Cadogan Guides Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches is a good example of these always-reliable guides friendly format. The book acknowledges that the travellers have moved beyond the golden hills of Tuscany west to the Bolgheri and Maremma seasides and east into the regions of equally stunning Umbria and the Marches. Its insider focus on food and wine based on a healthy appreciation of the culture gives it a mix that other guidebooks can miss.

The drawback to this approach, when coupled wi..

Next time you go travelling across Europe, think about packing some software. European Travel Companion provides you with eight handy CD-ROMs to improve your language skills and help you find your way around the leading cities.

If you are heading for Paris, the Great Cities of Europe discs let you quickly call up maps of the streets and discover useful local information about tipping at restaurants, bank opening hours and airport contact details. The information is concise and e..

Jules Verne may have been on his 80-day journey around the world a lot sooner if hed used Handmarks Travel Assistant . A combination of several unique applications, Travel Assistant helps to arrange and organise your travel plans, make sense of foreign lands, and communicate with the natives.

Planning your trip is a straightforward process with the itinerary application, albeit using somewhat confusing language (for example, a vendor is never defined, and were still not sure wha..

The 1998 edition of Following the Fairways is a comprehensive reference book on many of the finest golf courses in Great Britain and Ireland, plus a chapter on golf in France. The book is an easy-to-follow guide on "Where to Play- -Where to Stay" and has 30 chapters, each of which deals with a small geographical area.

An attractive, hand-drawn map at the start of each chapter shows the location of each golf club and the information is then given under three headings. First th..

The Rio Volt SP250 is a neat, portable digital-audio CD player which handles MP3 and WMA tracks as well as standard audio CDs. It includes an FM tuner, too. Portable MP3 players have been around for a while and CD-based Walkman-style devices much longer than that, but a player which combines the two is more of a novelty. Rio Volts SP250 is the top model in a range of digital audio players which aims to play just about anything you drop into it.

This is a versatile device. For a start, it can ..