Travel

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 …

Athens has been ranked the cheapest location for a city break on the continent, ahead of traditional budget-friendly eastern European destinations. Analysis of a dozen typical tourist costs for UK visitors in 20 popular cities by Post Office Travel Money found prices in the Greek capital have fallen by 15% …

I’d been wanting to do a walk around Bradford months before the city was chosen as UK City of Culture 2025. I’m chuffed for West Yorkshire’s Cinderella city and hope a year in the sun allows it to show off its industrial history, architectural heritage, youthfulness and multicultural mix. The …

We wrapped up well, Iceland We visited the low-rise, one-village island of Hrísey during our round-Iceland tour. It sits in the Arctic-facing inlet of Eyjafjördur, 20 minutes by ferry from Árskógssandur, north of Akureyri – the fourth largest town in Iceland. We wrapped up well for the crossing, before following …

The Vicious Valley trail starts with a terrifying half-metre drop off a wooden boardwalk. Like all the advanced runs at BikePark Wales in the Brecon Beacons national park, it begins with a qualifier, that is a tricky opening feature where you can check whether you’re good enough for the trail …

On one hand, who wouldn’t love to shower on a train? On the other, if the shower cubicle is so small that you can’t get up again when you’ve dropped the soap maybe it is not such a wonderful idea. This year is seeing the glorious resurgence of the sleeper …

“I walked six miles this morning” messaged BordersCrone a couple of weeks before our proposed hike, “and am absolutely knackered”. “My foot doctor said I should keep off it for five weeks,” replied BucksCrone, “but it’ll be OK in a boot.” DevonCrone’s hip hurts (that’s me) but she decided not …

With the summer holidays coming to an end, many of us will be wondering how to organise our next trip away with the cost of living crisis looming. We would like to hear about your favourite cheap-and-cheerful holidays … whether it was camping in a field in the UK; volunteering …