Dame Ivana Moanalot
"Housewife, Superstar and Travel Guru"
Dame Ivana Moanalot answers all your Travel Conundrums
Dear Dame Ivana,
Hamish and Dougal are bickering over where we should take our amateur football team for their Christmas night out. In homage to the founder of the BBC, we’re called Reith Rovers, also a pun on that mythical town where the dancing in the streets never ends. We need somewhere with good food and good beer, possibly in that order?
Dear Jock Tamson,
I presume your sporting bairns are well placed for my favourite north London suburb - Edinburgh. The Athens of the North - or is it the Reykjavik of the South - one can never tell - has some of the best gastropubs in Britain. There’s The Sheep Heid, where thankfully their culinary skills far outpace their grammatical and spelling prowess. Then there’s The Salisbury Arms, where the sawdust was recently changed for more agreeable parquet flooring, and they have Harvestoun’s Old WAGs on hand pull - which I think is a real ale, but may be a comment on the company your ageing squad tends to keep. It’s all here-say of course, since I would rather have gastro-enteritis than an affirmation in a gastropub.
Dear Ivana,
Is there any definition of an adrenalin filled weekend? At my local WRI, nothing gets Mrs Devine more excited than a deep dive in the tunnel section with Mrs Alton at the Towers Amusement Park, while Mrs Goldsworthy and Mrs Turrell enjoy nothing more than Mr Moore’s curves and holes at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Dear Prudence,
What constitutes a thrill-seeking weekend is something entirely subjective. For example, your ladies may enjoy downing a yard of ale in every pub from The Horse and Groom to the New Crown Inn on Merthyr Tydfil High Street, whereas I revel in a champagne bath while being exfoliated and depilated by a pair of compliant handmaidens. Each to her own, I say.