Travel, fashion and outdoors

Love in the Red City

ROSES are red and your Valentine will tickled pink with a bouquet, but they'll love you so much more if you whisk them off to the rose-tinted city of Marrakech to really paint the town red.

With its pink architecture, boutique hotels, sunshine and shopping, Marrakech likes to sell itself as the perfect playground for lovers, so this year why not romance them in a riad and seduce them in a souk.

Handpicked hotels or riads ranging from 50 to 480 a night are listed at www.hipmarrakech.com and www.hipmorocco.com. The sites also offer a personalised service that provides visitors with restaurant and activity guides and arranges excursions and airport pick ups.

Staying in style

FASHIONISTAS will be flocking to the capital for London Fashion Week, 19-24 February, after bagging a 20 per cent discount from British Airways (www.britishairways.com), the official airline of the event. But if you're not an industry insider, you've as much chance of slipping into a sample size as sliding on to a front row seat at any of the catwalk shows.

However, tickets are easier to come by for an alternative catwalk show, A La Mode, at Charing Cross Hotel (0871 376 9012, www.guoman.com), where some of the most promising fashion talent will be showcased. For 18 per person, guests will also enjoy a champagne reception and an exclusive goody bag at the hotel, which is just ten minutes from Oxford Street. Rooms start at 149 per room per night, plus VAT. For tickets to A La Mode, log on to www.lagenevenorthevents.co.uk.

Cross-country companion

THE fact that a waterproof version of the guidebook for England's most popular long walk is now available should perhaps serve as a warning.

A little rain on the 184-mile Wainwright's Route from St Bees on the Irish Sea to Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea doesn't put off thousands of walkers every year, though, and it's consistently voted one of the country's best hikes.

Now Rucksack Readers is publishing Coast to Coast: The Wainwright Route (12.50), with copious illustrations, maps and altitude profiles as well as background on wildlife, history and information on Alfred Wainwright himself.