The Hatta Fort Hotel Makeover. And Chickens.

Sheikh Rashid opens the Hatta Fort, 1981

We walked into the reception of the Hatta Fort and peered around the transformed area. 'Good morning,' smiled the receptionist.

'Good morning,' we replied. 'We're here for a chicken.'

His smile faltered. 'Check-in?'

'Oh, no. Chicken.'

You could see him realising that perhaps this was going to be a long, long day...

The small and delightful Hatta Fort Hotel nestles way up in the Hajar Mountains, the rocky range that runs down the spine of the UAE and gives rain to the country's Eastern coastal towns. The hotel's been there since Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, first declared it open back in 1981 - a weekend treat for romantic couples and a destination for various groups from bikers and wadi bashers to companies organising team building events and conferences.

1981 again: the Gazebo restaurant notably absent!

Back in the day, it was home to all sorts of expatty events, murder weekends and meetings of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs (Ah, darling, the quenelles of crustacean were simply divine). We've been going there since the  late '80s to enjoy quick getaways in the tranquility of the mountains, walking in the grounds or driving around and exploring the Hatta tracks. These peregrinatory pleasures are now, thanks to the hardening of the Omani border, no longer possible - and the road to the hotel is no longer the Dubai-Awir-Lahbab-Hatta highway, again because of that border. You have to take the Mileiha road, which snakes around the Omani border. But the Hatta Fort nevertheless still makes for a glorious weekend away from it all.

The Hatta Fort was for many, many years managed by the same chap, one Sergio Magnaldi. At one stage he tried to retire but came back again. He ran a small but tight ship, the happiness of the staff was always notable and over the years it became clear that the people who worked at the Hatta Fort tended to stick around.

The hotel's really something of an old friend. The chalet-style rooms with their round '70s spotlights and tall wooden roofs, the Jeema restaurant with its classical French menu enlivened by some truly glorious curries and, of course, the amazing Roumoul Bar - my favourite bar in the world. I kid you not. The interior of the Roumoul Bar was pure James Bond: a huge, curving leather-sided walnut counter dominated the brown velour-walled room with its rich walnut panelled ceiling home to little glittering brass spotlights. You were instantly transported back in time when you pulled up a chair at the counter. Cocktail shakers would rattle. Home made crisps and - for a while - dishes of canapes would appear. And all was well with the world.

The Hatta Fort's rooms circa 1981. Spot the wall decoration.

You can perhaps imagine how we felt when word reached us that the Hatta Fort was being renovated. Clearly the potential to ruin the whole thing was enormous. Sergio's wife had already had a go at updating the rooms years ago and had made an awful job of it, installing insane tin dogs, huge red bed-heads and utterly inappropriate lighting fixtures, as well as introducing faux-antique 'Marina Trading' style chests and strange chaise longues into the rooms. And, for some reason, odd swathes of leopard skin print material draped around. The hotel managed to rise above the whole thing. Would it survive a complete makeover?

The room post Mrs Sergio - note the chicken has survived the changes.

And if they were going to completely remodel the rooms, what about the brass and enamel chickens that used to hang on the walls? They had been there since the year dot and had even survived Mrs Sergio's reforms. They were pure '70s, fantastic dangly things made up of sweeping leaves of brass and bronze with shiny enamel-centred flowers and things. Sarah nagged me for weeks to get in touch with the hotel and see if we could rescue a chicken. Finally, I sent them the email. Did they by any chance save any of the chickens when they'd redone the rooms? Could we buy one?

Just before the weekend, the reply came. Yes, they had managed to track down a chicken. Yes, we could have it. They'd be pleased to see us whenever we came next. Sarah couldn't wait. Nothing would do but that we hoiked off up there tout de suite. And so Saturday saw us noodling through the mountain roads on our chicken rescuing mission.

The Hatta Fort Hotel today

We had made up our minds to be brave. Change is inevitable and you can't get mired in the past. What to us was a comfortingly familiar, retro delight probably looked to the rest of the world as dated and dowdy. We told each other these things as we pulled up to the hotel. It was something we'd just have to take on the chin.

A new pergola outside the reception was the first sign of change. There were 'on brand' new burgundy umbrellas around the pool. And the reception area itself was transformed and made funky: slate tiled floors, silver and gold furnishings, a lot more airy and spacious. This time round, someone had brought in a real interior designer. It is different, very different. But it is also very nicely done.

We met the older members of staff, one by one. What did we think of it all? The Jeema restaurant and Roumoul were closed by day because of Ramadan, but the chaps took us up for a quick peek around. The restaurant has been rethought totally - airier, lighter and more open. The buffet had been brought into the main dining room. And then, gulp, on to the Roumoul Bar.

Oh, my dears, but it's gone. The new bar is a faint, flickering shadow of former glories. It's nice, mind - again whites and silvers and blacks, slate and grey. All very modern and even a tad chic. But it's not the Roumoul Bar As Was. And you know what? We lived through it. We had a shrug, agreed with the chaps that yes, it was a little sad and its loss a shame but we all have to move on.

And that was that.

We went downstairs and explored one of the rooms - they've been done up very nicely, in fact. In place of the chicken on the wall is a framed piece of calligraphy and the dark wood beamed roofs have been painted white - pale ash bedheads and furnishings add to the airiness. They've kept the Hatta stone walls and the bathrooms have just been teased a little to lift them to the new style. Had other old regulars been horrified? Yes, a couple, the duty manager smiled. But while a few had found it hard to settle, the vast majority had approved. We knew what he meant - it was a lot of change to a place that had become, for many, something of an institution.

The new chalets - beautifully bright, but *gasp* chickenless!

But as we drove home and chatted, our Hatta Chicken safely in the back of the car, we realised that what hadn't changed about the Hatta Fort was the most important thing of all. The staff were still there and were still the same happy, friendly, helpful and smiley bunch. They're as clearly happy to be there as you are. You rather feel like royalty, wandering the grounds and being recognised with grins and murmurs of 'Welcome back' from everyone you encounter.

Apart from the outstanding food (including one of the better breakfast buffets to be had in the Emirates) and the whole tranquility of the mountains thing, it's the staff who always made the Hatta Fort Hotel that little bit more special. And they're still there, as they always are.

And last, and by no means least, we've got the chicken!

The Hatta Track Is Closed

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We tootled off into the Hajjar mountains, a merry little party of merry-makers and nieces on our way to take a whizz up the Track Formerly Known As The Hatta Track. As eny fule no, that track has now been transformed into a metalled road, the bumps evened out and the surface a ribbon of blacktop threading through the arid and majestic moutains.

The Hatta track takes you to the famous Hatta pools, a series of pools in the wadi bed, long strewn in graffiti but still beautiful. It takes you through the mountain villages of Rayy and Shuwayah, past the lovely Oleander Waterfall (now only accessible if you really know what you're doing, the original gatch track that led right up to it having long been washed away in a winter spate) down onto the plains that will take you to Al Ain and Buraimi.

Only now it won't.

We got to the UAE border point on the track, formerly only a sign on the open road and then a police post where your ID would be requested and glanced at before proceeding, only to be told that this time round, it would be as far as we were going. There had been trouble with the inhabitants of the village beyond the border point and people had been 'angry', the Omani police had been involved and there was a vague mumble about too many Europeans.

So that was it. Turned back. No Hatta track. Not even the NoFun OneCal blacktop one.

First Wadi Bih and now this. Pants.

The Passing Of The Tracks, The Pressing Of The Mountains

I wrote in the summer about the 'passing' of the Hatta/Al Ain track. It's inevitable, both the passing of the wadi tracks that have enlivened so many of our weekends and my old gittiness resulting in much 'I remember when that was all sand' whinery.

And yet, painfully aware that progress doesn't need the railing of old sticks in the mud to mark its march, there's a certain poignancy to it all. The landscape of the mountains is not only being altered, it's being literally smashed apart.

Time was when there was only one road through to the East coast of the UAE from the west: the Sharjah/Dhaid/Masafi road. It, too, started life as a track - the old route up from Fujeirah, past Bithnah and into the Wadi Ham before coming down from Masafi to the plains and through the desert to Dhaid. Running alongside it were aflaj (the plural of 'falaj'), underground aquifers dug out by ancient hands to create long waterways dotted with wells that snaked down from the mountains to desert oasis towns.

You could go north from Masafi to Dibba by following the deep bed of the wadi, but a road was blasted through the rock so that Masafi became the knot at the head of a lasso that stretched out from the giant hand of Sharjah to loop through Dibba, down the East coast along past Bidaya (the oldest mosque in the UAE sits here like a little meringue) and Khor Fakkan to Fujeirah before looping back to Masafi.

The road to Hatta was first constructed by Sheikh Rashid in a search for cheap concrete and stone to fuel the breakneck development of Port Rashid. As in so many other things he did, he was to set a precedent of tremendous proportions. Ever since, the Hajar mountains have been providing the concrete, gravel, stone, aggregate, hardcore and rock for the coastal towns' expansion.

After the Hatta road was extended down to the Omani coast, the epic journey through the precipitous passes into Wadi Bih was the Third Way. It never became blacktop - has, in fact, been closed by the sealing of the inland borders with Oman and, in any case, superceded by the Truck Road from Dibba down to join the Mohammed bin Zayed Road (the E311) as it touches Ras Al Khaimah's southern border.

The Mileiha Road was the first of the new road networks to smash their way though the mountains, at first blasting its way through the rocky promontory that gives us Fossil Rock south of Dhaid, then darting through the plain to the mountains where it drills through to twin exits in the mountainside above Kalba like a vampire's bite.

The Munay/Huwaylat track used to wind its way North of Hatta, taking you eventually to Fossil Rock (passing through the lovely wadi/oasis of 'The Sultan's Gardens'). We were wadi bashing one day when we suddenly found ourselves in a building site and then snooping our way up a smooth tarmac surface that halted in the middle of a mountainside, blasting underway ahead of us. Today that road is dwarfed by the new road from Hatta to the Sharjah/Mileiha/Kalba road - a route so new that it was still un-numbered when we drove it at the weekend. The mountains around it are gashed with tumbles of freshly hewn grey rock contrasted against the sunburnt browns and purples of the undisturbed peaks. Mountains have been flattened, hacked into by slab-sided quarries. Lorries rumble out of the crushers to weighbridges down the road towards the plains.

There's a new road being built from Daftah (a couple of kilometres East of Masafi down the Wadi Ham) to Khor Fakkan, as well. It's going to take five tunnels to make the final crossing, the longest of which will be 2.6km (it will be the longest tunnel, when it's finished, in the UAE). Only the first is complete, the road punches its way through the mountain and then peters out, joining a recently built track tumbling down into the East Coast mountain village of Shis. Where before you had to climb up the wadi to reach the legendary pools of Shis (the village is lit by lamp posts in the wadi, each of which has a switch on it), now you can drive down alongside them. Shis is partly Omani - straddling a strange doughnut-shaped enclave of Oman called Madha, nestled in the UAE and itself containing a little bit of Sharjah, the village of Nahwa. It's a rare example of an enclave and counter-enclave.

As the roads open up new fissures through the ranges, so the crushers are grinding them down, one peak at a time to feed coastal construction. It's a strange movement of matter: as the mountains are diminished, so the cities of the Gulf rise.

And as the roads open access to mountain communities, they are drained of their young people moving to the towns down those new roads that let them back at the weekends to visit their ageing relatives...

Hatta - The Track That Is No More. And Summer Rain.

We spent the weekend at the sublime Hatta Fort Hotel because we've been married 22 years and both of us needed to get away to overcome the feeling of utter shock.

The Ramoul Bar at the hotel is one of my favourite places on earth. Seriously. It has many fond memories dating back two decades and more - and it's one of the most wilfully retro experiences to be had in the UAE. Built in 1981, the bar is sheer '70s wonderfulness, all dark brown velour walls, a walnut ceiling dotted with the original spotlights, square glass lights and brown silkscreen prints on the wall. It's glorious. The original furnishings and leather bar edging were cream, they're red now and the Millbank speakers on the wall have been replaced by Bose units, but much of the original bar is as it was the day the hotel opened up in those faraway hills. It suits a Martini as well as anywhere suits a Martini. Lemon twist, no olive, thanks.

The Hatta Fort still does silver service. It's wonderful - food is revealed from beneath silver covers, caesar salads and crepes are made at your table. It doesn't get much better. The hotel runs like clockwork, it knows who it is. Its staff actually want to help. It has beautiful grounds, makes a brilliant breakfast and is more chilled out than a quantum hyper-chiller.

We took a turn up the Hatta track - as was. It was raining when we got up for breakfast, a fine, soft drizzle and a yellow cast to the sky, the mountains slowly enveloped in the encroaching mist. Breakfast looking out over Hatta watching the mountains fold into the meringue, then we set off.

There are few things finer than cool summer rain in the mountains.

Oh, my dears. Who remembers the Great Hatta Track? We first travelled it together, Sarah and I, the week we met during GITEX 1988 - 25 years ago. We hired a Corolla with a colleague of mine and Sarah's housemate and we took it out to find the Hatta Pools. We overshot. Four wheel drives passed us, staring. The girls got out and pushed at one point as the Corolla's little engine heaved to negotiate the rutted, vertiginous passes. We stopped at the village of Rayy (now spelled Rai for some reason) and asked directions at the mosque. It was a Friday. A wasp got into the car, cue the exit of two girls wearing shorts. Legs up to their bums. It's the only time I've ever felt intimidated in the Middle East, in the middle of nowhere, more callow than Callum the Callow Marshmallow and the locals furious at two prancing half-naked beauties decorating their Friday devotions. We beat a hasty retreat and ended up in the wadi at Shuwayah, playing with frogs in the glittering wadi waters that wove through the hot rocks.

In a Corolla. We did it in a Corolla. The hire company was furious at the state of what was eventually returned to it. But what to do?

It's just a memory, now, that track. It's blacktop nearly all the way, the only exception one short section where the road has to cross a particularly fearsome stretch of wadi that spates with road-destroying force. They've blown up the mountains to make the passes (three of them) more passable, so they don't climb as steep or high. The biggest was a first-gear climb, especially when the track got rutted up and you were traversing as well as climbing. The swoops down into wadi beds with their stomach-churning bottoming outs have all gone. It's just, well, a road through the mountains.

But they are still glorious, arid, scalloped mountains that surge from the land with all of the enormous splendour of their volcanic uplifting from what was then the ocean bed. They fold and thrust, patinated by purple outcrops, ochre faces and grey-white striations. Shuwaya is a memory of a wadi pool now, drained by snaking black plastic piping - and the Oleander Waterfall is clearly no longer visited - the old track as it originally was, washed away and accessible only to the brave who knew it was home to a little waterfall and a welcoming campsite on the high ground above the temperamental wadi bed.

The rain petered out, the heat intensifying as we drove down onto the plain, still blacktop all the way where it had once been gatch track, a road through the Madam plain and then up into the mountains past the Omani check-point and then back up to Madam through Vilayat Madha.

I felt intensely sad at the passing of those tracks. But that, I am sure the architect of the new roads would tell us, is progress.