Recipefiesta

This wetland south of Syracuse was saved from developers and preserved as an unspoilt haven for migratory birds

We rented Il Nido because we thought other people wouldn’t like it. Small and basic, without internet, the property was supposedly beside a beautiful national park famous for its coastline and migratory birds. The online picture suggested it was pressed up against one of those concrete pillars (common around Sicily) supporting a deserted and rotting motorway flyover. I was writing a thriller with mafia connections. My partner wanted to scrape off six months of fumes from her new job in London. Our daughter needed fun.

“This is a bomb,” said the hostess, opening a cupboard under the sink. “You turn it anticlockwise to go off.”

The 27km trail on the NSW mid-north coast reveals wildlife of the land and sea, plus the option to go clothes-free

The waves are tracking higher than the average Australian house when the opportunity arises to bare all. We’ve arrived on foot at Samurai beach, a remote nudist spot midway along the 27km Tomaree coastal walk on the New South Wales mid-north coast in the Port Stephens area. The one-in-50-year swell battering the state’s shoreline has clearly scared off the usual cohort of weekend naturists who come to this vast stretch of sand for its south-facing surf, salt-sprayed seclusion and pristine sand dunes.

Clothing removal is optional here, but my bushwalking buddy and I agree it would be rude not to experience the beach as it was intended. The only witnesses to our gleeful antics are a handful of nonchalant magpies foraging on the sand between bits of microplastic, and a Gould’s petrel (the endangered seabird that nests on the nearby islands off Port Stephens) hovering high above the breakers like a grey and white drone with a 75cm wingspan.

Britain’s Camping and Caravanning Club started as a cycle camping club 125 years ago. I cycle from its birthplace to one of its oldest campsites to see if its free-wheeling spirit survives

Skylarks call out a cascading trill as I pedal between the pink and white hawthorn blossoms that make my path look like a May Day parade. I’m on the outskirts of Oxford, a city I thought I knew well, yet as I follow the National Cycle Route 57 on the e-bike I’d picked up in Jericho, it feels as though I’ve discovered a secret passageway.

This year the Camping and Caravanning Club (CCC) turns 125 – and I’m celebrating with a 60-mile cycling and camping trip, leaving from the city where the organisation was born and heading to Walton-on-Thames to stay at one of the oldest campsites in the CCC network.

The French cities of Marseille, Aix, Avignon and Arles boast a wealth of museums and festivals showing work by contemporary artists. Here’s how to make the most of a dazzling cultural summer

My wife and I moved from London to Marseille a little over five years ago when our British passports still conferred “right to reside” in France. That first winter on the beach, in short sleeves, as our daughters played in the topaz-coloured Mediterranean and the sun set across an ever-clear blue sky, I understood why this part of southern France has always been popular with artists.

I was recently speaking about this with the painter Fanny Nushka and her sailor husband, Benoît Bouchet, on the terrace of Café la Muse in Marseille’s “coolest” neighbourhood. She said: “It took a long time to go back to blue. It’s like being in Paris and painting the Eiffel Tower. It’s dangerous to paint the Calanques [limestone coves] as an artist from here.”

Mindful of steep airfares and global uncertainty, more and more UK holiday-makers are staying close – very close – to home. Does this mean Milton Keynes is the new Malaga?

Name: Micro-staycations.

Age: New.

Can a long road trip work with children? I set out to relive a classic journey from Bilbao to Saint-Malo I did in my freewheeling 20s

The moment came on about day four. A cloud-like mist was drenching our faces, hair and clothes, despite the thick canopy of trees overhead. My six-year-old daughter silently trudged uphill pushing her bike, her mouth set in a grim line. I looked again at the blue blob on Google Maps, which seemed, unfeasibly, to indicate we were on the right path. I thought, again, about the diminishing supply of chocolate in my backpack.

“See! I told you! We’re having an adventure,” I said with forced jollity. She didn’t even look up.

She came directly up to me and offered the tray, accompanied by a torrent of incomprehensible Greek

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

The straps of my backpack dug hard into my shoulders as I trudged like a zombie through the sweltering heat. I was hitchhiking across the Greek island of Crete in summertime and had been dropped off in a small village miles from anywhere, hoping to pick up my next ride. It was 1978 and probably didn’t help that I looked every inch the hippie – jewellery, bushy beard and dusty clothes.

Cars passed only infrequently, maybe one every half hour. When they did, they hurtled past like unstoppable express trains, without a sideways glance my way. I took a seat on a low stone wall and hoped for the best. But after several hours under the relentless sun, I was beginning to think I’d never get out of the place. A few houses dotted the main road but the village seemed to be asleep.