Recipefiesta

With state-of-the-art fitness and spa facilities onsite and everything from hiking to kayaking the beautiful Bay of Kotor, it’s a perfect base for an active break

I was lying on a bed with no trousers on. A young man helped me into some crotch-high boots and zipped them up. He turned the lights down low, put on some music, pressed a button and left the room. Argh! The boots started to slowly inflate from the toes up, like a giant blood-pressure cuff. As they clenched around my upper thighs, I started to panic. What if they just got tighter and tighter until my legs exploded? As I was about to shout for help, the pressure suddenly released, leaving my legs feeling deliciously light. I took a deep breath and submitted to another 19 minutes of this sweet torture.

I was at Siro Boka Place in Montenegro, having compression boot therapy, which is supposed to boost circulation and reduce swelling. “It’s especially effective on women over 35,” my youthful assistant had told me, helpfully. The hotel, which opened last year, is proud of its “state-of-the-art wellness facilities”. In most hotels that means a poky gym. At Siro the facilities are so good the Montenegrin Olympic team is training here ahead of Los Angeles 2028.

For Evan Lewis and Dat Tien Lewis, a cycling odyssey was a test of their relationship. A quiet whisky session revealed how far they’d come

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I met Dat in San Francisco in 2015. I had left a tourism consulting role in China and moved to the US to start my own Mongolian vodka product. Dat was a specialised nurse. He loved being a nurse.

They say opposites attract and I think that rings true for us. He had this way of calming a room. Dat would arrive at a party and somehow the volume in the room would come down a little bit. He did the same with me. It was a very busy time trying to build my business but he was always there – very supportive and curious about what I was doing. We moved quite quickly into the relationship and spent a lot of time together.

From a stylish retreat in Norfolk to a remote hideaway on a Scottish island, these boltholes will make for a truly memorable stay

Tourism experts are predicting a bumper year for “staycations” with more of us choosing to holiday in the UK due to continuing uncertainty around jet fuel prices and possible flight cancellations. Holidaymakers are spoilt for choice with more than 350,000 UK self-catering listings on booking platforms, from rustic barn conversions to seaside villas with all mod cons for large family gatherings.

We’ve done some of the leg work and whittled down a selection of cottages which all offer something special, whether it’s a stunning location, a breathtaking view or a level of comfort and style that wouldn’t be out of place in a boutique hotel.

From Hadrian’s Wall to the locations of Happy Valley and Hot Fuzz, readers share their top discoveries

• Tell us about your favourite UK coast walk – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

“So this is where Officer Nick Angel [Simon Pegg] chased that swan.” As a fan of Hot Fuzz, I was excited to explore the cathedral city of Wells in Somerset, where much of the film was shot. This charming, compact and walkable city is awash with medieval architecture and magnificent buildings, such as the gothic cathedral, with one of the oldest working clocks in the UK (late 14th century) and the Bishop’s Palace and Gardens. Within easy reach of the Mendip Hills, Cheddar Gorge and the Wookey Hole Caves, Wells makes for a low-key alternative to tourist-soaked Bath.
Alison

There are few places where history can be felt more powerfully than these pathways, walked by explorer, author and TV presenter Nicholas Crane

How often do you look down and wonder who created the path your feet are following? Or ask the cause of its curves and dips? Formed over thousands of years, paths form an “internet of feet” – a web of bridleways and hollow ways, drove roads and ridgeways, coffin tracks, pilgrimage trails and city pavements. Whether you’re hiking a National Trail or pottering along a National Trust footpath, there’s a good chance you’re following ancestral steps.

It’s thoughts like these that led me on a journey to track the evolution of British paths for my book, The Path More Travelled. Eleven thousand years ago ice age hunter-gatherers arrived from Europe’s heartlands, moving through the wilderness along broad “routeways”, that later widened to tracks when horses and then wheels were adopted in the bronze age. For more than 2,000 years, traffic moved no faster than the speed of a horse, until the internal combustion engine drove pedestrians off the road just over a century ago.

Improve your mountain skills by day and party by night at the Arc’teryx Alpine Academy in Chamonix

After a day spent hiking across the Col d’Entrèves glacier, a sugar hit is required. I descend on the cable car and join the queue at the ice-cream counter. Above me, surrounded by jagged peaks, looms the huge white figure of Mont Blanc, serene and pure against a brilliant blue sky. Although it’s late afternoon, people are still heading up the mountain, and there are two clear groups. On one side are the tourists, who are about to be lifted into unfamiliar frozen realms at 3,375 metres (11,072ft), hoping to grab a picture and return. Mixed among them are the weathered faces of mountain experts: hikers confidently heading for a high-altitude hut, or climbers with coils of rope.

How many of those tourists, I wonder, are wishing they could be mountaineers, secretly regretting the twists of fate that kept them away from that path? But all is not lost. The aspiring adventurer, no matter what age or background, can begin the journey to competence in the mountains. The annual mountain festival I am attending aims to facilitate that by offering the chance to gain hands-on experience with experts.

The island of Samsø offers tranquil walks, biking, birding, distillery and pottery tours, and locally sourced fare – including citrusy ants

‘We have lammerullepøllse – lamb rolled sausage – today,” says Daniel Hesseldal-Haines, chef at Det Lille Sommerhotel on the Danish island of Samsø. “It tastes better than the translation sounds. And,” he gestures towards a woman sitting by the window, “the lamb is from Camilla’s farm.”

Camilla gives us a friendly wave, and my eyes fix upon her sweater, featuring row upon row of colourful motifs. Think Fair Isle but less orderly: each stripe holds a different design. “Oh, I made this,” she says. “It’s hønsestrik – chicken knitting. You can use it to tell your story – so this one is about hiking,” she adds, pointing to each section: “These are my footprints, this is my tent, my coffee flask …”