retreat

VISITING one of Portugal’s top golfing regions without an ounce of experience of the game was certainly a nerve-racking move.  

But I needn’t have worried. 

The Algarve is so much more than a golfer’s paradise — but it’s also the perfect place to learn.  

With a nature park that’s home to a 37-mile lagoon and salt marshes frequented by flamingos, otters and Mediterranean chameleons — plus breathtaking island beaches reminiscent of the Caribbean — this beauty spot is a haven for anyone seeking R&R. 

I was staying at the 4H Magnolia Hotel in Quinta do Lago, a lavish complex tucked away within the Ria Formosa Nature Park that features four hotels and a private villa estate spread across 2,000 acres. 

While the complex may be luxury, the price tag needn’t be. The Magnolia, one of the entry-level hotels, is affordable yet stylish and oozes retro glamour with its Palm Springs theme.  

AND RELAX

I stayed at the countryside spa hotel loved by WAGs with £50pp rooms

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Is this village the most autumnal English destination EVER?

A bright pink, neon ‘Welcome’ sign sits above the entrance, which is flanked by two cactus plants. Outside you’ll find a pool around which palm trees and stripey yellow sun loungers are dotted. Inside, the rooms are light, airy and unfussy.  

Staying here means you’ll also get access to the same shared facilities as the fancier hotels within Quinta do Lago, like the 5H Conrad.

This includes a gigantic lake with an inflatable obstacle course and watersports galore, plus a beach boardwalk that leads you straight down to the turquoise sea.

While golf is far from the only activity available to guests, the three championship courses are undoubtedly a big selling point to many.  

The legendary South Course has hosted the Portuguese Open eight times and each of the pristine fairways is backed by wildflowers and umbrella pines — pretty hard to resist. 

So it wasn’t long until I found myself at the driving range, picking up a club for the first time.  

Confronted with pyramids of perfectly-stacked golf balls, I wondered how many I would get through before I made a decent shot.  

But a beginner’s lesson from coach Callum had me swinging like a pro in no time, with simple drills and explanations that I could take away with me.  

If golf isn’t your sport, though, you can also try your hand at tennis, cycling, padel and Pilates. 

Many of these activities are at The Campus, which looks more like a glam beach club.  

It has a flawless football pitch on one side, and a patchwork of blue and orange sports courts on another.  

These grounds have been run on by elite athletes, including Chelsea and Everton footballers, during warm weather training camps, so you can be sure that the facilities here are top-notch. 

But despite its championship status and the reel of famous faces that have visited, I soon came to understand that Quinta do Lago is a place to relax and try new things, not one where you’re expected to step up to the plate and perform. 

If your aching muscles need soothing, then head to the wellness centre, which offers a sauna, steam room and plunge pool.  

There’s also Dano’s Sports Bar, a chillout spot where you can order wings and beers then sink back into a beanbag to catch a game on the big screen. 

I fuelled up on Caesar salad and bites of pizza before trying my hand at padel, which is basically tennis’s cooler, younger sibling. It’s a lot less strenuous and makes for easy rallies — ideal for beginners. 

My days at Quinta soon fell into a relaxed routine: wake up, spend the morning and afternoon trying new sports, go for a dip, then relax with dinner and cocktails. 

To fuel the body for all that sport, guests can pick from 14 dining spots spread across the resort and available to all guests. 

For an unbeatable breakfast, Pure backs on to the eighth hole of the North Golf Course and serves up freshly-squeezed juice and protein pancakes on a sun terrace shaded by pines.  

For lunch by the lake, stroll over to The Shack, where you can grab bites such as burgers and crispy fish tacos.  

And for a classy evening meal, I recommend Casa do Lago or Bovino — the former offers delicious fish from local markets, while the latter serves up juicy steaks and bold Portuguese red wines to match. 

Looking for the perfect way to end your night? Follow the boardwalk to its end to find Gigi’s, a cocktail bar that will happily shake up anything you like, and enjoy views of birds dipping down into the marshland. 

I left Quinta do Lago with not just a golden tan, but some muscle definition that I hadn’t seen in a while (a pleasant change from the usual extra holiday pounds) and a newfound love for golf — if you can’t beat them, join them. 

Holidays here feel like a health retreat that is actually fun and the exercise feels easy. There’s zero pressure to be perfect.  

Whether you want to spend your days down at the driving range, sipping cocktails by the beach or trying to master the splits in Pilates, this Portuguese playground is the place to do so.  

Who knew breaking a sweat could feel so incredibly glamorous?  

WASHINGTON — President Clinton was forced to retreat Monday in the face of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole’s angry accusation that the White House had told “a $23-million lie” about a project in his state.

The White House said that Clinton “regrets” any misunderstandings caused by “hyperbole” in a barbed joke the President told that brought the house down Saturday at an annual black-tie dinner hosted by White House correspondents.

Clinton had said that the Republican lawmaker from Kansas was seeking $23 million from the federal government to convert a senior citizens’ center into a boathouse, at the same time that he was assailing Clinton for wasteful “pork barrel” spending.

Dole, who led the Republican battle that scuttled Clinton’s economic stimulus package, first challenged the accuracy of the statement in a television interview show Sunday but he seemed confused about the details. Monday, he flatly denied the claim and issued a belated blast.

“The White House lied,” Dole said, carefully avoiding a direct attack on the President himself. “There’s no $23-million boathouse, no deficit spending, no new money, no connection with the President’s deadbeat ‘stimulus’ bill and no truth coming from a White House staff that is ill-serving the President with these sophomoric attacks.”

Dole said that he had sought a federal waiver to clear the way for privately funded construction of a public boathouse in Wichita.

“If the White House wants to play hardball, I’m ready to suit up,” Dole concluded, sending an ominous signal that the issue could spill over into future relations with Senate Republicans.

George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director, issued a statement late Monday afternoon.

“The President regrets the misunderstanding that may have been caused by any hyperbole in his jokes at Saturday’s White House dinner,” he said.

“While Sen. Dole did make the case that the Wichita boathouse is a legitimate Community Development Block Grant project, the potential cost to the taxpayer is not as high as stated in the President’s joke,” the statement concluded.

While the war of words may be forgotten, the harshly worded statement by Dole signaled that the lack of harmony between the Senate GOP leader and the Clinton White House could affect the future of the President’s programs in Congress.

Dole is in a key position as commander of 43 Republicans and as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, where the defection from party ranks of a single Democratic senator could block Clinton’s proposed tax increases.

As Dole described the situation, Wichita received $500,000 from the federal government’s Community Development Block Grant program in 1980 to help the city buy a building for use as a senior citizen center.

The center, however, moved to a larger facility in 1992, and the building along the Arkansas River has been standing vacant since then.

Wichita officials, Dole continued, wanted to lease the building to a charitable foundation that intends to use private funds to transform it into a boathouse. To change the use of the building, however, the city was required to seek a waiver from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Dole and Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kan.), who represents the area in the House, supported the city’s request for a waiver in letters to a HUD regional official. HUD had planned to tear the building down.

The Wichita Eagle Monday quoted an official of the charity, the Arkansas River Foundation, as saying that the boathouse project would cost $850,000 and the funds would come from donations and not the federal government.

“The White House really missed the boat on this one,” Dole said.

Good vibes weren’t invented in Marin County. But reading “Morning in Marin,” David Perlis’ history of the place and its outsize cultural influence for much of the 20th century, you get the sense it served as America’s leading countercultural way station.

Hosts of spiritual-minded sorts called it home: Alan Watts popularized Zen Buddhism in the ’60s, alongside poets Gary Snyder and Kenneth Rexroth. Francis Ford Coppola decamped there to write his script for “The Godfather,” and it’s where his compatriot George Lucas conjured up the “Star Wars” universe. (The cuddly Ewoks in “Return of the Jedi” were named after the region’s Miwok tribe.) Jack Kerouac sought enlightenment there; his compatriot Neal Cassady was imprisoned there, in San Quentin. It was the Grateful Dead’s retreat, Robin Williams’ launchpad, and the solid ground upon which Philip K. Dick questioned reality.

Why all these people, in this place, at that time? Perlis, an artist, radio host and Marin native, doesn’t strive for sociological or demographic explanations. His strategy is to sinuously move from moment to moment, artist to artist, as if in one continuous tracking shot, pausing only for a moment to catch some of the interesting characters he spots along the way. Over there, film critic Pauline Kael; and there, poet and sitcom star Suzanne Somers; and look, there’s bar-band singer Hugh Cregg, who’ll eventually use the stage name Huey Lewis.

Author David Perlis

(Jordan Blackman)

Still, Perlis breaks the flow just enough to offer a few reasons why the region became America’s affluent bohemia. It is, of course, gobstoppingly gorgeous, with Mount Tamalpais, Stinson Beach, Point Reyes and Bolinas practically designed to be edenic retreats. (Fairfax, he writes, is “ribboned with waterfalls, tufted with moss.”) Its isolation made it a counterculture haven for those looking to avoid San Francisco’s bustle: Gay poet Elsa Gidlow made her home there in the 1940s, among the first of many misfit pioneers. Wreckage from the 1906 earthquake was used to build the first “arks,” houseboats in Sausalito, providing a quirky infrastructure. Add some slow-growth initiatives, and you get artsy scrimping arrivistes; add LSD, legal until 1966, and you have a party.

So by the late ’60s, Marin had become a haven for a particular type: creative, interested in Eastern spirituality and profoundly disinterested in social convention (not to mention conspicuously white). Perlis’ portrait of the county at the height of the decade suggests a region that had escaped — or at least refused to look at — the worst of America’s turmoil. “Despite atomic bombs, rampant racism, political violence, and the war in Vietnam and Marin, there is hope, a sincere, emphatic belief, in an imminent inner revolution,” he writes. “When Zen, acid, or whatever your trip is, opens enough minds that people can outgrow this absurd, unwinnable conflict with nature and themselves.”

Perlis writes that with a slight smirk — of course nobody outgrew the conflict. Sure, a lot of people made a mint on the dream of transcendence: The Grateful Dead became a premier touring act, Lucas taught the country the ways of the Force and Sausalito’s Record Plant became the studio of choice for Sly Stone, Fleetwood Mac and more. But in the process, Marin became a kind of parody of itself, satirized by the writer Cyra McFadden in her 1977 novel, “The Serial.” In a world of what Perlis calls “swimmable wealth,” enlightenment sure looked a lot like narcissism in caftans. “I have no idea how I manage to do it,” Dick muses about his productivity at one point, prompting Perlis to bluntly break into the narrative: “I do. Drugs.”

Perlis could have gone further than that. One of the peculiarities of the Marin cultural scene, at least in Perlis’ reckoning, is that it hardly seems like a scene at all. Otis Redding and Frank Herbert and Linda Ronstadt and Anne Lamott and Shel Silverstein and Van Morrison all had little in common and interacted even less; if Marin was an incubator, it’s one where every egg hatched a different, brand-new species. Communal activity seemed relegated to the checkout aisles where locals kibbitzed over “The Serial,” or druggy extravaganzas that would in time claim Dick and various Dead members and associates as victims.

The irony, as the region stumbled into the ’80s, is that between its wealth and carefully cultivated isolation, Marin came to exemplify the ethos of conformist America: every man for himself. The actor Peter Coyote resisted: “When a Buddhist is thinking about shooting out traffic lights, it’s time to leave,” he quips. Others dug in: Huey Lewis and the News climbed the charts with a song titled “Hip to Be Square,” though to his credit, he explains to Perlis that it was meant to be a song about the difficulty of reconciling affluence and bohemian values. The man knows where he lives.

Perlis’ book isn’t a dismissal of Marin’s cultural moment, or even really a critique of it: His story is more something to be wondered at, like fog rolling over Mount Tamalpais. And Perlis’ storytelling skills make it seem like good fun as he pingpongs from artist to artist, each somehow inventing a meaningful, or at least recognizable, cultural touchstone. Marin gave us New Age music and Pablo Cruise; it also gave us Jim Carroll’s indelible punk classic, “People Who Died.” But one of the things to wonder at amid the good vibes is whether a different, more coherent, more sober scene would have been more meaningful, more enduring.

A regular contributor to The Times, Athitakis is a writer in Arizona and the author of “The New Midwest.”

Almost three decades ago, Joe Timko and Randy Neece were wandering through Disneyland, saw Goofy trailing around the gardens and made the connection.

This, but for dogs?

A Disneyland-inspired wonderland for their canine counterparts is what they were thinking. Timko, who Neece describes as “the most impulsive person in the world,” had no hesitation.

“That’s what we should do!” he says.

Dogs run around at the Wonderland yard.

That offhand vision has since expanded into Canyon View Ranch, a five-acre luxury retreat tucked into the hills of Topanga that its clients refer to as Disneyland for canines. Designed by married couple Timko and Neece, who worked as a trainer and TV game show director, respectively, this dog boarding retreat is like no other. Think multiple bone-shaped pools, a chauffeured shuttle service, behavioral and weight loss programs, 35 feet of underground tunnels and dedicated lands à la Disneyland, including Adventureland for the bigger hounds and Munchkinland for the little ones and older sports.

Dogs here wake promptly at 5 a.m. for morning exercise, eat breakfast at 6, take scheduled naps at 8, enjoy a “biscuit break” at 5:30 p.m. and are finally tucked in for “lights out” at 8. Ranch activities include hurtling through agility courses, swimming beneath a massive artificial waterfall and roaming sprawling fantasy playgrounds built expressly for their entertainment.

A map of the ranch drawn by Nina Rae Vaughn, the same artist who illustrates Disneyland’s official park maps.

(Canyon View Ranch)

Dog owners say that as soon as they pull into the driveway, their pups realize exactly where they’re headed and “start going bonkers,” says Neece. When they’re let loose, they enter Canyon View Ranch with the abandon of children running down Main Street, U.S.A.

Getting to the ranch requires a journey up winding hills, past signs that read “Please Be Kind,” on roads flanked by cacti, chaparral and coastal sage scrub. It looks nothing like the city.

Today, Canyon View Ranch boards around 60 dogs at once, often with a waiting list stretching six months or longer. There is no limitation on how long they can stay, and many of the dogs I meet today have been here for several weeks, totaling thousands with the ranch’s $100 nightly rate. Dogs travel from all over to get here, from Las Vegas to Dubai. Their owners include schoolteachers and secretaries alongside some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest families.

“We could be watching over all the jewelry in their safe,” Neece says, “and it wouldn’t matter as much as their dog.”

On this Wednesday morning, Neece and Timko lead the way through the property. Neece is calmly and casually kind, like a faithful bloodhound without jowls. Timko is sprightly, a live-wire Chihuahua. The two of them live on-site in what looks like a family home straight out of a 1990s Disney film, a white colonial home with blue shutters. There are 20 staff on-site. For Neece and Timko, the job is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Munchinkland is for smaller and less energetic dogs at Canyon View Ranch.

Dogs follow animal care specialist John Highland.

“I have the best job in the world,” says John Highland, former veterinary technician and now one of the ranch’s animal care specialists, as the dogs stream into Adventureland.

A great many dogs run up to me, tails wagging, tongues lolling. Neece and Timko lead me eastward of Adventureland toward the dandelion-headed alpacas, Stumbelina and Sparkle. Other animals on-site include a stable full of horses and Cowboy the tortoise, who is about the size of a lawnmower and whose head protrudes from what looks like a Venus flytrap made of bone.

“They help bring the flavor of fun, and that’s exactly what we want to do here,” Neece says. “We want it to be an escape, just like Disneyland.”

Neece was raised 15 minutes away from Disneyland and developed an obsession with it early on. “I’ve read every book imaginable,” he says. “I have this really deep appreciation for Walt Disney’s vision.”

Every detail of Canyon View Ranch evokes the legendary Anaheim theme park. The property has its own illustrated map, drawn by Nina Rae Vaughn, the same artist who illustrates Disneyland’s official park maps. The dogs’ sleeping quarters are modeled after the park’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, with its fort-like corridors made of sun-dried brick, the walls strewn with overgrown jungle vines. At Christmas, snow machines cover the grounds while lights are strung through the trees and holiday music plays all day.

The Disney vision has now come full circle. Several members of the Disney family are clients: Roy P. Disney and his wife, Sheri. His sister, Susan Disney Lord, is also a client, along with her children.

Canyon View Ranch even has what Neece describes as its own “Mickey Mouse”: Max the Tibetan terrier. A statue of him sits out front, honoring the first dog Timko and Neece owned together. “Usually, Tibetan terriers come in black and white, but we wanted Max, who came in earth tones, because he matched the furniture,” says Neece. The terrier, it turned out, was a champion, and the owner wouldn’t sell him unless the couple promised to show him. They agreed, and in 1997, Max won best of breed at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “All of this started because we made the decision to buy that dog,” says Timko.

Randy Neece, left, and Joe Timko spent years creating a “doggie Disneyland.”

Neece and Timko gaze over the canyon view from which inspired the ranch’s name. After 26 years, they’ve watched three generations of dogs come and go. “One of the things we didn’t count on when we started this was the emotional toll,” says Neece. “Yeah,” Timko adds, “every loss hurts.”

“When Max died, Joe struggled for weeks,” says Neece. “I later realized that a lot of it translated into him worrying about losing me next.”

In the late 1980s, while still working on TV sets, Neece learned he was HIV positive. “It was a death sentence then,” he says.

Larger dogs play in the Wonderland yard.

He survived, one of a comparatively small number of his generation who did. He returned to television briefly, working on two more game shows, one of which included one of his biggest paychecks. (“‘Match Game’ built Canyon View Ranch,” he laughs.)

But something had shifted. “When you go through something like that,” he says, “you really start taking inventory of your life. There’s something about that that frees you up to take a risk. I was ready to reinvent myself.”

The couple sold their house in Laurel Canyon and bought the Topanga property in the late ’90s from Melissa Sue Anderson, who had played Mary Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie.” Slowly, year after year, they planted every tree alongside ranch foreman David Barrios, dug every tunnel, built every waterfall and themed land, until the place began to resemble the idea they’d first imagined while watching children crowd around Goofy.

Now, late in this hot August afternoon, dogs of every size race through underground tunnels and emerge from the other side even more manically happy than when they entered. The Pomeranian munchkins in Munchkinland skitter around, sniffing wagging butts. A Labrador sprays his friends with water soaked into his fur from the bone-shaped pool. If there is such a thing as the Rainbow Bridge, Canyon View Ranch must be what it looks like on the other side.

Dogs dip in a pool and follow John Highland at Canyon View Ranch.