Author name: Cheryl Lucas

Hiking and delicious food in Italy’s Monti Sibillini national park All Italians race to la spiaggia in summer, leaving the hinterland marvellously empty. Tuscany gets a lot of love, but travel one region over to Umbria and Monti Sibillini national park bewitches with views of the Apennines and eyrie-like, honey-coloured hill towns such as Castelluccio,

After a tough scramble to the summit of Rhinog Fach, we look down into the deep valley holding the chilly waters of Llyn Hywel, then west across several miles of heather, bilberry and bare rock to the Welsh coast. Turning my gaze north, there is the entire Llyn peninsula leading east to the peak of Yr

Golden hour in Italy’s Dolomites After a gruelling journey from the UK, arriving at Alpe di Siusi during golden hour felt like stepping into a dream. Farmers turned hay in some of Europe’s highest alpine meadows, framed by jagged Dolomite peaks glowing in soft evening light. We can recommend staying at the Hotel Schmung, a

In 1787, Goethe wrote: “To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.” I’d go one step further and claim it’s impossible to really understand what makes the island tick without visiting Catania. Located on the east coast of the island,

In Old English its name meant “the land of the summer people”, after the local practice of coming down to the Somerset Levels after the winter flooding receded. Today, Somerset is still somewhere where seasons are felt vividly, as Sophie Brendel and Panu Long discovered when they and their two children moved to Thornfalcon, their

Around 240m years ago, a 12-foot-long reptile called a chirotherium walked along a beach in what was then part of the supercontinent of Pangaea, and what is now the shoreline of Kildonan village, on the rugged, southern coast of the Isle of Arran. Natural dykes of black igneous rock – cooled magma – jut out

Escaping the constant whir of modern life by heading off into the wild can be incredibily restorative. While there are few true areas of wilderness left in Europe, there are plenty of places to really get away from it all. Whether it was a hiking trip in the forests of eastern Europe, kayaking around the