In the small hours of Monday 22 August, the night’s watch shall return: HBO’s House of the Dragon, the much-awaited follow-up to Game of Thrones, the most successful television series of all time, will stream in the UK from 2am on Sky. The new series will be followed more keenly …
Read More »‘In a single walk you can see an acropolis, falcons and eagles’: hiking Greece’s ancient island paths
Beauty is all around us on the bright April morning my daughter and I climb a path marked as a donkey trail on our map of the Cycladic island of Sifnos. Butterflies flit over terraced meadows brimming with wild lupins, red poppies, and soft, green grasses. A whitewashed chapel is …
Read More »Nationwide sculpture trails brighten up the UK this summer
Public art events specialist Wild in Art is hosting 11 interactive art trails across the UK until mid-September, delivering a free cultural activity for families while also injecting £600,000 into creative communities and supporting local charities. Locations for the art trails stretch from Southampton to Belfast, and they will feature …
Read More »Fields of light: an arty Somerset glampsite with glowing gardens and a space pod
Thousands of tiny spheres of light are swaying in a midsummer night’s breeze. They resemble flowers: bright little bulbs on slender stems. Some change colour in waves, from soft pink to rich purple to deep blue. Others are fixed, grouped together in a fiery red sea or a shimmering emerald …
Read More »A two-day Highlands walk to Britain’s most remote pub: the Old Forge, Knoydart
You have to really want a pint to walk to the Old Forge. “It’s a two-day hike from the last tarmac to Britain’s most remote pub,” Knoydart ranger Finlay Greig warns me on the phone. I am desperate. And not just through thirst. Across those hulking mountains, plunging glens and …
Read More »What a scoop! Readers’ favourite ice-cream shops
Winning tip: Ewe turn, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire Shepherds Ice Cream Shop in Abergavenny is a Wes Anderson-styled drop-in, complete with classic Neapolitan ice-cream colours and a little hatch to fetch your favourite flavours from. The twist? It’s all made locally from sheep’s milk, the business is run by two generations of …
Read More »A hike in Scotland’s borders – ‘a world of emerald hills, meandering rivers and tiny villages’
Within minutes of leaving Edinburgh’s Waverley station, we’ve shaken off the urban sprawl and entered a world of emerald hills, meandering rivers, and tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-them villages. There are buzzards and deer, too. Under brilliant blue skies we surge into a land bathed in history and intrigue. Borders railway I’m back …
Read More »On the Coast to Coast from Cumbria to North Yorkshire: Wainwright route gains national trail status
The news that the much-loved Coast to Coast path is finally to become an official national trail – which brings extra funding of £5.6m from Natural England – should not be surprising. For some time it has been one of England’s most popular and iconic walks. The only surprising thing …
Read More »The second world war airbase turned private nature reserve – with its own low-impact holiday cabins
When war ends, the areas affected usually fester as bombed-out piles of rubble or are demolished then remade as a new chapter of history begins. Neither was the case when the US air force 351st Bomb Group departed Polebrook Airfield at the end of the second world war, however. In …
Read More »Tell us about a music venue in the UK or elsewhere in Europe – you could win a holiday voucher
Since the loosening of Covid guidelines, one of the greatest pleasures we’ve been able to return to is live music. But not all venues are created equal. Britain and Europe are chock-full of great independent venues, from the Deaf Institute in Manchester to Il Folk Club in Turin, and we …
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