Bear-watching and beyond: six of the wildest adventure holidays in Europe

From donkey hikes in France to high plains drifting in the Swiss Alps, you don’t need to go long-haul to have a memorable encounter with nature

A six-and-a-half-hour train ride from Helsinki, the town of Kajaani is the unofficial capital of Finland’s Lakeland region. The number of perfectly serene bodies of water here, ripe for paddleboarding, kayaking and myriad watersports, easily outnumber the settlements dotted between them.