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One day last September, Ann Halloran made her way to her nearest bus stop in Hove, East Sussex, with a 15kg rucksack. She had done plenty of travelling but, at 65, was setting off alone on her first backpacking adventure. Somewhere between her first stop in Turkey and her final destination – a yoga retreat […]

It was the penultimate day of my Tour du Mont Blanc and, as I scrambled up the side of the Aiguilles de l’Argentière, I was feeling smug. I’d ticked off more than 90 of the 105 miles, almost all in dazzling spring sunshine. Such luck with the weather was encouraging complacency. But up high, any […]

Another year, another survey (by M&S bank this time) of the stuff British people insist on taking on holiday. None can beat my mother’s friend who travelled to China for a fortnight with an entire suitcase filled with Ginger Nuts, but honestly, what weirdos take a water filter jug (4%), anti-bacterial spray (30%) and air […]

Croatia’s coast is made up of 1,200 islands – some are glamorous and hotelled, some are grand rocks enveloped by gulls. Some are for naturists, some are for fishermen, some have lagoons so blue they appear Photoshopped. The most sensible and affordable way to travel between these islands is by ferry and, next year, the […]

Lir and Native Seafood & Scran, The Marina, Coleraine, Northern Ireland BT52 1EY. Meal for two, starters £7.50-£8.50, mains £16-£29, desserts £7.50, wines from £24 The restaurant stands by the river. The river runs down to the sea, where the fish swim deep. The fish are brought to the restaurant that stands by the river […]

When the David Attenborough nature series Wild Isles was documenting the UK and Ireland’s coastal beauty, Peter Munk noticed it not because of the rave reviews, but because traffic to his website surged. The business he runs makes caravans, and a pleasant Sunday-evening advertisement for the islands of Britain and Ireland provided a welcome boost. […]

Malmö, Sweden Across the Øresund strait from Copenhagen, Sweden’s most southerly and culturally diverse city has developed into the region’s art and music hub with an opera house, concert hall, its own symphony orchestra, a museum complex and a contemporary art scene. It’s also close to sandy beaches, has a dockland which is still gritty, […]

The Porta Palazzo, Europe’s biggest open market, sits on the Piazza della Repubblica, Turin’s biggest square. The market is open six days a week and its hundreds of stalls attract thousands of visitors. The enormous octagonal piazza is criss-crossed by tram lines and usually clogged by delivery vans, empty pallets, full boxes of fruit and […]

The Midland Grand might be one of the most useful recent restaurant openings in the entire UK. Of course, no restaurant wants to be called useful; they’d much prefer flowery prose such as “gastronomically enlightening” or “a shattering orgasm for the tastebuds” or some other stuff they’d be able to regurgitate on the promotional material. […]

Winning tip: Caravaggio in his element, Malta Commissioned in the early 1600s by the Order of St John in Malta, Caravaggio’s masterpiece, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, has been hung in St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta, ever since. It is rare to view a painting in the space intended by the artist, […]

The start of the May half-term holiday for many schools will see “hectic” roads and the most flights departing the UK since before the pandemic, according to industry estimates. About 19m leisure journeys by car are expected on Britain’s roads over the next four days, and more than 3,000 planes are scheduled to take off […]

It is said the Mourne mountains of Northern Ireland were “born of fire and shaped by ice”, moulded from 400 million years of geological history into a landscape of dark peaks, drowned glacial lakes and lush green farmland, patchworked by stone walls. Now, that jaw-dropping beauty, as well as sustainable tourism projects and 25 years […]

My partner and I travelled to the south of France in December to spend Christmas with my father-in-law. We were taking our newborn twins to meet him for the first time. When we arrived at his flat in Perpignan, he didn’t answer the door. We had to break a window to gain entry, whereupon we […]

Holiday fraudsters conned UK consumers out of more than £15m last year – twice as much as the year before – according to the UK’s scam reporting centre. Action Fraud said there had been a surge in the number of people being conned into paying for fake flights and accommodation bookings as more people sought […]

Two weeks ago I caught a train from Stafford to London Euston that was due to arrive at lunchtime – in time to catch the Eurostar to Brussels two hours later. However there was a fatality on the line at Rugby, and all trains were cancelled going into London on the west coast mainline. I […]

Turner Contemporary, Margate For a top-notch art fix without leaving the country hop on a train to increasingly creative Margate. There’s a colourful exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Brazilian Beatriz Milhazes, one of the leading abstract artists working today, and a major installation in the Sunley Gallery Window, from 27 May until […]

Jai Henrietta still remembers the first time she went on an Olivia Travel vacation: “I just stood there with my mouth open. Seeing 2,000 women in one space, all cuddling, holding hands, and kissing – it was a utopia for me.” Henrietta has now traveled six times with Olivia, the world’s first travel company for […]

At 6.30am, I walk to the empty beach at Belvoir Bay. The sand is soft, the sky is pink, Normandy lines the horizon. The only sounds are the murmur of the waves and the piping of oystercatchers. I plunge into the sea. Immediately, the cove is filled with terrible swearwords: I force myself to stay […]