Recipefiesta

On a three-day fungi workshop in Australia’s largest cool temperate rainforest, Alexis Buxton-Collins unearths an unexpected appreciation for the third kingdom of life

Revered as one of Australia’s last true wilderness areas, Takayna/ Tarkine is a place of legends. Freshwater crayfish that can reach almost a metre in length lurk in the shade of 2000-year-old Huon pines, and every few years a rumour emerges that thylacines still prowl the dense Gondwanan rainforest of northwest Tasmania.

For 65m years, this landscape has sheltered all manner of astonishing creatures. But some of the most fascinating life forms found here are even older. Before animals walked the Earth or trees began converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, fungi helped to create the conditions necessary for complex life on our planet. “People often say that fungi grow in the forest,” Dr Alison Pouliot tells me as we inhale cool air perfumed with the gentle spice of sassafras. “But there wouldn’t be a forest without fungi. Fungi are the ecosystem engineers that created the foundation for the forest.”

Embarking on a girls’ trip to Greece, I was ready for unlimited fun in the sun. Instead, I ended up on a hospital ward where all the medics could say was: ‘Oh shit!’

In the heady days post A-levels, it felt like a great idea to spend all my hard-earned Saturday job wages on a girls trip to Corfu. I felt sure that what lay ahead was the classic rite of passage holiday of sun, sea and Sex on the Beaches. What happened next may not sound so surprising this side of a global pandemic, but in 2009 it felt like something out of a sci-fi horror film.

I didn’t feel great on the drive to Bristol airport, but explained it away as motion sickness; I tried to sleep it off on the plane, ready to start the party when we landed. At Greek passport control, there were heat-sensitive cameras to check for anyone with a temperature, due to the growing swine flu pandemic. As my friends walked through, they appeared on the screen as shadowy grey figures. I showed up lurid green, indicating a high temperature. Immediately, it was panic stations. I was rapidly ushered into a side room alone, then rushed away in an ambulance. The party, it appeared, would not be starting.

Surfers nicknamed it in the 90s, but this rugged coastline is becoming a hotspot for contemporary art lovers too

The North Sea wind is buffeting my body and face, shaking me awake after a six-hour journey from Copenhagen on buses and trains to this rugged stretch of the Danish coast. From my high vantage point on the grassy dunes, overlooking what feels like an endless sea, there is hardly another soul to be seen, save for the specks of a few surfers who are trying their luck on the crashing waves.

Surfers, windsurfers and paddleboarders flock to this stretch of north-west Jutland, which is playfully known as “Cold Hawaii”. The phrase was coined in the 1990s by the international surfing community, and popularised by world champion windsurfer Josh Stone, to describe this laid-back shoreline and its 31 official surf spots running for around 30 miles (50km) from a little north of the industrial harbour of Hanstholm down to the sandy beaches of Agger.

Excited to be away from home for the first time, we spent a riotous week partying, while the owner and his elderly parents understandably – and often audibly – seethed

Twenty British 16-year-olds rent a remote Sicilian villa for a week of partying and late-night binge drinking. It sounds like a holiday host’s nightmare. Well, anyone’s nightmare. Add in the fact that the host was staying on site with his elderly Italian parents, as the teenagers partied on without a care for their own welfare or anyone else’s. This wasn’t a holiday from hell for my teenage self, but I’m pretty sure it was for our hosts.

It was 2013 and, for many of us, it was the first time we had been away just with friends. Let loose from familial constraints, it was easy to get carried away. I arrived a few days later than the others but was the main contact with our host, Pablo. This meant that, before I even set foot in the villa, I received a string of messages threatening to kick us out. The police had apparently already been called after two late nights of nonstop boozing.

My sister and I were enjoying our all-inclusive getaway, but my mum hated forced fun and sitting by the pool. So we went off exploring in the searing heat. Our hike through the island’s building sites didn’t end well

Package holidays weren’t yet a thing people did, in 1983 or 84, and Mallorca hadn’t completely become itself, but wasn’t unspoilt either. Me, nine, my sister, 11, and my mum, 46, would have been early adopters of the all-inclusive getaway, if in any sense my mum had arrived in an adopting frame of mind. It’s hard to describe the attitude she brought with her without making her sound like a monster, so you just have to fill between the lines with “she had other nice qualities”.

She didn’t like small talk and didn’t like buffets; didn’t like bumptious dads who invited your kids to join theirs; didn’t like nuclear families; and she wasn’t wild about other single-parent families either. She hated sitting by the pool, drinking piña coladas, group activities and any kind of quiz. She had an aversion to forced fun, which she used as cover for her distaste for many other kinds of fun. Me and my sister loved forced fun. We would lose our shit over a cocktail umbrella.

The country’s coastline is one of the shortest in Europe, but it packs a punch with unspoilt nature reserves, vibrant Venetian towns and a thriving foodie scene

I’m riding a salt-coloured horse through the Dragonja valley, deep in the green hills of Slovenian Istria. Electric-blue dragonflies zip over the river as we gallop past olive trees and vineyards. The landscape rises steeply in a series of grassy terraces, and at the top of the hill we rein in the sweating horses to take in the view. Far below, the huge grids of solinas (salt pans), glittery and light-blue in the early morning light, look strange and somehow elegant against the wild, expansive sea beyond.

The Istrian peninsula is the largest in the Adriatic Sea, with 90% of it in Croatia and smaller portions in Slovenia and Italy. I’ve come to explore the Slovenian section. At just 29 miles (47km), the country’s coastline is one of the shortest in Europe, from the Italian city of Trieste down to the Croatian border, but it boasts colourful seaside towns, hilltop villages and an emerging gastronomy scene.

We were in Corfu for a cheap and cheerful tennis trip and every day brought a new disaster. The swimming pool had no water. The tennis rackets had no strings. And don’t get me started on the family-run restaurant

My boyfriend and I took up tennis a couple of years ago. After 18 months of group lessons in our local park, many of them cancelled or abandoned due to rain, we started fantasising about playing somewhere sunny. Perhaps at a nice hotel with a pool, and yoga classes, and delicious food …

A quick search for tennis holidays put paid to that dream. They all seemed to be in luxury resorts and cost a fortune. Undeterred, I decided to plan a DIY tennis trip. I found a cheap aparthotel in Corfu. It looked no-frills but perfectly nice – spacious rooms, a pool, pretty gardens and, crucially, a tennis court. Best of all, it was cheap as chips in March.