Recipefiesta

Orchards, dairies, vineyards and farm shops are among the delicious pit stops on a new series of ebike tours around the county

It’s farm-to-fork dining at its freshest. I’m sitting at a vast outdoor table in Herefordshire looking out over rows of vines. On the horizon, the Malvern Hills ripple towards the Black Mountains; in front of me is a selection of local produce: cheeses from Monkland Dairy, 6 miles away, salad leaves from Lane Cottage (8 miles), charcuterie from Trealy Farm (39 miles), cherries from Moorcourt Farm (3 miles), broccoli quiche (2 miles) and glasses of sparkling wine, cassis and apple juice made just footsteps away. This off-grid feast is the final stop on White Heron Estate’s ebike farm tour – and I’m getting the lie of the land with every bite.

Before eating, our small group pedalled along a two-hour route so pastorally pretty it would make Old MacDonald sigh. Skirting purple-hued borage fields, we’ve zipped in and out of woodland, down rows of apple trees and over patches of camomile, and learned how poo from White Heron’s chickens is burnt in biomass boilers to generate heat. “Providing habitats for wildlife is important, but we need to produce food as well,” says our guide Jo Hilditch, who swapped a career in PR for farming when she inherited the family estate 30 years ago.

Tuck into great food and drink at hotels, farms and B&Bs in France, Ireland, Portugal and beyond

A hamlet of restored rural buildings in the Ortolo valley in Corsica reopened in June as A Mandria di Murtoli. Guests can stay in a former sheepfold, stable or barn, or one of five rooms in the main house. Three of the smaller properties have private pools, all rooms have terraces and there is a big shared pool. The buildings have been refurbished by Corsican craftspeople in a minimalist Mediterranean style, using local materials.

As retrofitted sections of the Boyne Burnett Inland Rail Trail begin to open, cyclists are flocking to what one day promises to be Australia’s longest rail trail – and a 271km opportunity for dwindling townships

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The ghost station of Many Peaks is enclosed in a jumble of rocky and timbered hills. There is not much else to Littlemore now than a farmhouse and a sign.

These sleepy and forgotten places in the Boyne Valley of central Queensland were once linked by hundreds of kilometres of train lines that swept an inland arc between the ports of Maryborough and Gladstone. Now, sections of those tracks are being gradually retrofitted for slower forms of transport: the foot, the horse and the bicycle.

On the border with Slovenia, the Italian region of Friuli–Venezia Giulia continues a centuries-old tradition of farms opening their doors and serving up a feast to the public

In Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, travel writer Jan Morris described the city’s many faces and “ambivalence”, maintaining that, unlike most other Italian cities, it has “no unmistakable cuisine”. But I had come to Trieste to experience, if not a cuisine, then a culinary tradition which, to me at least, does seem unmistakable: the osmiza scene of the surrounding countryside.

An osmiza (or osmize in the plural) is a Slovene term for a smallholding that produces wine in the Karst Plateau, a steep rocky ridge scattered with pine and a patchwork of vineyards that overlooks the Adriatic Sea. Visiting osmize is a centuries-old tradition in which these homesteads open their doors to the public for a fleeting period each year. Guests order their food and wine at a till inside – where a simply tiled bar, often set into local stone, might boast family photos, halogen lights and a chalkboard menu – before heading outside to feast at long Oktoberfest-style tables and benches.

From a herring festival in The Hague to the best pizza in Rome, our tipsters share their perfect foodie travel moments
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Despite its name, Flag Day (Vlaggetjesdag) in Scheveningen – a seaside resort close to The Hague – is actually more about fresh herring. Fishmongers bring in the first catch of the year in June, the hollandse nieuwe, and mark the start of the herring season with festivities, marching bands, wearing traditional costumes, and even an auction of the first vat of fish to raise money for charity. Don’t miss the chance to share a jenever (gin) with a Scheveninger, who will tell you how this year’s herring compares with last year’s.
Olivia

A new walking tour offers a chance to meet the city’s Ukrainian community, with stops for hearty dumplings, castle views and shared histories

Before arriving in Edinburgh, Nataliya Bezborodova’s impression of Scotland was shaped largely by Hollywood. “My knowledge of this country was pretty much based on the film Braveheart,” she admits with a laugh, standing before the grand neoclassical columns of the National Galleries of Scotland. As if on cue, the castle’s daily gun salute fires overhead, scattering pigeons and punctuating our conversation with a jolt.

Three years have passed since the 47-year-old anthropologist left her home in Kyiv for Edinburgh, after the Russian invasion. Celluloid warriors have long been replaced by the rhythms of life in a city she now knows like the back of her hand. So well, in fact, that she has launched a walking tour revealing a layer even locals might miss: the story of Edinburgh’s vibrant Ukrainian community.

A trek along the Kosovo section of the Via Dinarica offers majestic Balkan scenery, magical stories and sobering reminders of this area’s recent history

There are stone bunkers shrouded in the mist on the hillside to my right, just shy of the ridgeline marking the Albanian-Kosovo border. To my left, the view is not just clear but startlingly beautiful.

I’m able to see back down to the tiny mountain hamlet of Gacaferi, where I’d slept the previous night, to look across the deep greenery of Deçan Gorge beyond, over dense pine forests and grasslands that pop with pink and yellow wildflowers, and gaze all the way to the 2,461m summit of Çfërla and the rugged peaks of western Kosovo’s Accursed mountains.