Author name: Cheryl Lucas

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

It’s easy to be seduced by the romance of train travel. Think of sleeper trains, boat trains, vintage steam railways, elegant dining cars. But it’s rare that an urban transport system can capture the imagination quite as much as the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany caught mine, and that of anyone else who’s clapped eyes on

When, two years ago now, our dog sitters cancelled on us just 24 hours before we were due to go on our summer holiday, we felt more than a little put out. Aware that we couldn’t leave Missy, our border terrier, home alone with a tin opener, we sent out frantic texts and made urgent

Off the lead at Gunwalloe, Cornwall Recently, Cornwall Council lifted the season-long dog ban on many of the county’s beaches, restricting it to just July and August rather than the six months or so it had been previously. The council publishes a list of beaches, with all restrictions listed, that it’s important to check before

Paul Cezanne is everywhere in Aix-en-Provence: there are streets named after him as well as a school, a cinema and even a sandwich (a version of traditional pan bagnat but with goat’s cheese instead of tuna). And from late June, the whole city will go Cezanne mad, as the painter’s atelier, north of the centre,

My earliest memory of Devon is being lost, and my mum crying. I was at junior school. I had a friend whose mother was described as “vague” – this was the 1970s, so that could have been code for almost anything. The vague mother had given my normally quite organised mother directions to a remote