Picture of the day: Shadow portrait

LLG's shadow at golden hour at the Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles

ch ch changes (Still dont know what I was waiting for)

Ah London. I am feeling like as though my personality has been wrought in two. On one hand there is the new, active, (fake) tanned California LLG who wakes at 730am and promptly hikes up a canyon wall. On t’other there is the London LLG, who eschews all forms of exercise, sleeps like a baby dormouse in geraniums red till 11am, and kept her hiking boots at the back of the garage, where they remained, unworn & mouldering, for ten years.

I’m looking at said hiking boots as I type. They are glowering at me, daring me to pack them in my London bound case, rather than in the box that is being mailed to New York today to await my return in three weeks. Have I changed so much that I would actually seek out exercise in England that didn’t involve more than a gentle stroll & spot of advanced ball throwing (with plastic ball thrower)on the Heath with Posetta Baddog?

After last year’s mental & physical insanity launching & running the style & fashion department on a huge American magazine, I spent the first three months of this year feeling rather bathetic & directionless. And then I decided to hop it to Los Angeles for a change of scenery. In turn making that decision has set in train a new direction for me, and crystallised my plans for the future.

I’ve become more focused, with a sense of purpose that has been sadly lacking up until now. (I’ve always gone with the wind, taking jobs that have been offered to me, rather than seeking out opportunities.) This time, I know what I want to do, without anyone else prodding me and I am extremely excited. Everything seems to be falling into place, and I have meetings coming out of my ears over the next three weeks in England.

It would seem that just 46 days in California has effected more of a change in me than just working out that I like to run around mountains.

The post where I am made bereft by giving up my car

It's hard to compute that today is my last full day in California. I fly tomorrow to London for three weeks, then head back back home to Manhattan. I've been away for 48 days now.

Apart from all the obvious things (climate, people, environment), I'm going to miss my rental car. After two years of car-free living in New York, it's been odd relying on a car to get me around. And, because I've been on the road continually, I've pretty much been living out the back of it too.

Although I've been trying to clean it out for the past week, it's still full of junk. SPF50 in the driver door for those searing traffic jams when you feel as though your arms might fry, emergency snacks, endless bottles of water, tangled cables & their gadgets to make long distance driving bearable (iPod, GPS), guidebooks & flyers, spare high heels (I'm a fashion editor, after all), sunhats, hiking gear, swimming stuff, lots of sand, and just endless crud.

After my first rental disaster - the car engine blew up, stranding me in the middle of nowhere - this Toyota Corolla arrived to replace the lesser Chevy Aveo I had booked. Apart from losing a day's work and having to spend a night in in San Simeon, I figure the upgrade was worthwhile. I've now driven over 3500miles since I arrived at LAX on 31st March and it's been a pleasure.
>This was taken on the mountain pass between Big Sur and Hunter Liggett Army Base. (Terrifying.)

Of course, with all this relentless driving through terrain ranging from desert (Coachella & Palm Springs) to muddy hills (Marin Headlands), the car was staggeringly filthy, with little handprints all over it. I really could care less, but I was starting to get dirty from it, and LA with its bizarre plethora of carwashes (ever heard of the drought people?) makes you feel pretty self conscious in a dirty vehicle. So, when I spotted this carwash in Cambria on my way back down south from San Francisco, I couldn't resist.

Of course, how could I predict that I would get stuck in the bloody thing and have to be rescued by the guffawing manager?

My first Los Angeles earthquake

Of all the things that might happen to me out here in California, I figured an earthquake was the least likely. It seems I was wrong. Lying on my bed, updating my blog, I suddenly realised that the trembling I could feel wasn’t the band practicing below, but the start of a proper earthquake.

The house rocked to its foundations, and the blinds and furniture rattled away. Nothing broke or fell, and it was over before I had time to realise I had no idea what I should do in an earthquake if caught on the second floor of a huge old wooden house.

If I had been in London, my first thought would have been ‘bomb’, having lived through the IRA reign of terror, and been caught up in both the Camden & the more recent July 7th bombings, but here an earthquake seemed the obvious cause. Twitter soon informed me, through my friends here in LA, and The LA Times’ excellent news feed, that it registered 4.7 on the Richter Scale.

Lucy Jones, seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, has just been quoted in The LA Times Online as saying, “Nothing about the quake or its aftershocks looked unusual, she said.”It's a real garden-variety California earthquake so far."

That’s put me in my place.

San Francisco: Ferry Building Farmers Market

After exploring the interior of the Ferry Building, and drooling over the independent producers' stores, I couldn't resist staying on another day so that I could visit the Saturday Farmer's Market. I loved the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, but this was in a different league. Such a breadth of amazing - cheap - fruit & veg from local suppliers, much of it organic. Below are yellow chard & fennel, white peaches, artichokes, scallions and organic heirloom tomatoes. I bought a bag of the perfect white peaches which dribbled sweet juice down my chin as I bit into them.

California eating & drinking

In my parallel life eating in fabulous restaurants is part and parcel of what I do but, on the road on my own for most of my time in California, eating in the kind of places you read about in glossy mags really hasn’t been part of my game plan.

Whilst I haven’t been screeching in on two wheels to the IHOP parking lot, lining up at the Jack in the Box drive-thru or jonesing for a Denny’s breakfast, I have eaten a lot of fabulous sandwiches (hello Sebastian’s), eaten lip smacking burritos in way too many Mexican hole in the walls, and scarfed up burgers & fries and waffles & ice cream at the counter in far more diners than I can count.

There’s just something immensely comfortingly and addictively delicious about everyday American food and I can’t get enough of it. (Neither, it would seem, can a lot of America’s generously proportioned population.)

That’s not to say I’ve completely ignored the over-hyped realm of expense account restaurants. I’ve had supper at Koi (excellent food, suburban crowd), lunch at The Ivy (chopped salad that resembled grass clippings) and excellent wine with okay food at The Polo Lounge, (if one ignored the stale bread on the table).

But the two loveliest meals I’ve eaten here in Los Angeles have been at opposite ends of the culinary realm, the first in a private home, the second at a hotel, with each pairing ingredients in wonderful ways. The first was at my friend Miss Whistle’s home high up in Laurel Canyon.

Between her & her husband they cooked up a stunning plateful of food with two particular dishes that had me wondering if anyone would notice if I surreptitiously wiped my plate with a grubby finger: a salad with frisée, pine nuts and little cubes of partly caramelised bright orange squash which looked alluring and tasted better, and a texturally brilliant creamy gratin of cauliflower and fennel, with classic gratineed crunchy cheese above, and fennel fronds lurking below.

The second was the wine & cheese pairing prelude to an excellent tasting menu eaten at the Hotel Bel-Air. Executive Chef Dan Olsen has an immaculate palate and, whilst the grande bouffe at the Chef’s table with its view of the busy kitchen was scrumptious, it was his small plates that we ate on the pretty flower bedecked terrace, before waddling wine-dazed into the private dining room that have remained firmly stuck in my mind.

The Hotel Bel-Air's charming and enthusiastic wine director Emmanuel Faure really pulled out the stops for us and, as this is a blog and not a newspaper, I'm indulging myself by reproducing the menu below:

Bermuda Triangle (Cypress Grove, CA. Ash covered goat, soft)
Morel mushroom & pickled onion salad
Peter Michael L’Apres Midi Sauvignon Blanc 2003

Brillat Savarin (Normandy. Triple crème, cow)
Black mission fig sandwich
Moraga Vineyard 2002

San Andreas (Bellwether Farms, CA. Raw sheep’s milk, hard)
Marcona almond brittle & black olive tapenade
Tyler Vineyard ‘Dierberg Vineyard’ Santa Maria Valley 2006

Crater Lake Blue (Rogue Creamery, Oregon. Cow)
Fruit & nut crisp and port gelee
Ojai Vineyard Botrytis Chardonnay 2006

The indulgent smooth creaminess of the Brillat Savarin against crispy, buttery toast, the sweet stickiness of the reduced figs and the hit of the complex but smooth red was absolutely the most inspired combination I’ve swallowed this year. It actually stopped me talking for a full minute. And, even tho I knew a gargantuan supper was coming, I cldn’t stop shooting lustful glances at everyone else’s plates. I could have eaten this for breakfast, lunch & supper.

As for the wine, both reds, (the Moraga Vineyard 2002 & the Tyler Vineyard ‘Dierberg Vineyard’ Santa Maria Valley 2006) were chock full of fruit & alcohol but didn’t punch out our taste buds as so many high alcohol Californian reds do these days.

The Tyler Vineyard is a single varietal – a pinot noir, with lots of raspberry and rich depth, but the standout was the house blend from the pocket sized Moraga estate in Bel-Air itself, making it truly local. They produce just one glorious red, a Bordeaux style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with a small amount of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. The 02 has a long finish, and a wonderful balanced complexity with lots of lovely blackcurrant. It made properly excellent drinking.

I hadn’t realised that the Californian climate could produce botrytised wines, and the Ojai Chardonnay 06 was from a production of just two barrels. Sweet & syrupy with pineapple but with a balance of minerality, it was a revelation.

And now, after being head down in the Californian food & wine trough for forty-nine days, I am preparing to fly to England from LAX on Tuesday. I have a list of food to eat in London, from breakfast at The Wolseley and Vietnamese on Kingsland Road through to penne al'arrabiata at the Italian café on Hampstead Heath and an enormous Indian takeaway from, well, anywhere.

But I think what I really need is a large green salad.

Saturday. San Francisco: Burnt chin

I stayed in San Francisco last week and, on Friday night, as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge after a day road trip to Calistoga, realised I had forgotten to book anywhere to stay that night. (All this living out of the back of my car is addling my already sun atrophied brain.)

It was too late to call any of my friends to beg a bed, every motel, hostel and B&B was fully booked and I was starting to contemplate shaking my sleeping bag out on the back seat of the car when my last call hit pay dirt: the Green Tortoise Backpacker's Hostel in North Beach had one bed left in a mixed dorm.

Not exactly ideal: in my experience ALL men snore and late bookers always get a top bunk, which means having to wear leggings in bed to avoid knicker flashing the guys in the bottom bunks when climbing the ladder.

Added to which parking in SF is a bitch, and North Beach (where I lived fifteen years ago) parking is just about the worst of all at a weekend. But someone loves me, because I found a free space (as opposed to a $30 overnight garage one), and the Hostel had jigged things around and found me a female-only dorm.

Next morning, I was curling my hair at the dorm basin (just because I was staying in a backpackers hostel didn’t mean I had to look like I did when I backpacked aged 20) when a fellow guest started chatting about NYC. Soon I was enthusiastically recommending galleries & restaurants. When I talk I wave my hands. A lot. Obviously this is not ideal with a hot curling iron in hand.

Within seconds I had managed to brand my chin. And curse EXTREMELY loudly. And explain that F**K wasn’t the name of a hot new NY bar. Christ, it hurt. A huge blister formed which wept and peeled all day. Attractive. And now I have a lovely burn mark right on my chin which I’m worried will get infected.

I have history in this arena, as lil’sis reminded me just this morning. (Parents: you can stop reading now.) A couple of years ago I got terrible stubble rash on my chin, and then went swimming next day in Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond. For the uninitiated, this is basically a duck pond masquerading as an open air swimming pool.

My chin was still very painful a week later when I lost my voice just before a live radio broadcast and rushed to my GP surgery in a panic for some prescription throat stuff. Elna our wonderful nurse looked at me in her lovely gentle way and remarked that I was obviously there to get antibiotics for the (huge weeping) sore on my chin. I hadn’t realised that I could get an infection from swimming. I am an idiot.


Me and my sore chin on the (very windy) pier at San Simeon harbour, Central Coast, California on Sunday

Picture of the day: Notice at Sebastian's, San Simeon

Ferry Market Building, San Francisco

Whenever I mentioned I was headed up to San Francisco, I'd receive a tweet or an email entreating me to please visit the Ferry Building. A spot of Googling revealed it to be SF's food mecca, a restored mercantile marine building which, until the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were completed in the 30s, was the second busiest transit terminal in the world.



In 2004 it was restored & reopened with a new ferry terminal and an indoor arena for some extraordinary food stores. There's a bi-weekly Farmer's market too and SF's famous Vietnamese restaurant The Slanted Door. Probably most famous is the wonderful Cowgirl Creamery who, whilst they sell artisan & organic European cheeses, have made it their raison d'etre to stock local cheese, including their own stellar organic cheese made just up the coast at Point Reyes Station. There are also organic grocery stores selling everything from oranges,



to ravishing organic flowers.



Tales Near the Runway begged via Twitter for a Fedex care package from:



Whose bread had me drooling as I photographed it.



I was also beguiled by:



who use California olives to make their delicious oil blends.



Given that I would happily eat mushrooms for every meal, my absolute favourite store by a country mile was Far West Funghi.



I've never seen mushrooms that look like this:



And I couldn't resist buying a small box of samphire (UK) or sea beans as it is apparently called in America.





But I suspect that both my father and my friends at We Are Dinosaurs would hotfoot it straight to:


For their justly famous hams, salami & charcuterie:



The Ferry Building Marketplace info can be found here

Art lovers at San Francisco's MoMA

Picture of the day: Monterey Aquarium: jelly fish exhibit

Tuesday: Back in Marin, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge

Am feeling rather distraught at having to leave my suite at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco. However wonderful a city, there’s something very beguiling about holing up in a fabulous hotel and just letting the cocooning sensation wash over everything. I’m afraid I was terribly self-indulgent during my stay: I did lots of writing & reading in bed, nestled in fluffy pillows, with a Ritz verbena candle burning and a plate of cookies on hand to aid the mental processes.

I had an added bonus when my beloved GG rang yesterday morning to announce his unexpected but imminent arrival in the city from New York for meetings today. The Ritz is his husband’s favourite SF hotel so, in Yo-Yo's honour, he hiked up to Nob Hill from his work-mandated Marriot (ha!) and we sat until 1am in the Ritz’s rather glamorous Lobby Bar sipping 10yr Glenmorangie (me), perfect Manhattans (GG) and being extremely evil.

I probably wouldn’t have felt quite so ropey today if I hadn’t been awaiting his arrival in the Club Lounge working my way through half a bottle of very acceptable Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut NV. There seemed only one sensible way to deal with my case of hotel & hangover induced blues: food.

I hopped it to an unidentifiable Vietnamese in SoMa and ordered a plate of fried tofu, cabbage & noodles which I drenched in Srichaha chili sauce:


Feeling fully restored by tea & noodles, I took myself off to the Ferry Building, currently the epicentre of San Francisco's local food movement, to graze on cheese, olive oil & sweet things. (Post tk). Then it was off to SF's MoMA for a squint at the Clyfford Still room and a chuckle at the emperor's new clothes (from the newer section) in the permanent collection.

I'm now back in Marin for the night, staying here in Fort Barry out in the wilds of the Headlands, where the only neighbours are coyotes, racoons and migrating wild turkeys which have already bird strike-ed on my car. (That'll teach me to park under their tree.)


It’s only a few miles, & twenty minutes from San Francisco itself, yet surrounded by bright green rolling hills, upon which flighty deer graze, it’s hard to compute that we could be so close to an enormous city.

The Ritz Carlton San Francisco

I’m back in San Francisco almost exactly one month after I was last here. I’ve always loved this city and I’m contemplating moving here when my lease is up in New York in August. It’s the perfect size, the weather is a more benign version of England’s, the food & restaurants are exceptional and I have lots of splendid friends & acquaintance. The hills aren’t quite such a draw: I haven’t got used to driving at 45 degrees, although I’m certainly appreciating being perched on top of Nob Hill right now.

That’s because after a wonderful week staying with one of my oldest friends, Julian Shah-Tayler in his huge crazy house full of musicians in LA’s Koreatown, and fifteen hours of driving up the coast road (I took a very circuitous scenic route), I have retreated into the luxurious splendour of the San Francisco Ritz Carlton for two days.


And, really, there is no better place to hole up in this city of great hotels. Although the hotel is large (336 rooms), and the frontage staggeringly neo-classically impressive, it’s actually rather intimate in scale. There are no echoing bare corridors here: gently lit by sconces, the carpet sinks beneath your feet, and the staff gently whisk through, greeting you by name.

I’ve been given a delicious 900 square foot suite on the Club Floor and, consequently have not left the hotel today. There’s a dedicated drawing room for Club guests, with giant glass jars of home baked cookies (I’ve been positioned right next to it all afternoon), and complimentary snacks are served all day. With copy to file and books to read, I can’t see any reason to stick my nose outside in the rain.

And by ‘snacks’ I mean a proper breakfast, cheese & appetizers at lunchtime, full afternoon tea, hors d’oeuvres in the early evening and deserts & chocolate fondue later on. Did I mention the full bar?

The Club Floor even offers complimentary pressing so, whilst I hotfooted it down to the Fitness Center to swim, steam and Jacuzzi myself into oblivion, my crumpled silk dresses, cocktail frocks and tux were picked up and promptly returned looking pristine in hanging zipper covers.

But it’s my room that has me properly cocooned in luxe-ness. Without wishing to rub it in, I’m no stranger to the five star hotel room: I’ve reviewed more of them than I can count, from Barcelona to Miami, Bangkok to Ibiza. Not a lot impresses me any more, and in my private life I’m just as likely to bed down in a youth hostel as I am in a smart hotel. After all, it’s only a bed. And, whether or not I'm being comped, high end or low, if I don't like it, I'll tell you.

But then you stay somewhere that gets it so right that you start to wish that ginormous one bedroom suites came as standard. Although it’s not just the jaw dropping size of my current quarters that has me impressed (after all, size isn’t everything), it’s the attention to detail. I’m obsessed with this. I’ve stayed in too many hotels obviously designed by men for men, that forget we need hair conditioner, cotton wool, full length mirrors, somewhere well lit to put on make-up that isn’t the edge of a basin unit, plenty of hangers - padded & wooden, large safes for purses & laptops and more than one luggage stand. And that’s for starters.

My room has all this. And more. Much, much more. 1000 thread count Frette sheets & ten cloud like pillows on my king size bed. There’s a ring stand by the basin, a full manicure set, a glass jar of cotton wool, an alarm clock, Bulgari toiletries from after-shave to facial moisturizer, piles & piles of fluffy towels, an iPod dock, a professional make up mirror on the separate dressing table, an LCD TV in the bathroom and a marble shower big enough for… well, you get the idea.


I had a squint at the entry level rooms here, the Deluxes, and they are just as well proportioned, (4-500 sq ft) with the same attention to detail: I noted the pot plants on the desks, umbrellas, ironing boards and mini-dressing areas.


In fact I am so blissfully happy in my current quarters that I am considering nipping back upstairs to hide in the suite’s loo after I check out. Or maybe in the separate dressing room. Or perhaps behind the sofa in the living room. Or behind the vast flat screen TV in the bedroom.

LLG is a guest of the Ritz Carlton San Francisco

Photo: my bedroom

Otters! Penguins! The Monterey Aquarium

I do apologise if you've popped over here under the impression that this is a fashion blog. Because today, ladies & gentlemen, we are all about the cute-ness:


My car engine blowing up on my coastal drive up from LAX a month ago meant that I had to give up most of my trad sight-seeing plans in favour of putting pedal to metal so that I could arrive in time for dinner in San Francisco with L (and the rest). This time around I was determined to hit up the Monterey Aquarium, about 115 miles south of San Francisco.

I'm not a huge fan of co-mingling with hundreds of small, shrieking, sticky-pawed humans, so choosing Saturday morning wasn't my best move, but I'd heard tell of penguins and of sea otters and I was damned if I was going to drive on by, especially considering I could have pressed on to Santa Cruz the night before when I discovered that my Monterey hotel was over-booked & everywhere else was full. Instead I had opted to spend the night persecuted by snorers & tooth grinders in a dormitory at Monterey Youth Hostel.

Monterey Aquarium is not the huge production you get at the London or the San Francicso Aquariums: there are no sharks nosing at you from behind inch thick glass. What you get is an exhibit dedicated to the fascinating sea life of Monterey Bay and beyond, with an emphasis on education, preservation and sustainability, all within a wonderful building contained in the old dockside sardine cannery. (Think Steinbeck's Cannery Row.)

Really, with the bright colours and emphasis on interactivity & touch pools it's aimed at infants not adults, but I would have happily paid double the $27.95 entrance just to watch the sea otters frolicking for an hour or two.

Stranded as pups, without the skills to survive in the wild, they were rescued by the Aquarium’s groundbreaking Sea Otter Research and Conservation (SORAC) program, and now live in a huge tank, frisking about for the visitors. They are especially tricky to shoot, as they move through the water like greased lightning. I have one too many images like this:


Fortunately I did manage this:


I also shot some rather wobbly video especially for Emma over at Belgian Waffling who, like me, can happily spend lost hours watching YouTube footage of small furry animals. (I suggest turning the sound down unless you wish to have your eardrums pierced by the shrieks of small children.)




You can join Friends of the Sea Otters here. They do need our help: an officially endangered species, there are only about 2200 otters now found off California's central coast.

Picture of the day: Hotel Bel-Air room service butter

Lunching on the terrace at The Ivy

The Los Angeles restaurant scene is legendary. For a town whose population is presumed to be disinterested in eating, there sure are a lot of places to not eat in.

Hovering near the top in notoriety is The Ivy on Robertson. After chewing interminably at their House Salad which resembled nothing so much as a pile of grass clippings bathed in dressing, I came to the conclusion that probably no one ever noticed how off the food was. And, even if the meals served there were delicious, they would always be secondary to the outdoor theatre going on on the terrace at lunchtime.

The paparazzi started off unobtrusively hovering around the corner, snapping arrivals indiscriminately, but half way through lunch they gave up all pretence and went straight for the money shots.


They were wound up to fever pitch by Sheryl Crow glowering at the lenses that stalked her every mouthful, (although we noted that she was not so bothered that she moved tables into the empty Siberia indoors) and then by Marc Anthony (sans J-Lo & twins) at the table next door, who is so pocket sized that he surely has a second career as a flat jockey waiting for him if his salsa hips stop swinging.

Piers Morgan was in pole position at the long back table of the terrace, neatly placed so that everyone walking in could see him sitting next to Sarah Brown (wife of Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister). She had tweeted earlier in the day that Piers was hosting a ‘British women in LA’ lunch in her honour, and he had rounded up Sharon Osbourne, Katherine Jenkins & June Sarpong.

Disparate. But, of course, we were fascinated.

Piers was preening his way through it. He already knew that his coup wouldn't be missed: I heard later that he had rung the big LA picture agency the day before to let them know where & with whom he'd be lunching.

NB As you know, I never do celeb stuff on here, but this was so amusing and felt so clichéd LA that it begged to be blogged. And, of course, people in the public eye only eat at The Ivy so that they may remain there. Why else would they choose an open air restaurant with photographers outside?

And thank you to the Hotel Bel-Air for wangling such a great table

Thursday: Beatnik Jr in LA at (sshh) The Hard Rock Café

Because I like to be perverse, I’ve spent more time in Los Angeles going to gigs than I have immersing myself in film. This is because one of my oldest, and most talented friends, Julian Shah-Tayler lives here, and I have been staying in the large rambling clapboard house in Koreatown in which he and several equally talented & charming musicians hole up. (The only drawback is trying to sleep when they are jamming in their rehearsal room at 4am.)
On Thursday night I needed distracting, (I was missing my suite at the Hotel Bel-Air.) Julian’s idea of diversion was the Hard Rock Café. Yup. That would do it.

Frankly I would rather stick pins in my eyes than go to a Hard Rock Café, whether in Hollywood, Hyderabad or Hong Kong, but I was made to drive to Universal City under duress, with JST promising that Beatnik Jr ‘one of the best upcoming bands in LA’ were playing in the LA final of the Hard Rock's Battle of the Bands competition.

I can’t possibly judge them against other LA bands but I can judge them against New York and, maybe, London bands. And they were excellent, head & shoulders above the level of the majority of bands who thrash about idiotically at similar competitions.

They're a four piece, in the slightly experimental rock mould with, in John Maro, a lead singer who also plays keyboards and transforms from polite & personable face to face to gleeful, possibly manic, exuberance within seconds of hitting the stage.


The last time I saw an unsigned band I enjoyed so much were White Rabbits, who I wrote about here & who, incidentally, have their second album, It's Frightening, out on May 16th

Anyway, Beatnik Jr go onto the national round of video judging against 21 other US bands, before judging is thrown open to the public on-line. The winner gets to play at Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park. Or Hyde Park, London, as everyone calls it over here.

(I'm afraid my photos of the other members of Beatnik Jr, in the main, have very enthusiastic audience members covering just about every shot.)

How to make exercise pleasurable: Hiking followed by a Hotel Bel-Air picnic

A year ago if I had been told that a stay in a sybaritic hotel was to be interrupted by a two hour hike, however beautiful the surroundings, I'd have pleaded an imaginary knee injury, stayed in bed, and worked my way through room service.

I never used to be like this. I did the Duke of Edinburgh's Bronze & Gold Awards at high school, which involved camping, orienteering & pretty strenuous two or four day hikes over the North Downs & the North York Moors.

On my GAP year I powered up, through and down 12km of interior rainforest to cross Pulau Tioman in Malaysia in 90% humidity, finishing the hike an hour ahead of my super-sporty best friend. But, once I started university, I reverted to my natural state: prone in bed with a novel.

The first inkling I had that I did actually enjoy exercise in adult life was when I bought a bike in London maybe four years ago. Gradually my tentative 5 min outings became half day expeditions down the London Canal paths. Then I moved to Manhattan, bought another bicycle and became one of those boring cycling evangelists. (Yes - it's so much quicker, yes - you can bike in four inch stilettos).

Bicycling has taught me not to be scared of exercise, that I am actually naturally capable of not collapsing after five minutes of exertion. That it was just exercising in a group where people judged my inadequacies & mal co-ordination that I loathed. And that Gym and Games were the work of the devil.

So that brings me to California and to hiking. JK forced me up the Santa Lucia mountains and I loved every minute, so when the Hotel Bel-Air suggested a morning hike in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains in Will Rogers State Park I jumped at the chance. (Not least because the hotel's transport to the park was in a Bentley Coupe.)

The trails are well marked, (and, incredibly, Jonathan & Jenny from the Bel-Air had previously hiked the paths to check their safety & suitability for guests), and the day was overcast, so powering up was strenuous but not too shattering. The scenery helped.
We carried on walking uphill.

Then, because obviously my brain was addled by an hour's uphill hike, I decided to run (I NEVER run, EVER) all the way back down the mountain along this path. I was so warmed up that it was immense fun, although if I had remembered to wear a sports bra, then I wouldn't have had to run with my arms wrapped around my chest to avoid two black eyes.

Of course, when you arrive back at the bottom in the flat part of the park to find Henry, the Hotel Bel-Air's magnificent banqueting manager standing sentinel over a row of Little Red Riding Hood picnic baskets, it all seems so worthwhile.



Henry also had a huge cooler of soda and an ipod speaker with soothing music for us to listen to whilst we collapsed on the rug he had so thoughtfully laid out. (We like Henry very much.)



Yes, those are hotel slippers, tucked into the side of the basket, so that tired toes can wiggle free. (We also had Evian spritzers.)



And, yes, that is a glass of Laurent-Perrier.



I went vegetarian so my utterly delicious lunch was a mozzarella & tomato salad, beetroot & goats cheese salad (or a shrimp version), a grilled vegetable sandwich (or turkey), an avocado, cucumber & cream cheese wrap (or with salmon), followed by a peach tart with streusel topping & cinnamon sauce. That little lot will have neatly balanced out any benefits of the exercise.



I am CRIPPLED today.

LLG was a guest of the Hotel Bel-Air