The National Trust has charted a circular walk through the national nature reserve that wraps around the 300 year old Calke Abbey, where the rooms were left exactly as they were when the trust acquired the estate in 1985.

Oman is on the NE corner of the Arabian peninsula, with many more natural wonders to build its still small tourism industry on than its near neighbours. The 600 miles of scintillating coast and beach is as undeveloped as the Costa Brava must have been in about 1910. Inland Oman is a power landscape of towering mountains scattered with deserts, lush oasis settlements – wadis – and a surprisingly green south country.