Every genre of music has made its mark on Manchester, including dialect ballads, classical, TV theme tunes and all the strands of post-punk. Welcome to the north-west sound Myth distorts any city’s musical history, and in Manchester myth looms as large as the new Co-op Live, a £365m, 23,500-capacity mega-venue that opens today and will soon be staging big-name acts, including Take That. So, for every occasion a music fan mentions the hit-making boy band or, for that matter, 10cc or the Hollies, a thousand more bark back: Joy Division, the Fall, Happy Mondays. Not that 10cc were a small Manc ba ..read more

Tell us about your favourite places to visit in Germany – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break With the Euro 2024 football tournament just a month and half away, the spotlight is going to be on host nation Germany in the early part of this summer. Whether you’ve enjoyed visiting the big cities with their bierkellers and clubs, the country’s Baltic coast and islands, half-timbered ancient villages, or its famous forests and mountains, we’d love to hear about your favourite experiences. If you have a relevant photo, do send it in – but it’s your words that will be judged for the comp ..read more

Busy places and unexpected events used to send me into meltdown on holiday. An autism diagnosis helped me to adapt my plans and rediscover the joy of travelling Wandering hand-in-hand through the medieval streets of Bologna, my boyfriend and I were in awe of the sweeping porticoes and distinctive rust-red brickwork of the city. It was our first holiday together. We’d wanted to find somewhere beyond the obvious that would marry our respective interests in architecture and history. Bologna was the perfect fit. We admired the Church of Santa Maria della Vita, with its imposing baroque interior, l ..read more

A thriving artisan quarter and inventive restaurants have injected new life into this genteel seaside town famed for its fossils and literary haunts Lyme Regis’s charms have always been resolutely genteel and old-fashioned, from its sedate regency seafront to its fondness for fossil shops and all things antique and literary. It is a seaside town that has never felt the need to play to the hipster crowd, thanks partly to such distinguished and familiar history: home to 19th-century palaeontologist Mary Anning; John Fowles lived here, immortalising the Cobb breakwater in The French Lieutenant’s ..read more

Offering exquisite scenery, rare wildlife and spectacular trails, these under-the-radar national parks are worth tracking down There is a wild and wonderful water world in the north-eastern corner of Spain. The Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici national park, in the central Pyrenees north of Lleida, is characterised by more than 200 lakes fed by melting snow and ice, plus rivers and streams, gorges, waterfalls and marshes. (Aigüestortes means “winding waters” in Catalan, and Sant Maurici is the biggest lake ..read more

Its peaks are a big draw for adrenaline junkies, but this natural park’s newer attractions offer more inclusive family activities The pool was empty – perhaps because at about 22C, the water was too cold for Italians. It was also about to close. Whatever the reason, we had the glorious Biolago di Pinzolo, a spring-fed, plant-filtered swimming lake, to ourselves. As my son and I swam, we could just make out the tiny red-roofed hermitage of San Martino on the forested slope above, where, according to legend, a hermit survived on bread provided by a tame bear. We’d come to the mountains of northe ..read more

From camping beside glacial lakes in Montenegro to birdwatching in Poland, the continent has no shortage of inspiring wilderness adventures One of the most incredible bird scenes in Europe took place as I hiked through the Bielawa nature reserve in northern Poland, about 40 miles north of Gdansk. I had left the village of Sławoszyno via a dirt track and was heading towards Kłanino, the open countryside and fields disappearing from my sight as the hedgerows grew taller either side of me. As I stepped forward, a gap appeared in the hedge and in front of my eyes a flock of nearly 100 cranes, whic ..read more

With nights spent in ancient churches and wayfarers’ meals at farms and pubs, this spiritual four-day walk is all about the journey – and rural England at its finest I’m lying on my back. Directly above me is “a vault of heaven” with great wooden beams. I’ve never woken before under such a high ceiling – but then I’ve never gone to sleep in a church before. We have arranged pew cushions on the stone slabs for increased comfort and, while this may sound austere, my fellow pilgrims and I agree we have slept remarkably well – helped by pies and cider from the Bridge Innnearby. Just as in Chaucer ..read more

A fishing village stay on one of the country’s less-visited large islands reveals a quiet Adriatic gem boasting green lakes, holm oak forests, and unspoilt beaches The first thing that struck me about Luka was the silence. My wife, Caroline, and I had driven our rental car from Split north along the Croatian coast to Zadar and taken an hour-and-a-half ferry ride to the island of Dugi Otok. Then we had driven the island’s length southwards, through pine forest and scrub, to arrive at this tiny fishing village, where we would spend the next week. Both of us were slightly wired from driving on fo ..read more

A five-day mindful adventure on the Knoydart peninsula – one of the last great wildernesses in the UK – offers the chance to fully unwind and leap into the unknown It’s a relief to lay my rucksack down, plunge hot feet into the cool stream and pause to revel in the fairytale surrounds. Foxgloves stand tall against a cornflower-blue sky, ferns look almost luminous, the water glints in the early summer sunshine. A patch of moss-covered ancient forest provides shade, a cuckoo calls in the distance, mountains layer on the horizon. I’m in Knoydart in the Highlands of western Scotland, one of the la ..read more