Travel

Up on Cornwall’s Penwith Moors time takes a strange quality. Here the landscape is a morass of knotted bracken and bristly gorse, a soft marigold tinge signalling warmer summer days. A grey smudge of cloud sags on the horizon and the wind whirs like white noise, a low and disorientating murmur. The topography is a palimpsest, with working farms etched over ruinous mines and prehistoric settlements. And at its heart is a scattering of ancient stones, the enigmatic quoits, barrows and stone circles that have captivated and confounded societies for millennia.It’s an enchanting place just to wander, but to help me dive deeper into the mysteries of the moors, I am meeting artists and stone enthusiasts Lally MacBeth and Matthew Shaw. Almost immediately I feel underdressed in hiking boots primed...

Ten years ago, while exploring the Renaissance city of Mantua in Lombardy, I bumped into a bunch of cyclists embarking on a “bike and barge” trip all the way to Venice. It sounded like the perfect way to hit the quiet backroads of the little-known Polesine region, which surrounds the Po River and stretches to the Adriatic. Finally, here I am, joining the trip (though in the opposite direction), boarding the Ave Maria, which is moored behind Palladio’s iconic Redentore church on the island of Giudecca. The once rust-encrusted 42-metre transport boat was saved from the scrapheap by local tour operator Girolibero and transformed into a very comfortable 17-cabin floating hotel.My 32 fellow passengers are a cosmopolitan crowd: Britons, Berliners, Americans, Canadians and New Zealanders, rangin...

According to a Eurostat study in 2021 on price levels for consumer goods and services, Denmark was the joint most expensive country in Europe. Sweden was fourth and and Finland fifth. Norway and Iceland? Don’t expect much change from £20 for couple of pints. It’s no wonder travellers baulk at the prospect of a holiday in the Nordic countries. But it doesn’t have to be that way. According to the Scandinavia travel guide, Routes North, “Just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you can’t stay right on the edge on a Norwegian fjord, in a beautiful historic building in the centre of Copenhagen or in a ski resort in Finnish Lapland”.We’d like to hear your budget tips on Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.If you have a relevant photo, do send it in – but it’s your words that will b...