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Website Of The Week: www.pocketvillage.com

By FRED MAWER
Updated: 11:49 EST, 11 May 2011

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Fancy doing something adventurous or interesting on your next holiday? Perhaps diving with sharks in South Africa? White-water rafting in Nepal? A cookery course in Morocco? Or a ghost tour of Venice?

Fancy a shark dive? Pocketvillage.com can offer a few options

These, and thousands of other intriguing options, are all out there on the internet waiting to be booked. The question is: where on earth should you look to find them?

You might want to start with new search engine www.pocketvillage.com.

The website is effectively a one-stop shop for some 11,000 unusual tours, activities and places to stay offered by other adventure travel providers.

Strengths

The intuitive ways you can search.

Click on 'inspire me', and you can state what you're after by putting together a pictorial postcard of the kind of destination and activity you want - all rather fun.

Click on 'what', and you're given lists that include everything from mountain biking to surfing and safari lodges. You can narrow down what you're looking for by destination, duration and price.

Click on 'where', and you get a list of countries. You can limit your options by place within that country, and, again, by duration and price.

The choice of activities and tours is often excellent. For example, for Turkey I was presented with 316 suggestions, including an underground tour of Cappadocia, gulet cruises, a Lycian Way walking tour and sea kayaking.

Click on something you like the look of and you're given a digestible summary of the trip, along with a link to the provider's website.

Weaknesses

I found that the results using the 'inspire me' tool did not always hit the mark. When I expressed interest in jungle and wildlife trips in summer involving hiking and trekking, the results given included walking in Jersey and Kent...

The geographical search is not sophisticated enough. For example, under United Kingdom, you can't narrow down your search to Wales, let alone Pembrokeshire. And for some reason, France was missing altogether when I looked.

Prices are shown in euros, not pounds.