The Guardian

With the weather slowly starting to improve, it’s time to start planning camping trips in the UK. We’d love to hear about your favourite places to camp. Maybe it’s somewhere wild near the sea, or a campsite with the best facilities for a memorable family holiday. Tell us about your adventures under canvas and in glamping pods and yurts for the chance to win a holiday voucher.

It was a morning of brooding green banks and dark skies on the River Tweed. Heavy rains had hit southern Scotland and the waterway had turned into a fast flood, with the deluge sweeping our two-seater canoe downstream through farmland and fishing beats as fast as a salmon escaping a rod and reel.

I cycled into birdsong, into colour, the light glimmering against the white of the low stone walls. There was a spaciousness as I cycled, a lateral stretching of soundscape, big skies, birds fluting. I didn’t meet anyone else on the narrow lanes and had a sense of being completely alone on an island of 2,000 people. Is there anything happier than being on a bicycle early in the morning, heading to the sea?

A British railway station can be many things. A place of tended flowers and toytown paintwork. A concourse of shuttered ticket booths and overpriced pasties. A terminus, a meeting spot, a gateway to escape. It can be heart-lifting or drab, bathed in birdsong or heaving with commuters. It can also be the starting point for a properly good walk.

My overriding memories of crossing countries by train, on a trip from London to Albania, are of half-empty carriages and countryside sweeping past windows bathed in the soft orange glow of sunset. I remember cypress trees, red-roofed villages with square churches, farmland in neat strips and row upon row of vineyards.

Once seen, never forgotten. Croatia’s fabulously beautiful coast and islands (1,246 to be precise) – with their rocky coves, iconic beaches, historic towns and gorgeous sunsets, all surrounded by some of the most breathtakingly blue waters imaginable – are places that stay in the mind, and they have a habit of luring you back.

‘‘No one hitchhikes any more, do they?” I often hear people saying this and am proud to reply that I’ve hitchhiked every decade of my life, except the first. And I don’t intend to stop just because I’m now in my 80s.

Myth distorts any city’s musical history, and in Manchester myth looms as large as the new Co-op Live, a £365m, 23,500-capacity mega-venue that opens today and will soon be staging big-name acts, including Take That. So, for every occasion a music fan mentions the hit-making boy band or, for that matter, 10cc or the Hollies, a thousand more bark back: Joy Division, the Fall, Happy Mondays. Not that 10cc were a small Manc band, but they peaked before punk and a wall went up at the end of the 1970s that relegated all that had passed prior to 4 June 1976 – the night the Sex Pistols performed at the Lesser Free Trade Hall – to prehistory, as in dinosaurs, fossils, folk musicians. New hagiographies about music impresario Tony Wilson (1950-2007) are no doubt at the printers as I write. But how about we spend half an hour mooching round the Rainy City aboard the free buses and trams in search of the underplayed, surprising and tangential – with a few Gen X/6 Music standards for when we’re stuck at the lights.

Driving through the Tuscan hills, the sun beginning its slow descent in the hazy, glowing heat on an August evening was one of the most exquisite experiences I have ever had. Travelling slowly along small, winding roads near Siena in our old Polo, we settled in to the rhythm the locals live by. The peaceful embrace of the Tuscan way of life was felt at every turn, with every smile we saw and every vineyard we gazed across. The cypress trees lining other, yet-to-be-discovered roads in the distance added to our awe at our surroundings.Lotta

Trains and wine make natural partners, be it a glass of crisp white over a leisurely lunch in a restaurant car while cruising through the Alps or a rail itinerary that meanders through a region noted for its fine wines. Many of Europe’s most prized wine regions lend themselves naturally to exploration by rail.

With spectacularly diverse landscapes and beautifully unspoilt nature, Croatia offers a wealth of experiences in the great outdoors – from hiking and kayaking, to cycling, climbing and more. So come and take a walk on Croatia’s wild side – or peddle, paddle, swim – and discover just how much outdoor adventure this beautiful Adriatic country has to offer.

The honk of the geese as they take off from the lake is comically loud, reeds quiver and the reflection of the clouds on the water is momentarily fractured. A butterfly flits by, landing on my boot. We’re on a guided walk at 42 Acres, a regenerative farm, nature reserve and retreat centre near Frome in Somerset – and the whole place feels vibrantly alive.

How far would you go – and how long would you take – to avoid flying and thoroughly embrace the idea of slow travel? In my case, it was 3,167 miles over three weeks. For nearly a decade I had wanted to do a road trip to Croatia, and to get as much out of the journey as the destination itself. Rather than bomb down the motorway for marathon stretches, the idea was to slow down and see new things.

Saturday morning, 10am, and I’m sitting at a café table on a cobbled street in the Beşiktaş neighbourhood of Istanbul, sipping a glass of çay (Turkish tea) and waiting for breakfast. By the café entrance, a plump, grey-haired man in a crisp white apron is sharpening a knife, before slicing through what is generally acknowledged to be the largest doner kebab in Turkey. The kebab weighs 100kg, a meaty monster slowly cooking from the outside in. Our guide, Sinan, tells us that Black Sea (Karadeniz) doners from this area are always the best – all of it will be gone by mid-afternoon.

Find out more by visiting croatia.hr

Croatia’s fabulous mishmash of cultures – from ancient Greeks to Romans, Venetians, Austrians, Hungarians and Italians – has left a rich legacy all around the country. You’ll see it in the Venetian architecture of Rovinj, Korčula, Dubrovnik and Hvar, the Habsburg townhouses of Zagreb and Opatija, and the ancient Roman ruins of Istria and Dalmatia. You’ll taste it in the delicious cuisine where the Adriatic and central Europe meet and mingle.

Authorities in Venice have been accused of transforming the famous lagoon city into a “theme park” as a long-mooted entrance fee for day trippers comes into force.

Wandering hand-in-hand through the medieval streets of Bologna, my boyfriend and I were in awe of the sweeping porticoes and distinctive rust-red brickwork of the city. It was our first holiday together. We’d wanted to find somewhere beyond the obvious that would marry our respective interests in architecture and history. Bologna was the perfect fit.

The pool was empty – perhaps because at about 22C, the water was too cold for Italians. It was also about to close. Whatever the reason, we had the glorious Biolago di Pinzolo, a spring-fed, plant-filtered swimming lake, to ourselves. As my son and I swam, we could just make out the tiny red-roofed hermitage of San Martino on the forested slope above, where, according to legend, a hermit survived on bread provided by a tame bear.

Lyme Regis’s charms have always been resolutely genteel and old-fashioned, from its sedate regency seafront to its fondness for fossil shops and all things antique and literary.

There is a wild and wonderful water world in the north-eastern corner of Spain. The Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici national park, in the central Pyrenees north of Lleida, is characterised by more than 200 lakes fed by melting snow and ice, plus rivers and streams, gorges, waterfalls and marshes. (Aigüestortes means “winding waters” in Catalan, and Sant Maurici is the biggest lake.)