The winner will receive a spectacular two-week trip for two to Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar from the luxury travel specialists Cox & Kings and British Airways.
The prize and the terms and conditions
It was meant to be a romantic week for two in Majorca. OK, it was late February so I wasn’t expecting balmy: maybe watery sunshine, with the odd shower. But I wasn’t expecting snow - and for the snow to temporarily strand us in our resort. Forget the beach, we were huddled round the heater. The locals could only remark that they had not had this much snow for as long as they could remember. But at least with us being cut off there was the chance of some romantic nights in.Or rather there wasn’t since I got dumped on the second night, and as soon as the road to the airport cleared my now ex-girlfriend was hot footing it to board the next plane. But rather than return home, I decided it would be wrong to waste the already booked room and full board. However, all I could really think about was why she couldn’t have waited until the end of the holiday to chuck me. Also the rest of the hotel seemed to have been block booked by a large group of Scandinavian pensioners. They had seen me with my girlfriend and now saw me sitting alone, the only other diner apart from their table for 50. For the rest of the week, the sniggers and gossiping of the hotel staff and other guests seemed to follow me everywhere I went. I started to become paranoid that the whole island knew of my misfortune. At least boarding the flight to return home to the daily grind of work seemed like a blessed relief - George Brendon, Cambridge
The perfect Christmas gift – New Year in Paris. "You’ll love it" enthused my friends. "Don’t forget the Eiffel Tower at midnight," said a colleague. Alas, not so magical. Our train to Heathrow was delayed an hour en-route. Missing our flight by two minutes, we bought extra tickets and sought a friend’s floor for the night. The day went well until we arrived at the restaurant we’d booked and found the menu had increased ten-fold for the occasion (we were year-old graduates on limited funds.) Eventually we found a restaurant who sat us in the bar with the uninspiring lunchtime menu. Grateful for a seat! – we ate and left for the Eiffel Tower. We didn’t expect the Metro crowds and celebrated New Year in an unknown street with no bars in sight. Every taxi we hailed refused the seven-mile trip to our hotel, with the Metro closed until 6am. We spent those hours in a near-zero tube station. Having had no sleep, we returned to the airport and were delayed four hours on the runway, due to a rumoured terrorist threat and heavy snow. We arrived in England to a phone call announcing the death of my partner’s grandmother - Morris Clare, Birmingham
We set off in a Vauxhall Estate with top box to camp in the South of France with our two young children. Days before setting off my husband went to the garage for four new tyres, but the lease company would only allow two new ones, assuring us the others were fine. Driving to Dover on the M20, we had a blow out (one of the old tyres). We unloaded the boot on the hard shoulder, put on the spare and a garage in Dover insisted both tyres needed replacing. The next day we were driving along a motorway in the South of France when the dashboard lit up like a disco, the power steering stopped and the engine died. A tow truck took us to a garage in Montpellier which announced the engine needed replacing due to pistons and cam belts (the car was only two years old). The RAC found us a hire car at the local airport - but it was a smaller estate and our top box would not fit it, so we set off with the children buried under a mountain of bedding (you could just see their heads). Ten minutes later a cloud of black smoke came out of the back of the hire car and the engine stopped working. This time standing on the hard shoulder we had to wait for another tow truck to take us to another garage. The children were by this time in tears. By now Montpellier airport only had an Astra estate and the children and I could hardly be seen for equipment. Finally we got to our camp site eight hours late. We spent the next two weeks trying to get a larger estate to drive back: on the last day we found a car at Montpellier airport again, swapped over all our bags and drove back to Calais. We were not allowed to take the car out of France, so we had to board the ferry as foot passengers. All our things were put into a large metal crate. I developed a migraine at this point due to stress. When we got to Dover our crate took two hours to go through customs, and my husband left me and the children with all our carrier bags sitting on the kerb while he walked around the hire car companies to find us a suitable car. Finally after a couple of hours he turned up with an MPV and we drove home in luxury. Our car came home on the back of a tow truck two weeks later and had to have a new engine fitted. We then got our credit car bill to find the hire car company at Calais had claimed for putting petrol into the car when we had left it full (we finally got the money back) and our mobile phone bill came to more than £300 - Karen Clark, Bleasby, Nottinghamshire
Our family had flown the nest and my husband and looked forward to our first holiday on our own. A few minutes before flying into Paphos airport in Cyprus, the captain announced that we were not to worry but within the last few hours there had been a small earthquake centred on Paphos. Prior to flying, I had begun to feel unwell but dismissed it as a stomach bug. By the time we arrived in Paphos I was feeling very unwell, so it was straight to bed. During the night I was aware of a deep rumbling sound and then violent shaking followed by loud bangs, creaking, falling masonry, and screaming. It was the start of the aftershocks. The next morning I made it to the reps' introduction and vaguely remembered a comment about avoiding certain medical centres in case they "cut you open if only to take your insurance money". Within a short space of time the brilliant blue sky darkened it became as black as night. Suddenly wham - the hotel was hit by a hurricane. Chairs and tables, brollies and branches flew by. Then the rain started, filled our balcony and began to seep into the room. My husband began to bail the water out with the waste bucket. Later that day my situation worsened and we were forced to send for a doctor. Emergency surgery was needed for what he diagnosed as peritonitis! I was convinced that it was only a virus. Without more ado, I was carried to the doctor's car and rushed to hospital. Within an hour I was lying on the operating table, terrified and wide awake. I was still convinced that surgery was unnecessary. Little did I know! I had suffered a perforated gall-bladder and peritonitis; was in intensive care for four days and in hospital for the rest of the holiday. My case had been genuine and the surgeons had worked hard to save my life! The following year we returned for the same holiday in order to thank them and were met with smiles and tears. "It was only a virus!" said the surgeon shaking his head in disbelief - Hilary Walsh, via e-mail
In June last year my boyfriend and I had planned to go to Barcelona - but at the last minute I spotted an all-female snowboarding camp in Norway in the same week. He was keen for me to improve so agreed I should go on it instead. After much consulting of maps and emails to the Norwegian Tourist Board I picked a low-cost airline and booked my car. Everything was going well, I arrived and set off in the car a bit flustered about driving on the wrong side of the car and the road, but doing well. Then I realised quite how slow the Norwegian speed limits were and how windy and up hill my journey was. The seemingly straight forward 300km drive then turned into 10 hours of hell and arrival at 2 am. From here it goes yet more down hill. I arrived at what was supposed to be our accommodation to discover not an apartment or a hotel as promised but a campsite - 21km away from the town we were suppost to be staying in. There were three people in a small hut with a tiny heater and a one ring electric hob that took 10 minutes to boil a pan of water. No crockery or cutlery except what plastic containers we could save. No pans either unless you borrowed one from the campsite office which sometimes meant boiling water in a frying pan. So I had a week of poor food, crap snow (not that they could help that) and to top it all off you had to pay the equivalent of £1 for two minutes of hot water that sometimes wasn't hot. My boyfriend was laughing when he met me at the airport - Felicity Bullamore, Selby, North Yorkshire
I was to spend two weeks living aboard a dive boat off Egypt and Sudan on holiday, but also to get a cover shot for a diving magazine. On the first day we were to dive the Salem Express, a ferry that recently sank claiming 700 lives. The locals do not like us diving it and an Egyptian friend and Divemaster said “Something bad happens to those that do”. On the first dive, my camera failed, never to work again. My cover shot was gone and I was out of pocket by £1,000. A few days later as we entered Sudanese waters (which we found out was illegal as there was a war on) and I went snorkelling. I ruptured my eardrum. In two months time I had to fly to the States to do my instructor exam. With a bust eardrum I may never dive again. I had to get it fixed but then we found out that Sudan was in the middle of an Ebola epidemic and going to hospital put you at greater risk. I now had a choice: spend another week aboard a boat with no medical facilities or risk catching a disease. I decided on the boat. In the middle of the night, we struck a reef and were now shipwrecked miles from land! Numerous boats came to our aid but were dismissed by the captain who didn’t want anyone to find out what he’d done. As a German dive boat came along I decided to swim towards it and summon help. We were eventually rescued by the Egyptian Navy and the captain arrested. We spent our last night on dry land, had a hearty meal and found a disco. On entering, we realised it wasn’t a disco by our western standards - the entire dancefloor was filled with men in traditional clothing, complete with headdress, dancing to Wigfields’ “Saturday Night”. For those that don’t remember, there was a syncronised dance not unlike the Macarena: 40 plus men in full Arab gear dancing in sync like some bizarre Monty Python sketch ! Every time I hear that song I think “Funky Groovy Disco” - Martin Read, Stevenage, Herts
The gastroenteritis epidemic was already raging at our hotel by the time we arrived for our late-season skiing holiday in Morzine in the French Alps. All along the second floor guests were dropping like flies, a worry especially when you’ve got a 10-month-old in tow. Maybe it was the dirty glasses, the filthy carpets or yesterday’s rock hard dinner. But this was not a youth hostel, it was a 150-room hotel, with a bar, restaurant and, most frightening of all, advertised childcare facilities. Having contracted gastroenteritis, I asked the girl behind reception for some more toilet paper. At that moment, the alarm system went off. She stares panic-stricken at the flashing lights on the monitor before asking if I could go and find someone who knows how to switch it off. Descending the back stairs I slip on a patch of freshly-swabbed lino and perform a triple back somersault onto the next landing where the missing “Danger Wet Floor” sign is propped against the wall. For the record, one week cost in excess of £1,000, excluding ski-passes and equipment hire, when it was booked last July. Our friends paid more so that their three-year-old could be enrolled in ski school (only to be informed on arrival that he had to be four) - Nick Brownleee, Carlisle
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