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That's one way to get away from it all! Private island off Skye goes on sale for just £10,000... but there are no buildings and it is the size of half a football pitch By Glenys Roberts for the Daily Mail
Published: 12:59 GMT, 6 August 2014 | Updated: 12:59 GMT, 6 August 2014Over the years, I’ve watched Palm Springs grow into a sophisticated city.
In the Sixties, it was just a handful of Indian huts and celebrity compounds where Hollywood stars used to bed their mistresses.
Aptly named: Palm Springs delivers a certain style of leafy elegance in eastern California In those days, the sand drifted over the narrow streets and tumbleweed clumps bowled into your path.
Now the wide highways are landscaped with shady palms and the once barren desert blooms with everything you could possibly need: restaurants, theatres, world-class shopping, top-notch hospitals and year-round sports facilities for all ages - golf complexes, cycling tracks, quad biking, horse riding and natural thermal springs.
There is also the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which attracts such stars as Charlize Theron. And it boasts a little gem of a tennis stadium, owned by billionaire phone mogul and America’s Cup winner Larry Ellison, host to the now famous Indian Wells tennis tournament held every March - of which more later.
Star quality: Palm Springs has long drawn in A-list celebrities - from Frank Sinatra through to Charlize TheronI like to visit Palm Springs every time I am in LA. You know you have reached the desert when, after about two hours’ freeway driving, you go over the pass in the casino town of Cabazon, your ears pop from the change of pressure and the temperature soars by 10 degrees.
On one side is the tallest peak in southern California, Mount San Gorgonio, where Frank Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, died in a plane crash. (She is buried next to Frank in the local cemetery.)
On the other is the majestic Mount San Jacinto, with its aerial tramway, from where you can see as far as California’s own Dead Sea, the Salton. Between them runs the romantic highway 111 that ends in Mexico but first leads straight into the main street of Palm Springs.
Creature comforts: Once a simple desert pitstop, Palm Springs now boasts restaurants and hotels aplenty As soon as I arrive, I head for a bar and order a margarita on the rocks, not blended, and guacamole and tortilla chips. Later, I take a pavement table at Ruby’s cheap and cheerful diner for chili with extra onions and watch the people go by.
Downtown Palm Springs offers an increasingly lively, young bohemian scene - but drive on and the highway turns into a sophisticated main street lined with opulent winter homes and high-class shopping centres.
The romantic names of the side streets make you think you are in a cowboy movie. Deep Canyon, Shadow Mountain, Indian Trail, all sound like somewhere John Wayne would have known.
For the incorrigibly nostalgic there is a genuine Fifties’ roadside diner, Keedy’s - serving gloopy milkshakes and crispy hash browns - where Humphrey Bogart would have felt at home.
Five minutes away is Indian Wells. For years I have watched the tennis tournament on TV, marvelling at the cloudless skies as I shivered in the English rain.
Ravishingly rugged: Palm Springs is framed by the San Jacinto Mountains, which like immediately to the west This year I decided to see it first hand. Gone are the days when you could get up close and personal with the stars at events such as Wimbledon, which are now corporate jamborees.
But even though the top players flock to Indian Wells, competing for a mammoth $6?million purse, the desert matches manage to remain refreshingly intimate.
I spotted some old stars in the stands, including Billie Jean King, Rod Laver and Roy Emerson, and on court some new ones, such as razor-cheeked Ukrainian Alexandr Dolgopolov, who smashed every ball as though he was aiming it at Vladimir Putin.
I took some fabulous action shots of Djokovic and Federer, and proved to myself that it is very different seeing events live rather than on TV.
This being Southern California, the commentaries are supercharged and our once polite English game is treated as a blood sport.
If you stay in one of the larger resort hotels, such as the Hyatt or La Quinta at tournament time, you could find yourself checking in next to Andy Murray. I found a quiet motel, the Mojave Resort in Palm Desert, five minutes from the stadium and handy for the boutiques and restaurants on El Paseo, the desert’s version of Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive.
Full service: The Indian Wells tennis tournament draws in giants of the game, such as Roger Federer Run by a cheery Tanzanian called Mash, who used to live in London, it’s a little pricey in the season at around £150 a night, but the rate drops to £50 in the summer if you want to experience 100-degree heat - and everything is air-conditioned, so why not?
In any case, you can always retreat to the desert’s many darkened cocktail lounges to knock back highballs like Sinatra.
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