Travel

If ever a pub was destined to be haunted by a friendly ghost, it’s the Red Lion. Regulars swear that the spirit of former landlady Doris Jemison lingers in this inn that has been a landmark in Snargate, a hamlet on Kent’s Romney Marsh, since the 1540s. Doris, who died …

Eco camping in Suffolk In July we took our trusty supermarket-bargain tent to Ling’s Meadow, a small eco-campsite near the Norfolk-Suffolk border, for a short but fabulous break. Each spacious pitch has its own picnic bench and fire pit. Eco-conscious facilities include composting toilets and solar-powered lighting and shower. Waking …

Strapped into a harness, hands clamped to a metal bar, I flew – at terrifying speed along 720 metres of zipwire suspended over the Rio Guadiana – from Spain into Portugal. I’d taken a boat from Alcoutim (on the Algarve side of the river) to Sanlúcar de Guadiana (in Andalucía). …

It’s the most exclusive lost property office in the world. Deep underground, in a thrumming, humidified laboratory, a world-historical statue is being reunited with its ancient marble foot. Of all the rooms at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, this is the most pulse-quickening, which is saying something considering that the …

“Sometimes I prefer one city, sometimes another,” wrote the late great travel writer Jan Morris in the Guardian in 2009. But, she added: “There are places in the world where my responses have not been fickle, and the chief of these is Trieste,” which she described as “a place to …

Avignon is a natural way station for travellers from Britain and northern Europe bound for the Iberian peninsula. It’s a place for choices. Fast or slow? Travellers in a rush to reach Spain head for the Gare TGV, which opened in 2001. It is a good way south of the …

The noise of the town had faded away and there was nothing on the horizon. No windmills, boats, islands or dikes. Ahead was the void of a glassy-calm lake that stretched for 270 sq miles around us. The landscape was static, empty, elemental. “We’re trying to wipe the slate clean …

It’s 3pm at Rizes, a farm in the heart of Mykonos, and there is not a champagne bottle in sight, a sunbed to lounge on, or a scintilla of music that might drown the sound of the winds breezing through the nearby bamboo. That’s because Nikos Zouganelis, “born and bred” …

Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire With medieval origins and largely built in Tudor times, Owlpen Manor is deeply revered in Arts and Crafts circles. In the 1920s, architect Norman Jewson bought and restored it alongside key Arts and Crafts figure Ernest Gimson, furniture maker and architect, using traditional methods and craftspeople trained …

BEST FOR ART AND CULTURE Plovdiv, Bulgaria Bulgaria’s second city has a good claim to being Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited centre. Its glory days were under the Romans – who left a marbled hillside amphitheatre and 200,000 square metres of elaborate mosaics inside the Bishop’s Basilica (reopened last year after …