Romantic adventures

Want to do something special for Valentine’s Day this year? Why not take her – or him – on an absolutely unique romantic adventure neither of you will ever forget? If you have ever yearned to travel back in time, now is your chance. People say they want to experience the real Greece and here it is in Skyros as the earliest signs of Spring beckon.

The ancient Skyros Goat Festival is an extraordinary celebration, leaving the privileged few non-Skyrians who have the chance to be part of it spellbound and enchanted by its mystery and potency.

Skyros Holistic Holidays has organised this very unusual holiday from February 14-21 on this idyllic island. This company, who pioneered health and well-being holidays in Europe over 20 years ago and now specialise in stress-busting holidays for the 21st Century, offers something very different to world-weary travellers – the chance to rest and recuperate in convivial surroundings with like-minded people.

Alongside a Writers Lab this February with Peter Guttridge (Author of ‘Cast Adrift’) teaching fiction and comic writing, there are dancing, song-writing, visualisation workshops with experienced facilitators Hazel Carey and Jim Gallagher. (Price: £495 excluding flights and transfers. Accommodation in comfortable village rooms, visit to Goat Festival, all courses & two daily meals included. Flights from £145 (excl. taxes) with Olympic Airways).

The highlight of the trip is the 5,000 -year- old Goat festival, which culminates during the week in a heady mix of non-stop partying by day and by night - a 48 hour explosion of revelry and a carnival parade. Villagers in fantastic costumes - half human, half animal - dance in the streets in an ancient, wild and primitive pagan abandon. The bizarre masks, the pantomime and the parodies identify the carnival on Skyros with the ancient Dionysia. Young men wrap themselves in goatskins and 50 kilos of goat bells and whirl frenetically round, in order to release Persephone and bring on the Spring. Valentine holidaymakers will have never seen anything like it. You can even join in the mask-play and dancing if you want to.

If you are single, the unspoilt island of Skyros is also the perfect destination – this February or for any of the other breaks offered by Skyros Holidays in 2007. The Atsitsa Bay centre on Skyros offers a huge range of fun courses to do while you are on holiday. Where else would you find flirting and relationships skills, African dance, survival techniques and song-writing courses offered alongside canoeing, painting, yoga, massage, reflexology and pilates? Up to 12 courses a week and five sessions a day can be selected.

That’s not all. UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, D.M. Thomas (‘The White Hotel’) and Betty Trask award-winning writer Susan Elderkin (‘Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains’) are among many world-class tutors offering courses with Skyros Holidays next year. Two thirds of participants on Skyros holidays tend to be people travelling on their own and it comes highly recommended by celebrity participants like Adrian Mole creator, Sue Townsend and Mariella Frostrup.

Matthew Collins of BBC2’s Travel Show said: “This amazing place has really fascinated me. It is the perfect place for a proper holiday.” Sue Townsend said: “I immediately fell in love with the place as everybody does. I kept thinking, 'I am an actor in A Midsummer Night's Dream; this is Arcadia, I want to live like this for ever'.” And Mariella Frostrup, describing Skyros Holiday’s breaks in other exotic locations, said: “For anyone who likes travelling alone or seeks stimulation from their holiday, Skyros-in-Thailand is a must.”

The singles holiday market is the next big boom sector as it begins to dawn on the holiday industry that singles represent a major consumer group in the UK (30% of all households and a growing trend for people to marry older). The World Travel Market Trends Report 2006 says career-minded singles are more likely to spend their disposable income on treating themselves. This makes it all the more important for singles to put their trust in travel operators like Skyros Holidays who have proven expertise in this field.

Holidays are offered in Thailand, Greece, Cuba (Salsa dance tuition and Yoga in April) and for the first time this year, Cambodia (a 10 day overland tour in April via the Khmer temples at Angkor Wat, with meditation, painting and photography courses en route). (See Skyros.com). You can relax into the break as soon as you arrive – because one special ingredient of this unusual holiday is the way a sense of community is created among fellow travellers from day one.

“We basically invented our own idea of a dream holiday, a delicious mix of great people, beautiful island scenery, fun things to do and a chance to reflect a little on life in good company, ” said founder Dr Dina Glouberman Ph.D, who has appeared on BBC TV’s Heaven and Earth Show and is the author of the best-selling book ‘The Joy of Burnout. “People eat great food, laugh more than they have in years and go home revitalised and joyful about life - some even fall in love. We are definitely doing something right!”

To book online and for details of all vacations go to Skyros.com.