Picture a sandstone building shimmering like a mirage. Perhaps something out of Lawrence of Arabia – or maybe a creamy Moroccan fort. Then imagine honey-coloured alleyways, a piazza and a church – just built but looking as if they’ve been there for centuries. Now envisage, if you will, 93 townhouses in the style of traditional Apulian hill villages. And finally add to the mix some large villas – grand-ish residences encircled with dry stonewalls and cacti – on the outskirts of the town.

Fill the air with the scent of figs and oregano and conjure in your mind’s eye a private estate with vines growing alongside fields bursting with cherry tomatoes and aubergines. Then you have an idea of Borgo Egnazia, Italy’s smartest new offering. Most of it opened at the beginning of the year.

Borgo Egnazia is a resort in Puglia – in the stiletto heel of Italy – and a feat of vision and design. It’s a place that has opened to oohs and ahs; a venue snapped up for French Vogue fashion shoots; and to which photographers from Architectural Digest Italia and suchlike have been hotfooting it. It’s rather like a film set – with extras wafting past in Alberta Ferretti and Pucci.

It ‘s a borgo (Italian for village) and comprises La Corte – a masseria-style hotel – plus the aforementioned townhouses, villas, pools too numerous to count and a fantabulous children’s club. Its design speaks of the rural architecture of the nearby hill villages with their Greek, Goth, Norman and Spanish influences – the legacy of Puglia’s invaders.

We go inside to find a cream-on-cream minimalist dream and wow! contemporary take on the farmhouse look. There are huge tufo pots of grain (‘pile’ as they’re known,) baskets of almonds and a massive sculpture of hanging birdcages. Then there’s Vair, its spa with Roman baths – including a Tepidarium, Calidarium and Frigidarium and therapists who float around in togas and offer locally -inspired therapies.

We stay in a very comfortable 3 -bedroom villa, enjoying our own space, attentive service and a private pool. It costs 10,000 Euros a week. It’s unusual in a new villa that costs that much for the shower to drip through the kitchen ceiling and the bedroom door handle to come off in your hand. But the Chief of Maintenance – he’s included in the price – deals with these minor issues. After all this is a paradiso where they pride themselves on attention to detail.

The one thing that is faultless and beyond compare is the food. A god among culinary men is Mario Musoni, Borgo Egnazia’s Michelin-starred Executive Chef. He’s a big noise in the Slow Food movement, believes in zero food miles and takes the organic produce for his dishes from the 250-acre estate surrounding his kitchens at Borgo Egnazia. To the Italian press he’s ‘The King of Risotto’ and his pistachio ice cream with a drizzle of olive oil is the talk of tutti in Puglia.

Puglia is a top destination for gourmet travellers. It has a microclimate producing many of the world’s best ingredients, plus fresh seafood from the Adriatic and some of the most delicious cuisine in Italy. One can also enjoy, courtesy of Mario, fantastic cookery lessons – there are four staff to six pupils – who teach us to make Pizza Margherita in an al fresco wood burning pizza oven. Additionally he does Olive Oil Tastings.

Outside the resort there are a number of restaurants. Nearby is Masseria Ciminowhere we eat like Apulian royalty on holiday in the countryside. It’s a 17th century farmhouse with agricultural implements decorating the walls. Dinner is a four- course homemade buffet – simple peasant fare and all of it delicious: from taralli (like delicious olive oil shortbread,) to homemade orecchitte pasta (rabbits’ ears pasta and the region’s speciality), and baked sea bream.

Next we go to Pescheria 2 Mari in the nearby fishing village of Savelletri. (It’s a restaurant ina glass box on the harbour.) Basically it’s a fishmongers where we choose our fish which they then slice (if necessary) and give to us to eat. Sea truffles, octopus, noci (pink mussels) , slivers of sea bass… They serve only raw fish and local wine.

You can play golf on the 18-hole San Domenico Golf Course. (It’s lovely and overlooks the sea.) We also cycle 15 minutes to the ruins of the important ancient city of Egnazia – from which the resort takes its name – to see pots, skeletons, tombs, crypt and acropolis. Some of it is still unexcavated and dating back to the Bronze Age. And all in a picturesque setting beside the sea.

Further afield, we visit Alberobello, ‘The capital of trulli’ – with its Hobbit hovels with conical roofs. Here we wander through alleyways amid these small, round stone houses like so many sun-bleached beehives. Afterwards we enjoy nearby Ostuni – known as The White Town – with its Byzantine-style cathedral and citadel. In its market they sell three types of green bean (one as long as spaghetti), curious indigenous melon- shaped cucumbers and artisan-made burratta (moonballs of double cream mozzarella) plus dried tomatoes.

Among my favourite sights, however, are the olive trees that stand in serried ranks in the estate surrounding Borgo Egnazia. Enormous, ancient olive trees. They are breathtakingly beautiful.

“These trees are two hundred years old, maybe more,” says our driver.

“They’re thousands of years old,” another local tells us later. If we stick around a few hours, the trees will celebrate their millionth birthdays.

Regardless, there are 65 million of them, give or take one or two, in Puglia. And they are, indeed, many hundreds of years old. Until 2005, these olive trees emigrated in biblical numbers – as they were stolen for fashionable gardens by thieves getting £8000-ish per tree. But now they’re protected and produce gallons of delicious extra virgin oils. Forty per cent of Italy’s oil, to be precise.

We can’t take a tree home with us these days. But we take some olive oil. Our stay may end up with us tipping the bathroom scales. It may do the same to the bank balance. But it’s definitely worth it. Without a doubt we’ll be back to visit this special resort on what’s known as the Olive Coast.

As we arrive, a baboon is trying to break into our tent. The manageress shoos him away and calls a guard who arrives with his spear a few minutes later. She says our primate friend won’t return unless we offer him sweets, which seems good enough reason to ban sugar from Africa. The frisson we feel increases when we learn that guests are only allowed to their tents accompanied by guards. Welcome to the delightful excitements of Naibor Camp, one of the most exclusive tented safari camps in Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve.

The camp is hidden in a grove of riverine woodland on the banks of the Talek River, enjoying possibly the best location in the Mara. Captivatingly, hippos bathe in the river at the bottom of its garden and can be seen hauling themselves out in the evening. The area has the region’s highest concentration of leopard. Rhino hang out on the south side of the river. Plus it’s strategically placed for the wildebeest migration, being close to all the major crossing sites on the Mara River. And because it’s in the heart of the Mara, there’s wildlife viewing throughout the year.

There’s a small air-strip 30 minutes away for landing private planes (or for charter ones, if you must). Or it takes mere seconds to get here if you come in a Lady Lori helicopter, as did the squillionaire who had our tent before us. The celebrity transport of choice, Lady Lori is renowned for accessing the inaccessible from finding a plant not seen by botanists since the Seventies to offering superlative safaris from the air.

But we’re here to enjoy things from the ground, to explore from an open-sided Land Cruiser the rolling open grassland and Safari Wonderland outside our tarpaulin door. So, accompanied by our guide Daudi wearing Masai suka (blanket) and beaded headdress – we set forth into Animal Disney World. We don’t wish to spend time spotting different strains of the Greater and Lesser Safari Jeep or the hot-air balloons that litter the sky so Daudi takes us off the beaten plain.

We are soon rewarded with a herd of elephant, including mini Barbars gambolling and frolicking in the sun; a band of mongoose; and enough zebra to make a crossing. Then we see one of the world’s most spectacular sights: thousands of wildebeest and zebra crossing the great Mara River. A crocodile hovers nearby. But I have to admit that, in this instance, there are also other predators in sight: the animals are closely surrounded by bands of Homo sapiens and a fleet of four wheel drives.

Our next stop is lunch. It’s nothing like the steak and baked pineapple and custard enjoyed by some back at Naibor Camp. Instead we’re served a truly memorable Out of Africa picnic complete with chairs, table and chest of food eaten under a tree on the open plain under the wide sky. If it’s specifics you want, then imagine delicious chicken drumsticks with rosemary and honey and potato salad, eaten under the ‘sausage’ fruit tree beloved of rhinos and in which the leopard likes to lie with his kill.

Back at base camp and done for the day with the wonders of the natural world, it’s hard not to marvel at some man-made wonders. Take the Little Naibor tented suites with their enormous under-lit, low-floating beds on fig-wood bases, Savannah-sized cream sofas and African wool rugs: contemporary style allied with muted bush colours. And as for the Mess Tent with its rustic fig-wood dining table and chunky bush dining ‘thrones’…well, it’s pure Conran en Afrique. And if such style doesn’t sound like the bush, you should try reflexology in the spa tent…

Naibor Camp is also so eco it makes you weep and recycle your tears of joy. Everything is solar- run. It has safari showers and charcoal-heated irons. It attracts khaki-heeled guests who want to leave the world a better place, families, people who want luxury in the bush and rich businessmen. It’s also popular with honeymooners, sipping sundowners and eating romantic meals privately under the stars. After all, it’s particularly charming at night; candlelit and gas lanterns light the paths as the sounds of hippos, frogs and crickets fill the air. And as you sit chatting about the day’s adventures around that communal table, a camp fire burns cheerily…

From £1868 per person based on two sharing for 3nights on a fully inclusive basis including flights, air taxes, park fees and transfers. Book through Scott Dunn: 020 8682 5000; www.scottdunn.com; www.naibor.com. Lady Lori helicopters can also be arranged through Scott Dunn.

WE’VE walked past tiny hamlets and ancient stone farms, stopping only to drink water from a mountain stream. We strode in dappled sunlight through pine forests, then wandered up a hill, alongside verdant fields and cattle wearing cow-bells.

Now one of the oldest monasteries in the Western world – the imposing Monasterio de Samos – stands resplendent below us in the spectacula Ouribo River valley.

No wonder walking this, the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northern Spain, is considered something to experience before you die.

It had never crossed my mind to do it. But then Nancy Durrell McKenna, film-maker and founder of the charity SafeHands for Mothers, asked me to join their six-day, 84-mile sponsored walk – the last leg of the 500-mile ‘French Road’.

Having never walked further than seven miles, it seemed an irresistible challenge. We were a motly group of 19 international ‘pilgrims’, all with our own reasons for walking, but united by charitable worthiness.

Lesley Nelson was a 40-something Aboriginal and maternity health worker taking her first-ever trip outside Australia; Sir Robert Naylor is chief executive of University College London Hospital, usually in charge of seven London hospitals and a budget of £750 million but was now our driver and gofer.

Events organser Michelle Laven had a poignant reason for participating: ‘I want to do something really difficult to alleviate my depression,’ she said. ‘My brother died in December.’ ‘It’s a privilege to follow in the footsteps of St James the Apostle,’ added Irish midwife Sally Griffiths, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I hope to strengthen my faith.’ For me, it had taken seven weeks of traumatic preparation for me to get to this point. I had all the nerdy essentials – from spring-loaded retractable walking poles and water backpack to fashion disaster Gore-Tex tousers (thereby facing the awful prospect that it often pours in northern Spain).

For relief I’d escaped to Sweaty Betty for voguish walking gear – but the shop assistant had suddenly produced a list of anorak pilgrimage must-haves: ‘Duct tape (to cover blisters), Vaseline for preventing chafing…’ With mouting horror, I read about the refugios (hostels) in which pilgrims sleep communally in rooms full of snoring people, if they can even get a bunk, and endure cold showers. Then came Ryanair’s demand for £250 on my excess luggage – so I emptied my suitcase, put on all my clothes at the check-in desk and waddled, Michelin Man-like on to the plane.

The first night we stayed in Casa de Labranza Arza, near Samos, in a 1720s, thick stone-waled farmhouse surrounded by spectacular scenery.

Next morning we started our pilgrimag at Igles de Camino in nearby Triacastela. We stamped our pilgrims’ passports in the church. Two Lithuanian monks wearing habits asked us to join them in prayer. We held hands in a circle, dew on the grass, mist rising. ‘Bless these pilgrims, our walk,’ intoned the monk. ‘Hallelujah.’ Yee ha!

We set off, following the yellow pilgrimage arrows. For more than 1,000 years pilgrims – including Louis VII and St Francis of Assisi – have undertaken the Way to earn forgiveness for their sins. Was I going to have a pilgrimage like the actress Shirley MacLaine famously had, with visions and meetings with angels? Or perhaps the opposite – as satirised in Luis Bunuel’s film The Milky Way – of encountering religious hypocrisy and human cruelty? Over the ensuing days we climbed gently rolling hills, followed tracks between stone fences and passed ancient pilgrims’ hospitals and centuries-old churches. We walked by smallholdings with private chapels, and sprouts and cabbages growing neatly for the family’s thick evening soup (caldo).

One day, in a medieval scene, a pilgrim walked past playing bagpipes, with people following him. My James Bond-style Silva radio pedometer recorded things like: ’27km, 2,016 (calories burned), five hours 48 mins (walking), 36,273 (steps).’ Part of the interest of the journey was meeting other pilgrims. There was Lavinia Scrymgeour, 22, a Scot who’d been walking for five weeks. And Andre Barreiro, 32, a Knight of Malta and son of a retired admiral. He worked in a Knights’ hospital and had walked 1,864 miles from Rome, living on alms.

The Camino (‘Way’) is said to be a journey of the soul. Outwardly, the pilgrim faces the weather and terrain.

The inward journey is about encountering challenges and having the space to discover what’s important in life.

The first ‘test’ of my pilgrimage was living communally. One of my room-mates snored like an erupting volcano.

Still sleepless at 3am, my torch clenched between my teeth like some wannabe Girl Guide, I dragged my mattress into the corridor – only to be woken every 15 minutes by a chiming clock.

As the journey progressed, people became reflective, self-disclosing and authentic.

We were on literally and metaphorically on the walk of life – helping each other face obstacles along the way.

NORMALLY I’m competitive and have to be first – but on the Camino I challenged myself to arrive last every day. I learnt to dally and eat chorizo. When I walked alone, it was harder – just spotting the arrows pointing the Way.

Then I was more aware of minor aches – and just focused on taking one step at a time. (I discovered a team of Aussie midwives were winning by using haemorrhoid cream on their feet…) When we arrived in the splendour of Santiago, I felt both elated and deflated. We were staying in the beutiful San Francisco Hotel Monumento, a lovely old convent with thick stone walls and courtyards. Musicians played schmaltzy Ave Maria in the streets. Pilgrims wer lying on rucksack pillows, sunbathing.

The architecture rivalled Venice. But for the first time in my life it had been the journey, not the destination that mattered.

We reached the great Baroque cathedral, and joined the queue for the tomb of St James. Every pew was full for the daily pilgrims’ mass, wi th people standing and baggage and sticks piled high. I sat on the floor while an enormous silent incense burner was swung spectacularly and dangerously overhead on a massive rope.

As we wandered cheerfully to the pilgrims’ office to get our completion certificates, I surprised myself. I decided which stretch of the Camino I’d walk next…

TO donate to Safe Hands For Mothers, visit njustgiving.com/safehandswalkforlife

WEB WISDOM For more uplifting walking ideas worldwide,go to travelmail.co.uk

According to Lord Mancroft, there are only three things that you need to learn in skiing: ‘How to put on your skis, how to slide downhill and how to walk along the hospital corridor’. What he forgot to mention is that you also have to learn to enjoy sporting clothes and equipment that cost the equivalent of the Greek national debt just to stand in sub-zero temperatures and suffer height vertigo. And additionally, you need to grasp that you will spend un bras et une jambe simply to break un bras et une jambe. Only a mug would do it. Yet, ooops, I’m winter-holidaying in the ski resort of Val d’Isere.

I’m in Val d’Isere with Ella, my 12 year-old daughter, a genetic aberration who likes to ski 24/7 and would happily slalom backwards down a black run. We’re here because of maternal love and Scott Dunn, the luxury tour operator beloved of celebrities and royals. On first sight, Val looks like toy town after someone has sneezed the best Bolivian cocaine over it, with a pretty layer of snow over footpaths, the Baroque church and traditional Savoyard chalets built from wood and local stone. It’s in a majestic setting and peopled less by fur coats than serious skiers, including the likes of Ben Elton, Peter Gabriel and Coldplay drummer, Will Champion.

If you don’t ski, you can do an array of lunatic snowy things like snowmobile driving (junior Schumacher on ice), driving on ice (Schumacher on ice), ice diving (going beneath the ice of Lac de Tignes, for the truly crazed), dog sledding, snow-shoeing, ice climbing (scaling a frozen waterfall with the aid of ice axes and crampons, I ask you…) and paragliding. Or take scenic flights and vivez la montaigne en helicoptere. Or you can eat, which is what I like to do.

But first to our lodgings. We’re staying in Marie, a lovely chalet which sleeps eight, with an open-plan living-area, roaring fire, exposed reclaimed timber and stone, and Hammam and plunge pool overlooking snow-capped mountains. Marie is one of a family of chalets nestling in a cul-de-sac. (If you want to do the oligarch thing, you can stay next door in Marie’s impressive sibling, Le Rocher. A snip with a starting price of £32,660 a week, it sleeps 14 and has ironic arty décor including groovy chandeliers partout, Alice in Wonderland throne chairs, a technogym and a screen on which to watch films whilst in the pool.) It soon becomes clear that we’re onto something special here. Drivers who whisk you hither and thither are included in the price and there’s one member of staff to every two guests, for who nothing is too much trouble.

Take Thomas Checkettts, the chef in Marie. He cut his culinary teeth working with Gordon Ramsay and so must be used to difficult people. Which is fortunate as I’m keen to follow a macrobiotic diet. Forget raclette and fondue, I want sea-weed and miso soup as my mountain staples. Thomas rises gamely to my Madonna-style aspirations and conjures up delicacies like beetroot jelly, sweet pea granite, and garlic and spinach veloute. But very soon I’m lured to the Other Side by his beautifully-presented gastronomic dishes of foie gras, succulent fowl with rosti and breakfasts of smoked salmon and scrambled egg with truffle oil. Diet be damned!

It would be unforgivably piggy to do nothing but eat. So I raise myself for a sports massage from physio Toby Clifford, who is about ten foot tall and all compacted brawn in army fatigue trousers. He is to deep-tissue massage what crevices are to wrinkles. Words like muscular release, relief and amazing come to mind. In the summer he pummels soldiers for the Ministry of Defence. It’s enough to make anyone join the Army. Then in a fit of further exertion, later I walk to my bedroom for a facial from Pamper Off Piste. Pamper On Piste, now that would be interesting.

Afterwards, I swim in Oxygene, the erstwhile winter Olympics press centre now converted into a sort of Chelsea Harbour Club at altitude. It boasts hydro-massage, sauna, steam bath and Art, including life-size cows in the reception area. Plus there’s a pool where women in black costumes and goggles do fierce lengths. You probably take your life into your hands as much in these lanes as you do on the slopes.

Next day, I go (drum roll) snow-shoeing with guide Michel Gavet and a group. We walk in the silence. The sounds are of nothing but falling snow. In the valley below there’s a dam and a submerged village, the church spire of which sometimes shows above the water. People are skiing like traversing ants on the mountains opposite. There are eagles, white hare, roe deer, wolves (apparently) and trees laden with lichen and snow. It’s beautiful. It’s exhilarating.

We press on. I fall over countless times, often ending up stuck knee-high in snow. It’s no walk in the park; it’s more like an aerobics session for advanced mountain goats. As we pick our way gingerly down steep and slippery snow-covered rocks like lame donkeys, there’s a Virgin Mary in a rocky shrine. A bit like the ones you find on hazardous corners of fatal roads, overseeing the accidents. I’m glad to get back to terra more firma and less slippery.

I head to L’Arolay, a rustic restaurant Savoyard with views over the Isere Gorge, for lunch. Here they serve Cremeaux du Pere Francis (a basket of potatoes and an entire cheese in a box,) which my friend, Jane, polishes off, while I content myself with a family-sized serving of tartfilette and Ella demolishes a cow-sized steak tartare. Afterwards, groaning at the waists, we pop down to the Chevallot patisserie for some gastro-porn: think window displays of tartellette framboise and eclairs and, inside, counters of fougasse and croque courgette, and an eponymous owner who is often voted, ‘best pastry cook’ in France.

Then things take a very curious twist. Give me a map of the pistes, and I usually feel giddy just looking at it but Val d’Isere is a legendary area: 300km of marked runs, two glaciers, 1930 metres of vertical drops and 90 ski lifts. And then, reader, I do it. Under the expert eye of Ken Smith, a moniteur independent, I put on a pair of skis and hit the slopes…