Recipefiesta

One large ski chalet in the French Alps and 17 strangers. An organised trip for solo travellers is a leap into the unknown

Everyone had their reasons for joining the trip. Louisa from south London was putting her life back together after a split from her partner; first-timer Tim was strapping on ski boots following years of hesitation; and Lexi from Bristol had a classic case of the non-skiing boyfriend.

I was there because I needed a ski gang. None of my friends ski, and my brother was out of action with an injury. Not only that, I needed a good night’s sleep. I love my two-year-old son dearly, but I have somehow spawned an insomniac – still waking four times a night. Weary from bedtime battles, Holly, my partner, bluntly pointed out we could both benefit from “a temporary break from family life”. In other words: separate holidays.

Gondolas on demand, electric piste-grooming and chemical-free snow cannons – how Laax is ‘greenstyling’ its future

It’s the worst ski resort nightmare: hillsides of shaggy yellow grass streaked with slush under a leaden sky that’s coughing up sleet. Parts of Europe – places previously accustomed to crisp snow fields and pristine blue skies – are now facing this calamity, something meteorologists might describe as a British winter.

Not everywhere, of course. Only lower altitudes are seeing such disasters. Higher up, normal service continues. I’m in the Swiss resort of Laax, where most of the slopes are at about 2,000 metres, lofty enough to be snow-secure, for now. The halfpipe is busy with dudes in baggy trousers and headphones nonchalantly practising their double corks. On the traditional pistes there are four-year-olds who could probably ski before they could walk. And then – Switzerland has its wacky side – three young men in first-world-war greatcoats on antique wooden skis propel themselves with rough-hewn quarter-staves.

From cosy Alpine villages to queue-free skiing, you tell us where to head to avoid the crowds

• Tell us about a conservation tourism experience – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Bad Gastein is a relatively unknown gem. The Austrian state it sits in, Salzburg, offers free local transport (the guest mobility ticket) if you are staying in the state, so you can travel to the resort via train for nothing. The slopes are directly next to the station, too.
Rob Owen

Sick of relying on internet recommendations, I left my next destination to chance. Luckily, it led to me discovering a magical hamlet in the Cévennes mountains of south-central France

An unruly rabble bursts on to the street: a noisy eruption, bubbling towards us. This isn’t closing time on the Croisette in Cannes. A flock of sheep bustles past our cottage towards the shade of a huge chestnut tree, driven by three generations of herders and their dogs. The waterlike cacophony of their bells slows until only the odd tink tink punctuates the cicadas’ hum. The sheep graze, the shepherds doze off, and the mountain hamlet is still again.

My partner and I had set off by Eurostar less than 24 hours before, yet this place felt a world away from the ad agency where I work.

The first stage of an ambitious new hiking route that will link woodlands across Wales takes walkers into the wild hills above the valleys’ old mining villages

Bracken and heather ripple across the plateau. I exhale into the chill autumn air and my breath mists a view that reaches all the way to Gower and the ochre peaks of Bannau Brycheiniog (formerly the Brecon Beacons). Far below, the Ogmore valley’s terrace houses look like tiny constellations but up here on Tarren y Fforch, it’s just me and a few sheep taking springy steps between tufts of bilberries. If this corner of the south Wales valleys feels a long way from its coal mining past, that is, partly, the point.

I’m hiking the new Llwybr Coedwig Cymru Trail, or Wales Forest Trail. Running from Porthkerry Park, near Barry, to Pont Walby, close to Glynneath, this 50-mile (80km) pilot route is the first section of what the National Forest for Wales hopes will eventually be a trail linking woodlands across the length and breadth of Wales: a sylvan counterpart to the Wales Coast Path.

The landscape of rolling hills and chalk valleys that inspired Tennyson is the perfect setting for an autumnal short break. Here’s where to eat, where to stay and what not to miss

Wide skies, gentle footpaths through gold and copper wooded hills, thatched cottages, cosy pubs and quirky shops: the Lincolnshire Wolds have all the ingredients for the perfect autumnal mini break. Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson lived in the village of Somersby for most of his first three decades and the local landscapes echo through his verses. In The Lady of Shalott: “Long fields of barley and of rye / That clothe the wold and meet the sky …”

The Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape covers an area of 216 sq miles. On its southern boundary, halfway between Lincoln and the coast, the friendly market town of Horncastle bills itself as the “gateway to the Wolds”. With handsome brick houses, great cafes, a market on Thursdays and Saturdays and decent public transport links, it’s a perfect base for exploring the area.

If you’re looking for a last blast of summer, these sunny resorts offer quiet beaches but enough life to stave off the end-of-season blues

A Kalkan sunset is always a beautiful thing – the horseshoe-shaped bay deepening to azure blue against an apricot-rose sky – but, in October, when the light is low and the sun drops early, it’s almost transcendentally lovely. In some Turkish resorts, you’d be sitting watching it surrounded by quiet streets, half-empty bars and that melancholic sense that another season is over. In Kalkan, it still feels like summer; the harbourfront restaurants throng with visitors, the day gulets (wooden boats) still putter in and out of the bay and you don’t have to wait an hour to get a taxi back to your villa.