More from Damascus and Beirut

First it just a racket, coming from the far end of the tunnel-style al Hamidiyya souq in old Damascus. If this had been England, and a railway station, you'd have put money on it being a trainload of football fans arriving for an away game. As we approached, it was clear they were chanting. But the chants were not in favour of 11 blokes employed to kick a ball around a field. It was a Shiite ritual in which groups of men pound their bared upper torsos with some force; they do not use sticks or whips, but the weals on their backs show it is for real nonetheless. This little group, above, is mentioned in my column at The National. The small girl was wandering in deep distress around the square by the Umayyad mosque when we spotted her. The adults took her under their wing and repeatedly called out - perhaps her name, perhaps just something like "lost child" - until she was reunited with her family. And here is another view of the Beit Jabri restaurant, which I heartily commend to anyone visiting Syria... It was a short trip, so we got around as much as possible...from Mount Lebanon to Jounieh, as much of Beirut as possible (but not nearly enough)... The visit to Chateau Musar, home of one of my favourite liquid accompaniments to food, was a special treat... This is the wine, heroically produced without interruption during the war-ravaged years by descendants of its 1930 creator, Gaston Hochar, that Auberon Waugh's daughter once described as having the taste of a Red Cross lorry trundling through it. I was introduced to it in, of all places, Cardiff in the early 1980s and have been a confirmed admirer ever since. We would have needed to penetrate the Bekaa Valley rather more deeply than was possible to see the vineyard itself. But we did have a tour of the chateau north of Jounieh where the wine matures and is bottled. In terms of photographic souvenirs, I keep returning to Damascus - the old city simply yielded so many opportunities...