forgot

Ruben Loftus-Cheek says he “completely forgot” about playing for England and was “just a fan” during his near seven-year absence from the national team.

Loftus-Cheek’s last appearance for the Three Lions came in a friendly against the United States in November 2018 after he had been part of Gareth Southgate’s World Cup squad that reached the semi-finals in Russia the same year.

The 29-year-old midfielder ruptured his Achilles in 2019 playing for Chelsea in a friendly in the USA before the Europa League final, and subsequently dropped out of the England reckoning.

He joined AC Milan in 2023 and has made 71 appearances for the Rossoneri in all competitions, scoring 11 goals and registering three assists.

“When I ruptured my Achilles, I was on such a high [before it happened], so after that I had a hard time mentally,” said Loftus-Cheek.

“But I was still young, I still had time to come back, so I wasn’t too low.”

He added he had “got used” to not joining up with England because he had been away for so long.

“You still want to push in club football with the hope of maybe getting a sniff,” he said.

“But I just completely forgot about it and was being a fan of the team instead.”

Loftus-Cheek said it took about two years for him to feel himself again after the injury.

“If you have got good people around you it is going to help you so much, but the main thing comes from your self drive,” he said of his recovery.

“That belief, to overcome challenges, is paramount in sport and in life – that you have this mentality in overcoming challenges.”

Southwest Airlines is being criticised for failing to communicate changes to its five-hour delayed flight as two disabled women were left behind as the flight took off without them

An airline has been slammed after two women who are both blind were left behind by a plane and told by staff “we forgot about you.”

Southwest Airlines is being criticised for failing to communicate changes to its five-hour delayed flight from New Orleans to Orlando on July 24.

Friends Camille Tate and Sherri Brun were left stranded after the pair were at the airport waiting by the gate, checking the airline’s app for any updates.

However, they were the only two people on the flight when they boarded. “You’re the only two people on this flight because they forgot about you,” Sherri Bun said the two were told.

According to the airline, because the flight was delayed, nearly all of the passengers on the original flight were re-booked on another Southwest flight to Orlando that departed a little earlier from a different gate. It comes after a furious tourist was just ‘offered £21 by easyJet’ after being stranded in Turkey.

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Sherri and Camillie were the only two passengers not re-booked on the flight. They even admitted they had no idea another flight was an option.

“Nobody at B6 told us anything. Nobody came to get us at B4. The time passed,” said Sherri. “That airplane took off, and our boarding pass had not been swiped,” said Camille.

The pair remains stunned that they weren’t on the flight. They want the airline to improve its communication to people with disabilities.

“The way they help their customers that require additional assistance needs to change. There needs to be follow through,” said Sherri.

“There needs to be some improvement in how they communicate with their passengers especially those that have disabilities,” Camille added.

The friends were offered an £80 voucher as compensation for the delay, but weren’t eligible for a full refund as the flight departed.

Southwest Airlines has since apologised for the embarrassing incident. It said: “The Customers were scheduled on Flight 2637. Although it ran almost five hours late that day, it remained their same flight number throughout.

“We issued the $100 vouchers as compensation for the delayed travel, but a refund is not available if a Customer actually completes the flight.

“It appears the confusion about a plane coming back to get them might be because many of the Customers on that flight were accommodated on another MCO-bound flight that left a little earlier from a nearby gate. These two Customers were not re-booked on that flight, so their assigned gate never changed. Our records show they flew to MCO on the airplane that had been parked at their original gate.

“As far as accessibility policies, all of our information is found on the Disability-Related Accommodations section of the Help Center. For Customers who are blind, escort and navigation assistance is available from the airport curb to and from gates and between gates for connecting flights.

“To receive assistance, Customers must identify themselves and the type of assistance they require to a Southwest Employee when they arrive at the airport, at any connection points, and when they land at their destination. In the event of a gate change, our Employees are responsible for ensuring all Customers who need assistance reach the new gate.

“We apologise for the inconvenience. Southwest is always looking for ways to improve our Customers’ travel experiences, and we’re active in the airline industry in sharing best practices about how to best accommodate Passengers with disabilities.”

As with paint colours or lipstick shades, naming a mountain range requires serious consideration. It should suggest character, create intrigue, and kindle desire. Who doesn’t want to explore the Crazy Mountains of Montana, or make a fiery pact with California’s Diablo Range? While studying a map of Spain, my interest was piqued by a patch of grey and green emptiness bearing the enticing words: Sierra de la Demanda.

I’ve travelled all over Spain for work and play in the last two decades, but somehow these “demanding” mountains had eluded me. Located in the remote northern interior, halfway between Madrid and Santander, their isolation (and a dearth of English-language Google results) only added to the mystique. The Sierra de la Demanda covers a vast area across Spain’s least populated regions of Burgos, Soria and La Rioja. An investigation of more detailed maps revealed an almost roadless expanse of limestone peaks, valleys, ravines, rivers, gorges and glacial lakes, with the highest peak, San Lorenzo, towering at 2,271 metres (7,451ft). The calling was real.

This is not the Spain of white villages and dusty olive groves. On the Demanda’s north face, where the climate is wetter and cooler, the improvised allotments, stone ruins and makeshift shacks are reminiscent of the forgotten corners of eastern Europe. Climbing higher, above the treeline, the terrain becomes harsh and rocky with sweeping views across plunging, pine-covered valleys. But unlike the dramatic outline of Spain’s more famous mountain ranges, the Demanda appear gradually, almost secretly, their true splendour only emerging once you’re deep in their midst. Every season brings its own charms. Winter is a snowy picture postcard, but in spring the meltwater sends waterfalls thundering down the mountainsides among wildflower meadows. Summer is hot and arid, but by autumn the temperatures hover in the mid-20Cs with (mostly) solid blue skies, and the ground is swathed in pink heather and alpine flowers.

The town of Ezcaray, on the north side, is the closest thing to a tourist hub – a scenic former textile centre on the River Oja that operates as a base for the small ski resort of Valdezcaray, built in the 1970s (the Palacio Azcárate has doubles from €90, B&B). The sealed road ends abruptly after the ski centre, becoming a rocky trail that makes for a nail-biting drive (especially in a hire car) along a ridge that’s at more than 1,800 metres (6,000ft), before looping back to Ezcaray in a dizzying descent of hairpin bends. The views are stupendous in every direction – fold upon fold of untouched mountain wilderness and, apart from the occasional hiking trail signpost, nothing human-made in sight.

Halfway around the loop road, if you’re craving more back-country adventure, a dirt track, appearing as an almost imperceptible black line on the Michelin map and marked with a rusty, hand-painted sign, takes you down into the southern foothills via the Lagunas de Neila, a cluster of glacial lakes, surrounded by cliffs and pine forests. The lakes can only be reached on foot, and at an altitude of 6,000ft make for an invigorating dip. The Laguna Negra is named after its dark waters, but in the late afternoon sun it appears a deep, shimmering blue. The water is, as you would expect, bracing, but it’s the sheer scale of the surroundings, and the solitude, that will take your breath away. The only sound accompanying my swim was a chorus of surprisingly loud frogs, ribbeting from the reeds.

On their south side, heading downhill from the lagunas, the Demanda feel different. The climate turns drier and warmer, and Spain becomes familiar again, with its oak forests, medieval ermitas (chapels) and sleepy villages where old men wave from their chairs outside the taverna. Although there are plenty of well-marked hiking and mountain bike trails here, this is still “España vacía” – empty Spain – and human activity remains a rare sight outside the towns. This phenomenon of the interior’s depopulation is much discussed by Spanish politicians and citizens, and the low density is tangible here – traffic is light and most of the activity is among the animal kingdom. Deer leap through the trees, boar amble across the road, and as the forests give way to open rocky landscapes, griffon vultures perch in their hundreds along the high cliffs before swooping and circling in the late afternoon thermals.

The village of Quintanar de la Sierra, in the southern foothills, makes a good base to explore the Demanda, and the Hostal Domingo offers affordable rooms (doubles from €55, room-only). Like all the villages in the area, life moves slowly and peacefully. Locals get around on horses and in beat-up 4x4s, the shops shut all afternoon, nobody speaks English, and everyone, young and old, socialises in the town plaza where a café con leche will set you back €1.50. Like the ski centre, the hotels and bars are a non-ironic throwback to the 1970s, their only concession to the 21st century being charmingly rudimentary websites and an email address. This is the land that social media forgot, and is better off for it. Although it may appear on the surface that there’s not much in the way of tourist attractions, as you delve deeper into its hidden corners, an intriguing and eclectic landscape of history and culture reveals itself.

Dinosaurs roamed this part of Spain, and hundreds of their footprints are visible near the town of Salas de los Infantes, which also boasts a dinosaur museum. Moving on a few miles, and a few million years, is the eerie Necrópolis de Cuyacabras, dating from the ninth to 11th centuries, where dozens of adult- and child-size tombs are carved from a slab of rock in the depth of a pine forest. Meandering through the villages, Roman bridges, abandoned monasteries and ruins of all eras – from medieval to mid-century – appear at every turn. For lovers of industrial archaeology (AKA clambering around abandoned buildings), an enticing disused railway runs through Salas, its crumbling stations and rusty tracks half hidden beneath tangles of vegetation.

One town where the monastery remains in immaculate order is Santo Domingo de Silos (stay in the Hotel Tres Coronas de Silos, an 18th-century palace nearby; doubles from €95, room only). Its abbey, dating back to at least the 10th century, became world famous in 1994 when its monks scored a chart-topping album of Gregorian chants, and visitors can listen to the vespers being sung every evening.

Three miles over the hill from Silos, you’ll find yourself at an altogether different but equally revered site – Sad Hill cemetery, one of cinema’s most well-known locations, where the closing scene of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly was filmed in 1966. Twenty miles west, venturing deeper into fantasy land, is the Territorio Artlanza, which claims to be the largest sculpture in the world. A magical, full-scale reproduction of a medieval Castilian village, created by Félix Yáñez, a local artist, from materials salvaged from rubbish dumps, it includes porticoed squares, a perfectly equipped school, a carpentry shop, bakery, forge, canteen, wine cellars, an alchemist’s pharmacy and even a small chapel.

Empty patches on maps that elicit few Google search results are rare in these hyperconnected, overshared times. There is a timelessness to the Sierra de la Demanda that feels like innocence, and while other parts of Spain struggle with the pressures of over-tourism, these mountains are a lungful of fresh air. The charms of the Demanda are simple and unshowy, and ironically, make few demands on the visitor – except to breathe deeply and tread lightly.

The small white signs with red lettering are dotted through the landscape: “Military training area – keep out”. It adds to the eerie feel of unusually quiet roads and twisted Scots pines, which gather the long summer dusk around them.

But when we arrive at our accommodation on an old farm bordering a forbidden area where the British army conduct secretive manoeuvres, the whole place sings with peace. A red kite cavorts in the breeze over handsome parkland, a cuckoo calls and, down by the Wissey, a gin-clear chalk stream, reed warblers chunter from deep within the rushes.

If ever a region deserved to be its own county, it’s Breckland. This is a unique swath of south Norfolk and north Suffolk dominated by sandy heathland. It has an unusually dry climate more typical of central Europe and is notable for its rare plants and birds. Once an area dominated by inland sand dunes and commercial rabbit warrens, since the 20th century it’s been planted with the pines and conifers of Thetford forest. These woods offer a wealth of walks but there is also the vast Stanta army training area, 30,000 acres in size, where people cannot go – and other species thrive.

Breckland is a stronghold for charismatic endangered birds such as the goggle-eyed stone-curlew, dashing forest-dwelling goshawks and enigmatic, nocturnal nightjars. It’s home to ultra-rare and fantastically named plants and invertebrates, from the prostrate perennial knawel to the wormwood moonshiner beetle. It has every conservation designation going and would undoubtedly be a national park if so much of it hadn’t been commandeered by the military.

This land is usually overlooked by visitors whizzing through en route to the Norfolk coast or Norwich. It’s perhaps not helped by an absence of pretty towns and fancy restaurants (although well-heeled Bury St Edmunds on its southern edge boasts the Michelin-starred Pea Porridge). I live 30 miles away and I’ve never brought my family for a holiday here, until now.

My children immediately take to Bodney Hall Farm, where we are staying in a beautifully renovated cottage, the smaller of two high-end self-catering options. Guests are given the run of the 40-acre grounds and gardens which roll down to the River Wissey and feature a magical mix of interesting trees, formal planting, wildflowers and wildlife.

We stroll the banks of this private stretch of the Wissey. Since relocating from London in 2016, owners Henry and Anna Sands have been restoring the river, encouraging natural wiggles and bringing back the natural clarity of the water as it races over shingle, providing homes for dashing inhabitants including wild trout and kingfishers.

It’s possible to swim in the river but there’s also a jetty for easy access into a large Wissey-fed pond enveloped by rushes and willows. We savour a long evening swim to the soundtrack of cuckoos and reed warblers and – to my amazement – even a booming bittern. The water is sweet and fresh, and I feel as if we could be in Scandinavia, especially when we warm ourselves in our private woodfired hot tub as the first stars emerge. I’m hoping for a strange drone or red flare from the military training area, but all is quiet.

I rise early for a 5.45am swim and just miss an otter – Henry Sands, who is up even earlier, spots it – and there’s just enough time for a morning hot tub before we head to nearby Grime’s Graves, the largest known and best excavated flint mine in the country. Here, 4,500 years ago, late Neolithic people dug up to 1,000 mines up to 13 metres below ground and used antler picks to extract flints embedded in the chalk. The flint was particularly high quality and exported across the country, making specialist tools and weapons. The site is a large grassy clearing filled with the strange lumps and pits that are old, long-filled-in mineshafts. The air is filled with the song of dozens of skylarks.

The English Heritage visitor centre is pleasingly low-key – and quiet, naturally – with “please touch” signs so we can feel the weight of flints and the sharp edges of knapped stone. My kids enjoy brandishing replica axes before we move to the real highlight: descending into a nine-metre mineshaft excavated by archeologists in 1914. They found the remains of antler picks, pottery, animal bones and neolithic bats – and Daubenton’s bats still roost in the excavated shafts where it is a constant 8C.

“It smells nice down here,” says my son Ted as we descend the steel staircase. The scent is cool, damp stone. At the bottom, we can crawl on the chalk a short way into some of the horizontal excavations. It’s a vivid experience, a portal into another time.

Dark holes is a theme of our day because we next head to Oxburgh Hall, a stately home that has a priest’s hole which I remember from childhood was a thrilling portal into Tudor terror. On our way, we drop in on Foulden Common, one of a plethora of tranquil but rare wildlife-packed nature reserves including Weeting Heath and Lakenheath Fen. Thetford forest boasts several good country parks and there’s a multitude of cycle rides, swims (the Little Ouse is another gorgeous small river) and walks, including the long-distance Peddars Way on the old Roman road leading from Thetford to the north-west Norfolk coast.

Oxburgh is a red-brick Tudor palace surrounded by a fine moat which must be one of the most picturesque National Trust properties. The hall was built by Sir Edmund Bedingfeld around 1476 and the 10th baronet still lives in a wing of the house. The rest of his ancestral home is open to the public, and the rooms are filled with vast oil portraits, ornate furniture, ancient books and even leather wallpaper, which was amusingly purchased secondhand from Spain by thrifty Victorian aristocrats.

The priest’s hole was built up a tiny staircase, below a brick-topped iron hatch, so the Bedingfield family’s Catholic priest could be safely concealed during the persecution of the Catholics that saw the family fall from favour when they refused to renounce their faith. It is not known how much action the hole saw, but this tiny claustrophobic stone cell may have saved the life of a priest or three.

Unfortunately, after a visitor became stuck in the hole (it’s oddly much harder to get out than in) we’re no longer allowed inside, and have to make do with peering down the hatch and watching a video of a stressed (actor) priest fretting inside.

After a late lunch at the Bedingfeld Arms, with swifts screaming as they circle the 1783 pub, I take an evening excursion to another unique nature reserve: Thompson Common. The map reveals this to be another place of strange indentations in the land: a profusion of nearly 500 pingos, small ponds formed when subterranean mounds of ice thawed and the soil slumped down at the end of the last ice age. It’s a bewitchingly unusual place, home to rare dragonflies and the very rare pool frog, which became extinct in the 1990s but has been successfully reintroduced from Sweden. The males can be heard “singing” in late spring, via a pair of white inflatable sacs like airbags either side of their head.

There’s an eight-mile circular pingo walking trail for a full day out but I took a shorter potter through the reserve. The frogs are doing well thanks to restoration work by Norfolk Wildlife Trust which has seen the excavation and revival of a dozen “ghost” pingos, with many ponds filled in during a century of agricultural “improvement” and intensification.

I’d like to say we enjoyed a fine evening of the frog chorus but there’s nothing melodic about the groaning croak which sounds like a duck with laryngitis. They don’t call on my visit; instead I hear the bugling song of a crane from somewhere in the undergrowth. It’s another notable experience in this fascinating land, which is much the finer for its all-enveloping strangeness.

Accommodation was provided by Bodney Hall Farm,which has a cottage (sleeps 4) from £300 a night and lodge (sleeps 12). Grimes Graves (English Heritage) is open daily 10am-5pm (family up to five from £20.70). Oxburgh Hall (National Trust) open 10.30am–3pm; gardens 9.30am–5pm (family up to five from £32.50). Foulden Common and Thompson Common (Norfolk Wildlife Trust) are free to enter