Celebrity traveller
and off in Africa and when I was 18 my mum and dad moved back there, bought a plot of land and built this incredible house on the coast.
They started a charity, the Vipingo Village Fund and they have a school for children with HIV. It’s magical there. You can’t use your phone, there’s no internet and we’ve got a stretch of beach which is basically our own. I go for runs through the bush, read lots of books and drink spritzers by the pool. It’s my paradise.
AND YOUR WORST?
As children we used to go to a ski resort in France called La Clusaz but we’d go in the summer so it was all luging, tennis and ice skating.
When I was 15 my parents decided we should go back for another family holiday and it was like revisiting the past.
We drove from England, which takes a day, and arrived in the mountains and it was pitch black and raining, nothing was open and nobody was there.
After four days of being cooped up in the apartment my dad said, “Right, I’ve had enough!” So we packed the car and drove to Italy where we fi nished our holiday in the sunshine.
BEST SOUVENIR?
I’m not a souvenir purchaser but I did buy a spoon last year when I cycled across Vietnam and Cambodia with Denise Van Outen, Matt Johnson and Lydia Bright. We were in this tiny Vietnamese village and they were bending spoons and making them into bracelets, so each one of us
got a spoon bracelet.
BEST HOLIDAY READ?
Victoria Hislop’s The Island. It’s a brilliant holiday read. It’s about a leper colony on an island just off Crete. It’s beautifully written and there’s a love story in there.
HOW DO YOU SPEND YOUR TIME ON HOLIDAY?
I love going away with Paul. He’s not a typical boy and doesn’t need to be doing stuff all the time. We’ll sit and do the crossword, play cards, have a cocktail or go exploring. We love being together so it’s always entertaining.
WHERE WOULD YOU REVISIT?
Mexico. I was lucky enough to fi lm the reality game show Playing It Straight there when I was 21. I’d been travelling there four months before that. You have to go to Puerto Escondido, a tiny surfi ng town on the west coast. That was my hidden gem.
WHERE NEXT?
I’m trekking the Grand Canyon for Heart’s charity Make Some Noise. We’ve got seven nights of camping under the stars. It’s proper rough camping but I love all that. I have these dreams of grandeur with people playing guitar and roasting marshmallows but I don’t think it’s going to be that fi lm- like. We have one night in Las Vegas at the end and I’ve never been.