'Best Kept Secret'
By Basil Turner - 10/12/2008
Whose secret is it anyway? We can only assume that this special destination is known only to a privileged few who don’t want to see the place ‘developed’. Or do they? Well, the cat is now well and truly out of the bag, so if you want to take your holiday in a ‘secret’ place, you’d better get your skates on ‘cos MacDonalds will be there selling burgers quicker than you can click on ‘Special Offers’.
I well remember back in 2001 joining a camping safari trip to view some big rocks in Australia’s Northern Territory. It was no secret that the preferred name for ‘Ayers Rock’ was now the Aboriginal ‘Uluru’ and that ‘Kata Tjuta’ sounds more of a tourist attraction than ‘The Olgas’. Any Outback excursion is a bit of an adventure, and the experience of viewing the great rock at sunrise and sunset is not to be missed. Perhaps I can share with readers the secret of toasting the Uluru sunset in champagne. The one luxury on board our mini-bus was a fridge and the ‘champers’ was just right for the occasion. I also remember the remark of an American member of our
group: “How come there’s no MacDonalds out here.” He was joking - I hope!
Nevertheless, there is an Ayers Rock Resort and a Kings Canyon Resort where presumably one can buy one’s Coke and Fries and sleep in a luxury bed. We spurned the softie options and were thankful that the resorts were some way from the Rock and our campsite. No comfy beds for us, no fancy restaurants and thankfully no MacDonalds! We enjoyed campfire food and slept under the stars or in a tent. I chose the latter - well at 70 I was the oldest in the group and valued a modicum of privacy. Having said that, I am pretty certain that I was not completely alone during the night. The occasional scurrying of uninvited native wild life seemed uncomfortably close to me as I lay somewhat apprehensibly in my Aussie bedroll.
I am happy to recommend any off-the-beaten-track destination, but when that track gets beaten firmly enough, ease of access will encourage sufferers from burger deprivation to ‘modernise’ the area: then the secret will be out, there will be no going back and the popularity steamroller will destroy what attracted the visitor in the first place.
I can imagine that the beautiful island of Madeira was once someone’s ‘best kept secret’. It is still a great holiday destination, but by tunnelling through the mountains to ‘improve’ the road system the developers have changed the island from a wild place into a ‘resort’ where everything is laid on and the ‘sights’ that can be visited effortlessly.
As with so many destinations, modernising the infrastructure has taken the discovery element out of the island. It is still a very pleasant place to stay and with its equable climate it should continue to attract many visitors. And that is the problem for a crowd-hater like me: the big turn-off for this tourist is other tourists!
One famous tourist hotspot left me completely underwhelmed. I must try to be fair, since my one day stopover at Los Angeles was hardly long enough to explore the place. It is obviously no-one’s secret, but on a ‘See the Sights’ tour I was bored out of my mind by being told that: “On your right now is the luxury home of Roger Rabbit”. But that’s me! I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want to gape at any celeb’s living space, or worse, waste their hard earned money shaking hands with one-arm bandits in Las Vegas.
I can feel myself wandering well off the beaten track of this article so I want to return from the glitzy super highways of Hollywood and ‘The Strip’ back to the ‘Single Track Road with Passing Places’ of undiscovered Scotland.
Ah! That’s more my style. I don’t think it will ever happen, but widening the road north from Dalchork to allow quick access to view lovely Ben Loyal on the way to Tongue in the far north would be a disaster. Tongue? If you’ve got to ask, you are obviously not one to appreciate out-of-the-way places simply because they are out-of-the- way. Take a look at a road map of the UK. In Sutherland, for example (a pretty big county) there aren’t many roads and although most of them are classified as ‘A’ roads, only a few have long stretches without those ‘white diamond’ signs signifying that these are the only places where vehicles may safely pass.
In the world’s wildest regions there are no roads at all, so only trail-blazing adventurers will venture: I doubt if anyone would refer to the Polar Regions or the Amazon Rain Forest as ‘best kept secrets’. However, if you are looking for a place where you can get that feeling of being alone in the world – a place where there is temporary respite from traffic noise and mobile phone chatter – you can still find it right here in the UK.
The question remains: “Are there any ‘best kept secrets’ for the tourist yet to discover?” I suppose there must be, but if they are among your personal favourites, think hard before telling anyone about them. It all depends on what you are looking for. I remember a time when the locals kept their pigs on the beach at Torremolinos.
But then again: “Why should pigs monopolise all the best beaches?”
I would like to end on a really depressing note: surely it can’t be true that advertising hoardings are to be allowed in St. Mark’s Square in Venice? That should keep the numbers down!