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Lesbos is Greece’s third-largest island, sitting in the Aegean Sea just 16 miles off the Turkish coast. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful place, with long stretches of sandy beaches next to crystal-clear waters, thickly forested mountains with therapeutic hot springs, salt marshes that are home to flamingos and wild birds, and more than 11m olive trees, […]

From a distance the ocean looks calm – safe, even – but a sticker peeling from a window in St Agnes lifeguard station offers a cautionary warning to all visitors: Respect the Water, it says. The summer ahead promises to be busier than ever in Cornwall, with a boom in domestic tourism fuelled by global […]

‘As a venue for hiking and fell running, Stanage Edge is unbeatable’ – Kevin Rushby When we were kids it was always UK holidays, usually under canvas, and always recalled with affection. I have no problem giving up foreign travel for a while, although I do miss the sheer scale and biodiversity of distant wildernesses […]

Won’t somebody think of the poor restaurant critics? Won’t anyone consider the plight of these hard-working, committed professionals, robbed this past year of their vital place in society? Week after week pre-pandemic, we pulled up to a thickly clothed table, ordered potentially nice things to eat at somebody else’s expense, and then returned to our […]

Scott Morrison says Australia is in “no hurry” to reopen international borders, but vaccinated Australians may be able to travel for “essential” purposes in the second half of the year, with the possibility of quarantining at home on return. Just days after saying Australia would “have to get used to dealing with 1,000 cases a […]

Ludlow, Shropshire As one of the country’s celebrated foodie hubs, Ludlow will become a battle zone for outdoor table slots now that lockdown has relaxed. In a region famed for its wealth of local produce though, even low-key venues pack a flavour into every dish. Opt for takeaway salad boxes or cook-at-home three-course-meal kits from […]

It’s hard to remember what life was like before the pandemic hit. A year and a half ago, 2019 was drawing to a close with something like a promise. It had been the year of Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikes, and the momentum was with climate activism. And 2020 promised to […]

One consequence of the UK government positing a possible date for the reopening of foreign travel but then, quite responsibly, refusing to confirm it is an anxious frenzy. What to do about the summer? Would-be tourists, and the significant percentage of people with family abroad, are like athletes awaiting a starting gun, weighing up strategies, […]

With the uncertainties around international travel from the UK this summer, many of us are choosing to holiday closer to home. We would like to hear about your best and worst memories – distant or recent – of holidays in the UK. From brilliant days at the beach to camping catastrophes, tell us your stories. […]

Winning tip: Conversation Piece, South Shields Conversation Piece – 22 bronze statues on Littlehaven beach in South Shields – is by Juan Muñoz and peers out over the sand dunes towards Herd Groyne lighthouse, the point where the River Tyne spills into the North Sea. The statues are known locally as weebles. These lifesize figures […]

‘The Rat’s Sleek Machine” reads the sign on one of three parking spots just inside the gate. Though our battered Toyota wasn’t ever sleek, we know that’s our space, as we are to be the first guests in the Magic Rat, a brand new unit at The Meadow Glamping, near Broughton in rural Hampshire. Giddy […]

EasyJet has said it is ready to “ramp up” its operations during the summer holiday season as it prepares to offer more flights to passengers from late May, once Covid travel restrictions are eased. The budget airline only expects to fly 20% of its 2019 capacity between April and June, with most European countries planning […]

Last year was one of cancellations, postponements and digital reinventions, but this summer many arts festivals are hoping to go ahead. Most are planning an adaptable, hybrid format, with socially-distanced live shows alongside online content. Tickets are often sold with Covid-proof guarantees of refund or rollover, but check before you buy. Brighton festival and fringe […]

A regime that might, in more normal times, resemble a boot camp has been happily embraced by 189 Dutch tourists who traded lockdown in the Netherlands for eight days of voluntary confinement at a Greek beach resort. In an experiment devised by travel industry experts determined not to lose another season to Covid-19, the tourists […]

One night in January, I was at a low ebb in a period of particularly low ebbs, when a friend messaged to say she’d booked a caravan in Croyde for the last week of the Easter school holidays. She and her husband had crunched the data on vaccine distribution and the likely effects of lockdown […]

I appear to have been scammed by a fake travel agent. Needing to get my wife and three children back from an emergency visit to Pakistan, I used a firm called Sevenseaholidays.co.uk to book Qatar Airways flights – for me to travel out, and for all of us to return. Sevenseaholidays sent me two invoices […]

Steam Packet, Totnes The Dart is tidal in Totnes, and drinkers and diners on the Steam Packet’s roomy riverside terrace often spot a grey seal that scoops up salmon coming over the weir at high tide, or just pops its head up and takes a look around. The town sits at the bottom of a […]

Most business travellers in the UK will take fewer flights than they used to, according to a poll, thanks to increased use of video conferencing. Only a third expected to return to the same level of flying as before the coronavirus pandemic, once travel restrictions are lifted. The huge reduction in air travel caused by […]

From Monday, non-essential shops, gyms and art galleries will be reopening in England. People will also be able to stay at campsites, holiday lets and other forms of self-contained accommodation as restrictions are eased. Three people talk about their plans and what the change in restrictions means for them. ‘We’re all just looking forward to […]

At the beginning of lockdown I reread Alan Warner’s novel The Stars in the Bright Sky, about a group of young women on their way to Las Vegas or maybe Benidorm or Magaluf, destined instead to spend their holiday drinking and bitching at Gatwick airport. I was drawn back to this book when it became […]

Wasdale Head Inn, Lake District If you manage to scale Scafell Pike, you might just be able to make out the giant letters spelling out INN on the side of this building. In the Lake District’s isolated valley, the Wasdale Head has transformed itself over the centuries from a farmhouse to a no-nonsense hotel aimed […]

It is being hailed as the latest evidence of a new dawn for the European sleeper train. Citing changes in attitude wrought by the two crises of the climate emergency and the Covid pandemic, a new night service in 2022 was announced last week between Brussels and Prague, stopping at Amsterdam, Berlin and Dresden, with […]