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

A drive to Dundee, a Cornish sleeper train and a £2 bus trip across Yorkshire offer spectacular scenery, rare wildlife and culinary delights The sequence M77, M74, M73, M80, A9, M90, A90 may not sound freighted with emotional weight, but those roads are, for me, associated with the sadness of separation and the pleasure of reunion. It’s the route I drive between our home in Glasgow and Dundee, where our eldest boy now lives, having left for university ..read more

A popular circuit round Scotland’s wild north coast draws thousands of drivers – but there’s so much more to experience by public transport and on foot There’s a party atmosphere round the lighthouse on Chanonry Point near Inverness, the UK’s best place to see dolphins from land. It’s an hour after low tide and there are pipers, picnics and kids running barefoot over long, evening sands. Already in late spring, the sun barely seems to set in the Highlands. The kelp-strewn pebbles are glowing as I walk from the bus stop near Fortrose cathedral (bus 26/26A from Inverness) along one side of the p ..read more

Port Talbot, Rochdale, Wick, Croydon and Kettering – we continue our series on places the guidebook writers skip Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-7 Port Talbot recently returned to the spotlight, when Tata Steel announced electrification and layoffs last month and the BBC broadcast Michael Sheen’s television series The Way this week. Politicians and foreign companies can shut down entire towns with impressive equanimity when the factories they are mothballing and the lives they are destroying are invisible. Port Talbot, however, would seem hard to ignore. As you approach on the M4, which u ..read more

A beautifully decorated bothy amid ancient pinewoods in the Caledonian Forest is the setting for a relaxing creative break Blanketed by snow, the forest is almost silent, with only the muffled crunch of boots, my frosty exhale and the occasional creak of laden branches. Low sunlight dazzles, glinting off curls of silver birch bark and branches festooned with lichen like forgotten tinsel. Ahead of us on the trail there are footprints of roe deer and red squirrel. This is Abernethy Forest, at 4,000 hectares the largest remaining section of the great Caledonian Forest that once covered much of Sc ..read more

The region between the Cairngorms and the Moray Firth is rightly famous for its whisky, but that is just one of its many charms The world outside my sleeper-train compartment was black and white: trees with feather-like branches silhouetted against snowy fields; the grey stretch of the A9 and then the sleek steel of a river; white candy-floss clouds against an ever paler sky. By the time I was in my hire car, driving east from Inverness, colour was slowly returning to the landscape, though the hills beneath the milky sun were still cloaked in snow. I was heading for Moray Speyside, edged by th ..read more

From the wilds of Exmoor to the blustery beaches of Northumberland, these characterful pubs offer walks on the doorstep, a pint by the fire, dinner and a bed for the night In the summer months, Tarr Steps heaves with families and visitors who come to cross the medieval clapper bridge that spans the River Barle. But in winter the woodland is tranquil, with lovely walks to the picturesque village of Dulverton. The Tarr Farm Inn – set right by the Steps – dates back to the 1600s, with nine comfortable rooms that come with fluffy bathrobes and Egyptian cotton, and homemade biscuits and fresh milk ..read more

There’s joy to be found in the darkest winter months, and people living in cold places use a variety of rituals to celebrate the lack of light – and its eventual return These long evenings at the year’s turn, when dusk seems to fall just after lunch, take me back to the extreme polar night I spent on a small, rocky island off the west coast of Greenland a few winters ago. The inhabitants of the Upernavik archipelago have no sight of the sun from late November to January. When I received the email inviting me to work in the artist’s “refuge” at the island museum – described as the most northerl ..read more

Sandy beaches, glorious vistas and a bustling high street add to the charm of this pretty seaside town just half an hour from Edinburgh The first surprise is that a half-hour trip by train from Edinburgh to North Berwick is really as far as you need to go for a taste of Scotland that is elemental and remote, a place of windswept beaches, stunning coastal walks and panoramic views. The West Coast and the Highlands may be more extreme, but then so is the journey to get there. This, by contrast, is an easier but no less enjoyable adventure. We take a sleeper train from London’s Euston, tip out on ..read more

We asked 23 Guardian travel writers to share their best experiences of 2023, from elegant spas and an art deco cinema to a new ‘megalith’ and a futuristic hotel There are many places where you expect to see jaw-dropping architecture, but the quiet Brittany countryside isn’t one of them. As we walked toward Hotel l’Essenciel (not a typo, ciel means sky) with its 36 rooms, or “nests” suspended around its central structure, with the flying-saucer shaped restaurant La Table des Pères at its foot, I had to wonder if I’d stepped into a parallel universe or on to another planet ..read more