the beautiful and unique coastal arches, blowholes and stacks that attract so many of us to the beach each year. Primarily this is achieved by hydraulic action, whereby the force of the waves compresses air pockets in the coastal cliffs and rocks, which then explode as the air expands rapidly. During a big storm the force of the sea is so strong that it is actually akin to a bulldozer smashing into them at full tilt.

But thanks to rising sea temperatures of about 1C over the last century this process looks set to increase in intensity with about 20% of sites along the east coast eroding by more than 1 meter a year, which the Environment Agency thinks will cost us about £100 million a year in damages. About a year ago that might have sounded like a lot of money but in a post Credit Crunch Britain it feels oddly like small change.

The real concern will be the increased likelihood of flooding, with sea levels increasing by a millimeter a year and winter waves getting bigger all the time latest estimates put the increase at anywhere between four and tenfold over the coming years. Looks like a good time to learn how to surf though.

Tags: Britain by John Hillman
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Each and every medium of transport carries its advantages and disadvantages. Here John Hillman urges you to get on a boat, because quite simply it is the most wonderful form of them all.

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As a frequent business traveller I find most journeys tend to leave me feeling rather like an eight year old child in the back of my mother’s car

The “are we there yet?” gene is a strong and robust one, and no matter how many times we treat ourselves to another coffee, cake, beer or sandwich, the fact is that given the choice most of us would prefer to use the Starship Enterprise ‘beam me up Scotty’ mode of transport, and forgo the whole ‘waiting to arrive’ chore altogether.

But as this is not possible, we must look to the available options and decide which one will help us to arrive in the best frame of mind and in the shortest time possible.

Unfortunately ‘shortest time possible’ and ‘best frame of mind’ are a couple that you’re unlikely to meet celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary on a P&O Cruise.

The simple fact is that if you want to get to the continent in a hurry then most people will opt for the cramped, stressful option, and take to the sky; thus ensuring that they arrive at their destination tired, dehydrated and (usually in my case) suffering from a mild case of IBS, but is this really wise?

With British airports in the news so much and BAA being told to break up its monopoly on its South East’s airports, because this was leading to an inadequate passenger experience, there has surely never been a better time to consider the pleasures of reaching the continent aboard a P&O ferry?

Ask most people this question and they immediately react by stating the time factor, but let’s face it: time is the enemy of productivity. Whenever we structure our lives around a clock we soon end up going through the motions like a burnt out functionless droid, bereft of the essential juices that spark our creative energies and produce our best thinking.

The benefits of reaching the continent by ferry are so vast, so magnificent in their numerousness, that the limp and pathetic argument of saving time quickly starts to look like the defensive ramblings of a disconnected madman.

On board a P&O ferry a person can relax, work, exercise and rest, giving them space to think and time to reflect. Whereas on an aeroplane you are, quite literally, strapped into a chair and controlled, watered and fed like a small baby. On board a ship you can wonder the decks at will, sit in the comfort of the lounge and do bit of work on the laptop, or get some inspiration by gazing at the incredible force of nature that is the English Channel.

You do all of this relaxed in the knowledge that your belongings are exactly where you left them, safely locked in the boot of your car below, not waltzing around a carousel in Mumbai. And let’s not underestimate the fact that you arrive equipped with your own transport, no tricky negotiations with continental taxi drivers for you, just the freedom of the open road.

The truth is that that not all of us can chose how we travel, many of us are put on planes by bosses and sent to remote airports on board bargain bucket airlines with as much say in the matter as a turkey has at Christmas.

Tags: Britain, France, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman discusses the joys of growing old and taking advice from Robert Peston

The two biggest signs of getting old must be noticing that the weathermen look younger than you and thinking that Christmas has suddenly blended into autumn.

No sooner has your creaking body recovered from the hangover sustained at your friends Halloween party before you find yourself wondering around chintzy department stores looking at multi-function toasters.

And what a dodgy Christmas this is looking set to be; credit crunch Britain is in full swing now, and the press are loving it so much that they’ll probably start the holiday season with BBC finance editor Robert Peston running up to cameras and screaming “it’s too late, grab what you can and save yourselves!” whilst pointing a loaded pistol at the side of his head.

Most of us are, by now, quite fed up of being told that the world is about to end; there is only so much paranoid hyperbole the brain can take. So there is only one thing for it: pack up the car and head to Europe for Christmas.

Grab the tree and the kids, don’t worry about the food there’s plenty on the continent, and head to your nearest P&O ferry port. Once on the other side of the channel find yourself a secluded spot and settle in, relaxed in the knowledge that news in a foreign language isn’t really true. Honestly, a bloke from my local told me.

Tags: Britain, France, Lifestyle by John Hillman
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As one former history teacher once told me, if there was a Premier League of battles that the English and French had fought, them Agincourt would be in a comfortable Champions League position. Here John Hillman revisits a familiar tale, and wonders why this battle about all others, became such an important part of English folklore

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The French and the English have been on reasonably good terms (off and on) for almost 200 years now, which is quite remarkable given the tumultuous nature of their relationship for millennia before the Battle of Waterloo.

But amongst all of the wars and conquests; chivalrous escapades and bloodthirsty barbarities; the Battle of Agincourt – fought between the hungry and outnumbered troops of Henry V and the French armies under the command of Constable Charles d’Albret, in 1415 – continues to surprise everyone with its ability to conquer the public imagination on both sides of the Channel.

St. Crispin’s Day, October 25^th, was the day that became immortalized by William Shakespeare’s famous lines “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”, as Henry’s Welsh archers killed an estimated 8,000 French troops on little more than a few mouldy baguettes for sustenance and after having marched more than 260 miles in 2 weeks.

But considering the number of bloody conflicts that blighted the lives of French and English citizens for a further 400 years, it seems strange that we choose to concentrate so much historical and political firepower on such a remote date in our collective history, and one which has little relevance to the modern world in which we live when compared to Trafalgar or Waterloo.

Perhaps it is our romantic nature calling us back to a time before our world’s became dominated by larger forces and more sinister global powers, a time of knights in shining armour, heaving bosoms and the chivalric code, all of which is complete “bollocks on stilts” (to quote an old history professor) but nevertheless something inherently appealing to us all.

Recent news stories in the British press have accused French historians of trying to rewrite history after some of their corduroy wearing clan attempted to hijack the battle’s anniversary by accusing Henry’s soldiers of war crimes, something so pointless and laughable it almost makes camembert look like a useful contribution to the adhesive industry.

What have they got lined up for us next? Shaking the foundations of the historical universe by exposing homosexuality in the British Navy perhaps? Or maybe they’ll just floor us all by pointing out that some of Wellington’s men, like you know, were probably guilty of assault.

Everybody knows that in modern terms killing prisoners of war is completely out of the question, no matter how tedious it might be having to chain them up and feed them every fortnight; but this was a time when the aristocracy of Europe could still wonder into villages and help themselves to whoever’s virginity they so happened to take a fancy to, and expect said villagers to be dam well grateful for it.

This whole debate has kicked off at exactly the same time that Bernard Cornwell releases his latest novel, which, surprise surprise, is called Azincourt and promises to delve into this timelessly controversial battle in myopic detail.

I do of course have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that would allow me to suggest that Mr Cornwell’s PR company have anything to do with this recent flurry of historical nonsense but I very much doubt whether it’ll do his book sales any harm.

You can visit Azincourt’s recently extended museum and make you own mind up, it’s just a short drive down the A26 motorway from Calais. But please, make sure that you take a trusty British shield to protect yourself from the angry French historians who’ll probably be standing outside throwing text books at you.

Tags: Britain, France, Lifestyle by John Hillman
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