Getting into California's easy-going vibe proved laughably simple for Lindy van den Boomen, winner of the accommodation category, when she rented a comedian's flat in LA
See the runners-up here
THE WINNER
"The key's under the mat," was the last message I'd received from Paul before boarding a flight to Los Angeles.
Paul, a 56-year-old stand-up comedian who I'd never met but who I thoroughly researched online, was leaving for a cruise ship gig and renting out his home in Venice Beach to two girls about whom he knew nothing other than that one was a teacher and the other writing a novel.
"Isn't that a bit, you know, trusting?" my girlfriend Claire asked. "Leaving the key somewhere so obvious?"
This was the first time I'd ever booked to stay in someone's home and nightmare scenarios of turning up at a house to which pretty much half of LA had a key went through my head during the sleepless 11-hour flight.
"This is it," the taxi driver murmured, in front of a house that fortunately looked exactly as expected and could have stepped straight out of the mind of David Lynch. The large, wooden, yellow-painted property had its front lawn bedecked with a rocking bench, a creaking signpost, a large guava plant and an all-American white picket fence.
"Have a good time and help yourselves to anything," was written on the blackboard stuck to the first-floor apartment door. Although the consent was clearly there, stepping into a home that was empty and definitely not ours still felt like breaking in.
On the wall opposite the door hung a large porcelain moose head, surrounded by an array of frames filled with ancient family pictures. Above it, a lengthy bookshelf was stocked with books describing the beat generation in Venice, the health benefits of pilates and how to make green juices. Several Doors records appeared stuck to the ceiling, covering up what was probably a leaky roof.
"Good thing it never rains in California," Claire said, as she struggled to turn on the TV, a holiday routine.
I opened the window. Beneath, three elderly buskers in tie-dye shirts were playing Beach Boys covers.
Above the Pacific Ocean, a marine layer of cloud moved in, in time for sunset. Venice Beach turned pink in the evening light, the air filled with the smell of marijuana and seafood and the sounds of skateboards rolling down the hill.
"Shall we grab a bite to eat?" Claire asked.
She closed the door behind us and, hesitating for a minute, stuck the key back under the mat.
Lindy lives in London
The judge, Sally Shalam (twitter.com/sallyshalam), hotel reviewer for the Guardian, says: "I love Lindy's entry. Her eye for detail and humour capture the art of good travel writing. She turns arriving at a rented apartment in California into pure entertainment. It is as though we are there too. Her short vignette is proof that travel writing is often not about climbing mountains or disappearing into the bug-ridden tropics. It can be about simply standing in someone else's flat."
The prize: A week's holiday for two at Yediburunlar Lighthouse in Fethiye in Turkey from Exclusive Escapes (020-8605 3500, exclusiveescapes.co.uk), including half-board, flights from Stansted or Manchester, transfers, a gulet cruise and guided trekking. If the winner departs on 6 July 2013, a Turkish vegetarian cuisine course and full-board will also be included.
THE RUNNERS-UP
Bedouin cave
"In which hotel will you stay tonight?" the Bedouin man asked me as he poured out the tea.
Learning that I had no reservations, and no luggage beside my small rucksack, Fawe and Sami offered me a bed in their cave house – a rare offer for a visitor inside the ticketed lost city of Petra.
I sat and smoked while Sami played a flute that echoed around the park with haunting clarity.
"We have to go into town to get some supplies," said Fawe, the older of the men, his sand-blasted tanned cheeks and long, weaved hair giving him the appearance of a tougher, more lucid Keith Richards.
"What do you like to drink?" he said. "We will bring whiskey if that is okay?"
I was to wait for them and keep the home fires burning, quite literally. I helped them load their donkeys and they cantered gracefully down the ridge and into the shadows.
I found myself the lone guardian of a Bedouin home in this wondrous Jordanian scene.
As the sun resigned I broke myself away from the splendour of the moment and tended to the fire. The stack of desert-dried branches outside crackled in the metal oven bucket as I sat alone in the dark smoky warmth. An hour passed and I stood outside, shivering as I scanned the ridge for signs of their return.
Fireworks fizzed above a town in the distance – an engagement celebration, I would later learn. Around me the silence was punctuated only by a soft symphony of a distant, gently plucked oud and the echoey longing of flutes.
I retreated into the cave and after another lonely hour I finally heard the patter of hooves on the stone-cold Petra floor. My hosts had returned with a saddle-bagged banquet. As we ate in the darkness, the flavours were accentuated by their invisibility. Sharing whiskey, smokes and stories, Sami produced a photo album of him and his girlfriend, a student from Aqaba. Later he would chat to her long into the night on his phone.
The sweet blend of food, liquor and smoke sent me into a deep sleep of vivid dreams. The next morning I reflected on the beauty of their hospitality. Just as my hosts had trusted me with their home, I had trusted that they'd return. How glad I was that I had accepted their offer.
Stephen Withington, Brighton
The guest book
We could not entirely fall for the heavy pine doors shuttering every window and all the kitchen utilities in our rented Cornish cottage, or the downstairs wetroom somewhat scarily incorporating the washing machine and tumble-drier. But these things are sent to try the serial cottage renter, and if the place is warm and dry and convenient, any complaint seems churlish and a bit smug.
But what about knick-knacks and family photographs? How much should the rented cottage be a "home from home"? How much should it belong to the owners – or should it strive to be a tabula rasa for happy holidaymakers? Most such places do not arouse strong emotions. But our cottage was … different.
The guest book starts only four years before. From July throughout the summer of 2004, families from all over England – but predominantly from the home counties – praised the cottage and its facilities, the countryside and the local eateries. Perhaps, then, it was the nights drawing in that led Steph and Jez, visitors in October, to sound the first negative note. They found the cottage "lovely – apart from the personal photos everywhere. A little spooky". We know what they meant. You could trace the recent genealogy of the owners' family throughout the house. It was strange to be looked on by an elderly rather pensive man while washing the sand from one's feet in the repro Edwardian bath. Our daughter felt obliged to turn a picture of, presumably, someone's much-loved grandmother to the wall, in order to sleep undisturbed by strange dreams.
With that, as far as the guest book is concerned, the genie is out of the bottle. Now anyone feels free to express an opinion. Tracey and Alex "agree about the amount of personal photos", but a family from Bromley "liked the happy family photos". So did a very cosmopolitan group from, variously, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia, who found it very homely.
By 2005, open season has been declared. If you like the photos, you have to say so with great vehemence – at least three exclamation marks. But complaining about other features is OK too, now. Jan and Brian, in March, liked the cottage, but felt cut off – the incoming call facility didn't work and there was no mobile signal in the area.
There's a debate about the Rayburn and the log fire – some found the place warm enough; others thought it romantic. A post-finals group from Bristol were only interested in the surfing, but Sandra, Paul and William from Hertfordshire wanted a travel cot, a high chair and a clothes airer, hoped the washing machine would be fixed soon, and thought a payphone would be a good idea.
A fortnight in August has a Yorkshire family waxing lyrical: "The Milky Way, wild carrots, loads of blackberries, the bench walk, the fudge shop and the castle – all new discoveries."
For the second year running, shorter days bleakened the visitors' outlook. Bev, in November, saw something rather sinister in the jolly snaps – an owner on the make: "Paid over £700 for the week and was absolutely frozen!! Radiators supposedly come on 2 hrs. morn and eve (Half of them didn't work anyway!). Thermo was locked, spent about £30 on wood to keep warm! Reckon a good profit was made from the wk!"
Up next, a Lancashire family were clearly accustomed to being a coat colder. They thought it was "very warm – only spent £6 on wood, so don't know what previous people complained about".
Omigod, a family from Surrey recognises the children in the photos. Their lad goes to school with the twins! But next week, the Rayburn isn't working and there's a lot of doorknobs missing. Have the Lancashire people been burning them to keep down their fuel bill? By the end of September, the strain on the cottage is beginning to show – the Rayburn is still dead, the toaster's given up the ghost, and the stairs have become dangerously steep.
And so it goes on. People fussing about the heat and the cold, the implements and the absence of implements, the homeliness and the strangeness. What are we looking for from our weeks in someone else's house? To embrace the poetry of it?
Spending a day – rainy I guess – in a nearby coastal village, the family from Essex had wandered into the village pottery. What were they looking for – a ceramic reminder of damper but happier times? What would they write about their search for the rural idyll?
"Man at the pottery is a pompous shit and rude – make sure you have change."
Nigel Gann, Chiselborough, Somerset
Characterful hotel in India
"Will he die?" asked my three-year-old son of his two-year-old brother.
"Leeches; nothing," said the General airily. "He will bleed for some time. Please keep him away from the furniture."
A creeping mist pressed at the windows of Samthar Farmhouse, 80 remote miles from Kalimpong in India's Darjeeling district. The teak interior smelled of incense, furniture polish and damp, and creaked like a boat at sea. By the flickering light of solar lamps we took tea on embroidered silk cushions. Our son bled quietly on a plastic bag on the floor.
Over dinner, the General regaled us with stories of those who had come before: the guests who had been injured, the guests who had got lost in the jungle, the guest who had slipped off a trail into the heart of a giant fern and swayed all night over an 800ft drop.
"Enjoy your trek tomorrow," said the General, toasting us with his whisky. "Myself, I prefer to read."
We were awoken by a knock. A man staggered in swinging a heavy wooden bucket which billowed copiously with steam. Behind, pattered a maid with cups of tea. We lay, enjoying the hum of others working, until the water was tepid.
My husband carried our eight-month-old daughter in a backpack. Our sons were carried by guides, young and slight, shod only in flipflops. My walking boots rubbed as I gave chase up mountain paths. Shifting mists revealed the scenery gradually, at every turn a breathtaking view of forests and valleys and mountains which touched the clouds. We passed terraces of brilliant green paddy fields snaking along the slopes and brightly painted cottages adorned with pots of geraniums.
Now the boys were running; dressed as Superman and Spiderman, I glimpsed them as flashes of red through outsized jungle foliage, then squeezed perilously on a ledge, gazing at the lush valley below. A stream took us to a Buddhist shrine decorated with red and yellow prayer flags. Here, in full sun now, we ate lunch on smooth, warm boulders, contemplating the snow-capped Himalayas spread before us.
The mist had crept back with the darkness and Samthar was a boat at sea once more. It was Diwali, festival of lights. We sat on the veranda and watched village youngsters singing and laughing and playing with fireworks.
'"Someone will get burnt," predicted the General. "Be sure it isn't you."
Clare Haden, Wandsworth, London