Recipefiesta

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.

An out-of-season journey through the peninsula reveals Byzantine villages, deserted beaches and friendly tavernas

As I drove across the causeway which links the tiny fortress island of Monemvasia to the south-eastern coast of the Peloponnese, the Aegean sparkling on all sides, I recalled a line by Yiannis Ritsos, one of Greece’s greatest 20th-century poets. Ritsos lived in Monemvasia, in a house that is today a museum on a cobble-stretch by the tawny castle walls. A favourite passage goes: “The voyage is neither a leave-taking nor a home-coming – an ethereal bridge …”

The excuse for my trip to the Peloponnese’s deep south – Messinia, the Mani, and Laconia – fell between those two ideas. My mother has roots in the Peloponnese – a sort-of homecoming that I’ve long wanted to explore – and with the summer over and greedy for an adventure to myself, I set out by car, leaving Kalamata, the leafy port city and gateway to the area, on a coastal road circuit.

As a new film about Sherpa Tenzing Norgay is released, we visit Pen-Y-Gwryd, the Snowdonia hotel which served as British ‘base camp’ for the 1953 expedition and where the spirit of adventure lives on

In the early hours of 2 June 1953, guests at the Pen-Y-Gwryd hotel in the heart of Eryri (Snowdonia) were woken from their sleep by the sound of footsteps running down the corridor outside their rooms. The commotion was followed by gleeful shouting and the sound of champagne corks popping. A late-night telephone call to the hotel’s owner had moments earlier confirmed that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had successfully summited Mount Everest. It had taken two days for the news to travel from the Himalayas to London. Serendipitously, news of the historic achievement coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II later that day.

In the days and weeks that followed, the two mountaineers were feted across the front pages of newspapers around the world. Posing awkwardly for the cameras, their beaming smiles shone out of frost-burnt faces. In the decades that followed, Tenzing Norgay’s role in the expedition was increasingly marginalised – he was a Sherpa, indigenous to the area, and the load-carrying guide, while Hillary firmly planted his ice axe in the history books.

From ancient forests to spas, medieval cities and the birthplace of Bauhaus, Thuringia packs a punch for a car-free autumn break

It’s early morning in Erfurt, the capital of Germany’s Thuringia region, and Domplatz is abuzz with local growers setting out crates of vegetables and flowers beneath the soaring medieval cathedral towers. This 14th- and 15th-century engineering wonder holds the Gloriosa, the world’s largest medieval free-swinging bell, cast in 1497 and weighing 12 tonnes. Though the city and surrounding landscape are notably flat, its skyline is pierced by soaring church towers and steeples, the atmospheric old town hardly changed over the centuries.

Thuringia – often called the “green heart of Germany” – lies in the centre of the country, between Hesse, Saxony and Bavaria. It’s famous for its dense forests, intellectual heritage and hearty cuisine, and I’m here for four days to explore using public transport.

Smaller and less visited than Como and Garda, Lake Iseo harbours a gorgeous car-free island ideal for easy-going cycling and sightseeing

Rust red and burnt sienna speckle the green mountain rising from Lake Iseo. Golden autumn sunlight shimmers on the water. Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, is a peak of sheer cliffs and dense forest, dotted with old fishing hamlets and hillside villages, each as pretty as the terraced villas of Lake Como and Garda, but with far fewer visitors. I arrive at the small port town of Peschiera Maraglio – where striped wooden boats jut from the water like the gondolas of Venice – on a ferry from Sulzano, a five-minute hop across the water.

“Only three people on the island are allowed to own a car: the priest, the doctor and the mayor,” says Chiara, my tour guide from Brescia. Residents can zip up and down the steep island roads on mopeds, and a small fleet of van-sized buses trundle around throughout the day, but nearly all cars are forbidden and visitors have to explore on foot or bike.