Brittany's south coast is the setting for Les Jardins d'Arvor, a new complex of 134 family friendly apartments at Bénodet that is being sold through Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1444; brittanyferries.com/holidays).

Food miles

When is a restaurant not a restaurant? When it's trying to be several other things at once. I may have bent your ears before about restaurants which are "also" breakfast cafés, tea-rooms, local-produce shops, off-licences, children's rumpus-rooms, and places where "you just drop in for a glass of wine and a few nibbles". I've heard every combination, and they seldom work: it's like training a shire horse to go out and be a thoroughbred the next day and take kids on beach rides the day after.

I am afraid I'm old enough to remember when restaurant dining was undertaken only on a very special occasion. And even then, a Berni Inn, with its choice of steak or chicken, was regarded as the height of sophistication.

'My dream dining companion? Jennifer Lopez. I love her music'

Government's new Green Deal pushes virtues of LED bulbs, but critics say the sums won't add up

This week I've been eating...The Connaught brunch

Last week, the chef Thomas Keller received yet another accolade. After a meal at his New York restaurant, Samuel Muston knows why.

With Bond-themed swimmers and tea with terrorists, this year's Fringe festival is crazier than ever, says Fiona Sturges

This year's Brighton Fringe is bigger and brasher than ever, says Fiona Sturges

My earliest food memory...Nipples, obviously, which is my last memory as well! Seriously, though, mozzarella: as a toddler, I got told off for putting it in crazy places, like down other kids' nappies.

New build

Late-night visitors to Marlow have often been shocked by the chilling apparition of the Grey Lady of Danesfield Park, a solemn-faced ghost holding a lantern, who glides around where the chapel once stood, before disappearing. We had a broadly similar experience on driving into the hotel grounds – seeing the chilling apparition of Danesfield House, a great white whale of a late-Victorian Gothic folly looming in front of you like Moby Dick. It's an extraordinary sight, with its tall chimneys, its clock tower and elaborately terraced gardens, and it carries an air of melancholy – the result, perhaps, of too many owners, speculators and changes of use. It was built in 1899 by the heir to the Sunlight soap fortune, who sold it the moment it was finished. It housed evacuees in the war and was requisitioned by the RAF. It was once home to the Hellfire Club of Medmenham, a bunch of crazed desperadoes from the nearby village. Since 1991 it's been a hotel. And in the past four years, it's picked up a reputation as home to one of the country's finest chefs, Adam Simmonds.

Its founder talks to Karen Hodkinson about causing offence, cover splashes and hiring a little-known cartoonist named Matt Groening.