Travel Industry news

• Jura holiday guide: what to see plus the best bars, hotels and restaurants

  17-05-2015 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The rolling fields, vineyards, mountain ranges and untouched forests of this region of eastern France are packed with wonderful places to eat, drink and stay
  Readers’ favourite places to go in the JuraLyon city guideIf it is still possible for France to have an undiscovered region, the Jura can lay a serious claim, as the lush valleys, thick forests, lakes and mountains of this rural landscape are still very much off the beaten track, even for the French. I should know – my wife comes from a
  
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• ‘Turkey gave us one of the most exhilarating experiences of our lives’: readers’ travel tips

  06-09-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Stunning beaches, car-free islands and reminders of antiquity feature in our tipsters’ picks from the Aegean to the Black Sea. Plus, the best rice pudding ever …Lake Eğirdir is the fourth largest lake in Turkey and the town of Eğirdir (80 miles north of Antalya), which sits on the southern edge of the lake, is sometimes used as a stopover for coach travellers as they travel between the tourist hotspots of Cappadocia and Pamukkale. If you can, stay longer. We stayed three n
  
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• Tour de France: the new cycle route from Nantes to Mont-Saint-Michel

  05-09-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  La Régalante is a 170-mile cycle network linking historic villages, windmills and abbeys in less-visited parts of Brittany and the Atlantic Loire, with pitstops at lovely bars and B&Bs We wave au revoir to Nantes and, moments later, we’re rushing towards the sea on hired touring bikes. We’re heading along France’s newest cycle route, from the Pays de la Loire through Brittany to the tidal flats of Normandy. My friend and I have an appointment with Mont-Saint-Michel i
  
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• One Spanish region where tourists are welcome – especially spaghetti western fans

  04-09-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A new walking route around Burgos, in northern Spain, offers film pilgrims a close-up of the iconic locations used in Sergio Leone’s movie The Good, the Bad and the UglyIn the mountains of northern Spain, the sleepy town of Santo Domingo de Silos is accustomed to welcoming pilgrims. In the province of Burgos, on the Camino de Santiago, it is home to one of Spain’s most famous monasteries.Built in the seventh century, the Monasterio de San Francisco was catapulted to unlikely stardom
  
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• ‘Plus-size people face a lot of barriers’: the campaigners helping larger walkers to enjoy the great outdoors

  03-09-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  From being properly kitted out to planning a walking route up Mam Tor, our writer finds her feet and her tribe in the Peak DistrictIt is raining. Heavy drops hit so hard they bounce back into the air. Cloud hangs over the highest peak, today’s destination. I gather with the small group of women in larger bodies, all facing the same challenge as me, with similar demons whispering into their ears, “You’re too fat, you’re not fit enough, you don’t belong here, you will
  
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• Share a tip on a gap year or sabbatical – you could win a holiday voucher

  02-09-2024 18:18 via theguardian.com
  Tell us about a favourite long trip – it could have been a gap year, a sabbatical or a spell volunteering abroad – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays breakGap years are not just the domain of students in search of adventure after A-levels or university. Increasing numbers of us are choosing to take a career break or sabbatical later in life to travel abroad or try something new. Have you taken time out to volunteer overseas, to see the world, or to study abroad? We&rsqu
  
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• Driving to the Italian Alps with two small kids – and camping: the unholy trinity of travel?

  02-09-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The idea of a family road trip across Europe to reach Trentino’s celebrated Lago di Ledro felt daunting. Turns out getting there was more than half the funFloating motionless in the deep water of northern Italy’s exquisite Lago di Ledro in beating sun, I felt the contradictory sensation of simultaneous exertion and relaxation. My heart was thumping from the front crawl I’d just done, yet my mind basked in the beauty of this tree-lined valley and my brief, heavenly solitude
  
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• Viennese waltz: top travel tips for a spin around Austria’s capital

  01-09-2024 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From the ferris wheel featured in the Third Man to an evening with Mozart and the world’s largest collection of Klimts, here’s how to make the most of a break in ViennaWalk some of the city’s 23 districts, each one with its own distinct identity and history. The 9th district is a great place to start. Elegant and rich in art nouveau and art deco architecture, it was also home to Beethoven, Schubert and Freud. Visit one of the most famous addresses in psychoanalytic history, Wie
  
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• Saving the seas one dive at a time in Northumberland

  01-09-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  We dip beneath the North Sea waves with Britain’s first eco-dive centre, to see how it is inspiring divers to help clean up the seas they loveOn the outer side of Britain’s Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, is the Longstone lighthouse, which was home in 1838 to a reluctant heroine called Grace Darling. She was the lighthouse keeper’s daugher, and at the age of just 22, she jumped into a rowing boat in the midst of a violent storm and successfully saved nine people fr
  
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• How I spent 16 months journeying from the top to the bottom of England in a canal boat

  31-08-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  From within sight of the Lake District to Surrey, an epic – and slow – journey along the length of England’s waterwaysMy home is a floating island on more than 2,000 miles of interconnected inland waterways in England and Wales. In my 17-metre narrowboat home, I have travelled from the most northerly of the joined waterways – within sight of the Lake District – to the most southerly, about 30 miles from the Channel.It took me 16 months to complete but I was never in
  
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• Sea swims, sensational Scandinavian food - and the odd disagreement: Interrailing with my 75-year-old mum

  31-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Taking the train from Manchester to Oslo led to 10 action-packed days me and my Zumba-going mum would never forgetMy mum had just one stipulation when it came to our mother-and-daughter holiday: she didn’t want to do any of the planning. She would not lift a finger – payback, perhaps, for my tricky teenage years, which saw me ruin one Pyrenean road trip by vomiting on every hairpin. I tried to claim it was food poisoning rather than the result of a night of underage drinking with the
  
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• ‘It was more than a journey, it was an immersion’: readers’ favourite slow travel adventures

  30-08-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A night train to Venice, a Provence river cruise and ferries between the Aeolian islands – our tipsters share their slow travel highlightsOne of my most memorable travel experiences was drifting down the Rhône from Lyon to Avignon. Instead of rushing through France, I chose to embrace the slower pace of a river cruise, allowing the beauty of Provence to unfold gradually. As we glided past vineyards and lavender fields, I could almost taste the crisp rosé waiting for me in Tain
  
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• In the footsteps of DH Lawrence: across the Alps from Germany to Italy

  30-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  More than a century on, the route from Konstanz to Como across lakes and Swiss mountains must also contend with traffic, but it still inspires a novel‘When I went from Constance, it was on a small steamer down the Rhine to Schaffhausen.” So wrote DH Lawrence in 1913. While his lover Frieda Weekley (née von Richthofen) was trying to explain their love affair to her family in Germany, Lawrence decided to walk south across the Alps, to Como and Milan, about 230 miles, taking stea
  
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• Austrian town gets its lederhosen in a twist over modern art

  29-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Bad Ischl is the first alpine town to be awarded European capital of culture status, bringing nudity and surreal sculptures to a rural area more in tune with classical music and mountain pursuits I’m walking through the town of Bad Aussee, in Austria’s alpine Salzkammergut region, where I’m expecting a vision of depravity to emerge through the drizzle. The artists Wolfgang Müllegger and Georg Holzmann gleefully tell me how their big pink sculpture, which was recently place
  
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• Is Derby the UK’s worst short break destination? How I ‘bussed’ that myth

  28-08-2024 01:00 via theguardian.com
  With good public transport services to surrounding attractions, and riverside walks for ornithologists, the East Midlands hub defies pollsters’ findingsA peregrine falcon is flying high over the gothic tower of the cathedral while elegant grey wagtails hop across the curving weir among flocks of gulls and geese. Is this really the worst city in the UK? Derby recently came bottom in a Which? poll of big UK cities for a short break. I’m only passing through on my way to the Peak Distri
  
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• Share a tip on a sunny city break in Europe – you could win a holiday voucher

  27-08-2024 11:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Tell us about your favourite trip to a European city that’s perfect for a spot of late summer sunshine – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays breakAs the last days of August approach, many of us are searching for ways to eke out our summer before packing away the shorts and sunglasses. One tried and tested way is by heading for a city in southern Europe – somewhere you can combine culture and sightseeing with the possibility of a dip in the sea, perhaps, or an al fr
  
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• Leaving the herd behind on a family trip in the peaceful southern French Alps

  27-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Rugged scenery, an insight into shepherds’ culture, delicious food and remote mountain stays make for a memorable few days hiking in FranceHigh above the Champsaur Valley, in the southern French Alps, the plateau is shrouded in cream-coloured froth. But it’s not clouds I’m surrounded by; it’s sheep. Transhumance – the driving of animals from winter valleys to high summer pastures – is still practised here, and thousands of animals are swirling around me as I s
  
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• Fjords and seaweed safaris: a new cycle trail along Denmark’s east coast

  26-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A cycling holiday on the Jutland peninsula’s ‘Fjordmino’ is a gentle procession of quiet roads, ferry rides, cute B&Bs and islands When I heard about Denmark’s “island of wild rabbits”, I knew I had to check it out. And the isle of Endelave did not disappoint. Rabbits in fields, rabbits in gardens, rabbits on the road, rabbits emerging from wild rose bushes – everywhere my companion and I looked played out like one of the happier scene
  
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• Gastro reboots: 10 of the best renovated English foodie inns

  25-08-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  From a 16th-century former pub on the Isle of Wight to a boutique hotel in the Lake District, these refurbished inns and coaching houses offer a mouthwatering stay in all seasonsSeven months after it reopened under the new ownership of renowned Yorkshire chef Sam Varley, the Owl made it into both the Michelin Guide and the Good Food Guide last month. Depending on the time of year, meals can be taken on the sunny terrace, in the elegant dining room or in front of the fire in the stone-flagged bar
  
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• How I found my Dartmoor moment with the gift of wild camping

  24-08-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The freedom to wild camp can make hiking among the majestic tors and ancient forests even more rewarding, but this right is at riskThere is such a thing as a Dartmoor moment. It’s when you realise you’ve gone wild, walked away from fires and towels and teacups. When, in an instant, soft southern England summons its dark side. When you look at the map, fraying in the gale, and notice you’re far from the chocolate-box villages on the moor’s edge – Lustleigh, Lydford,
  
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• A family surfing holiday in the French Basque Country

  24-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A ferry ‘cruise’ from Portsmouth to Santander brings the surf, cuisine and mountains of one of south-west France’s most distinctive regions within easy reachThe Bay of Biscay is renowned for its turbulent waters, but as I fall off my surfboard for the fifth time during a family lesson at Anglet, near Biarritz, I realise this is more a case of “user error” than choppy sea conditions. While my husband and I are perfecting our wipe-outs and feeling like we’r
  
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• ‘I inched across rock faces, explored sea caves and plummeted off cliffs’: readers’ favourite active holidays in Europe

  23-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Island-hopping in Sicily, saving turtles in Cephalonia, coasteering in Pembrokeshire, e-biking in Andalucía and more – courtesy of our readersTaking a Friday off gave me three clear days, enough time to walk from Llangynidr to Abergavenny along the Beacons Way. It’s delightful! I got a return train ticket from Bristol to Abergavenny, then the local bus from Abergavenny to Llangynidr on the first day – I was one of three passengers, with a super-friendly driver. First day
  
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• ‘A journey and an adventure’: driving Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way

  22-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Running 1,600 miles from County Cork up to County Donegal, this route, launched 10 years ago, takes in the west coast’s spectacular sceneryOn the edge of pretty Mannin Bay there’s a barrel sauna with a convex picture window overlooking the white sand and translucent Atlantic Ocean. It’s the perfect place to warm up after a morning kayaking around the indented shoreline, one that changes dramatically with the rise and fall of the tide. We stroll back to Connemara Sands hotel, ju
  
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• The reluctant camper: 15 easy tips to make you love life beneath the stars

  22-08-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  If you think nights under canvas aren’t for you, think again. The experts reveal how you can turn camping from a daunting ordeal into a brilliant adventure
  In my experience, the world is divided into people who love camping and people who hate it. In the second group are those scarred by miserable memories of childhood camping trips, and those who have never slept in a field and don’t intend to start now when they have a perfectly good bed at home, thank you very much. But at its bes
  
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• Tackling the wild Rhône on a bikerafting adventure in France

  21-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  You never get bored on a trip that switches from cycling along country lanes to paddling down rivers – and takes in picnic stops and wine-tasting, tooTravelling on two wheels is terrific: you cover more ground than on foot, but go slowly enough to take it all in. I’ve had a great time on cycle rides from London to Amsterdam, and Bordeaux to Bilbao. But, dare I say it, after a while cycling can get a bit … samey. Proper long-distance cyclists will no doubt disagree, but I find
  
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• UK citizens travelling to EU next summer will have to pay €7 visa-waiver charge

  20-08-2024 15:22 via theguardian.com
  
  Scheme will mirror US Esta and apply to travel to Schengen area, with under-18s and over-70s exempt Business live – latest updatesUK citizens travelling to the EU next summer will have to pay a €7 visa-waiver charge after the EU revealed its timeline for the introduction of new border checks and entry requirements for some visitors.Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs commissioner, confirmed that the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (Etias), which will require UK ci
  
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• Where tourists seldom tread, part 11: five British seaside towns with hidden histories

  20-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Look carefully around less-loved, gently crumbling resorts such as Rhyl, Bognor and Skegness and they are still teeming with hidden pleasures
  Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-10Every summer, Which? magazine publishes a list of resorts – 126 this year – ranked according to hotel quality and prices, food and drink, attractions, shopping, scenery. The top slots are inevitably occupied by smaller, smarter places visited by the better-off, probably before or after a trip to France or
  
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• Share a tip on lesser-known Turkey and you could win a holiday voucher

  19-08-2024 16:49 via theguardian.com
  
  Tell us about off-the-beaten track places you love – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays breakWhile Turkey is a much-loved holiday destination, many places like Bodrum are struggling with the effects of overtourism. It’s a vast country though, with so much more to explore beyond the usual tourist haunts. We’d love to hear about the off-the-beaten-track gems you’ve discovered on your travels, whether it’s a train ride through less-visited rural areas, a
  
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• Walking the Netherlands’ new long-distance Salt Path

  19-08-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A new hiking route in the far north of the country is helping to connect visitors with rural communities and giving churches a new lease of life as B&Bs and art studios
  At 5am, the toll of the church bell reverberates through the darkness, jolting me awake – again. The unwavering sentinel in the rural Dutch village of Eastrum has rung every half hour throughout the night. Lying on a camp bed in the nave of the 16th-century Saint Nicholas church, I begin to wonder what I’ve agreed
  
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• 10 of the best regions in Europe for sparkling wine

  18-08-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The bubbles don’t just stop in champagne country. Here’s where to find the fizz from Germany to Romania via Dorset and Catalonia Germans drink more bubbly than any other nationality, with riesling sekt (from the regions of Baden, Pfalz and Mosel) absolutely the top quaff. The best way to seek out sekt is along the 85km-long German Wine Route (the country’s oldest) – an idyllic rural stretch studded with castles and encompassing hiking and cycling routes that wiggle throug
  
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