Travel

A chance encounter with a group of dancers shows the surprising origins of a very English tradition

Once the way Extremaduran families got their annual supply of meat, these days the traditional pig slaughter is a big day out

Buffeted by the pandemic, Eurostar faced collapse. With little thanks to the UK government, this link to the continent is revived.

From Orkney to Oléron, people are heading offshore in search of a simpler existence. But the trend is having a profound impact on some of the continent’s most fragile communities.

The country has a reputation for doing things better. But Berlin’s disastrous new airport shows that given a chance, it can stuff things up just as badly as everyone else.

PETER BARRON on a night spent at a monastery, where he met one of Spain’s most revered figures

The comedian and broadcaster is back with a conspiracy theorist's guide to the great British holiday

As elusive as they are exclusive, superyachts are the world's most glaring symbols of uber-wealth. Gemma Fottles explores the economics behind them

Few things could better connect the continent than an affordable, integrated rail system joining up its great cities. As airlines struggle, travel horizons shorten and climate change becomes ever more pressing, if it doesn’t happen now, when will it?

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary tells JOHN KAMPFNER, in characteristically forthright style, just what he thinks of the government’s Covid travel rules, the ‘hijacking’ of his aircraft by Belarus and the future of aviation The UK’s travel rules are in chaos. The European Union is starting to open up, but not to Brits. Is ‘delta’, the Indian variant, […]

As Portugal tops the list of ‘green’ destinations for UK tourists, Will Self looks back on trips there and ahead to the future of tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic So, the list of ‘green’ destinations has been published and holiday bookings have already soared. The Great British Jet-Off – a major component of our national […]

TOM CHESSHYRE on tantalising plans to reboot Europe’s legendary rail service for the modern, post-pandemic age. Kraftwerk’s 1977 song Trans Europe Express, inspired by the first-class only rail service of the same name that ran between 130 cities in Europe between 1957 and 1995, is not known for its scintillating lyrics. To a clickety-clack drumbeat – evocative […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on a writer who brings home the strange attraction that hotels have for us, and what it is exactly he is missing most about them. I had an e-mail from a friend the other day that felt like it came from another era. She had, she told me, just booked a long weekend in Bucharest […]

They may be tricky to pronounce, but isthmuses – those narrow strips of land that join larger territories together – have shaped the world we live in, says Stan Abbott. Lacking the romantic allure of the island or the distinct cultural identity of the peninsula, the isthmus is a geographical feature that’s rarely celebrated, or […]

Robert Louis Stevenson might be known for his gripping tales of adventure, but CHARLIE CONNELLY finds comfort in the gently flowing narrative of one of his lesser known works “We made a great stir in Antwerp docks,” would be a great opening line to any book, but it happens to be the first line of […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on three books about pilgrimage, both secular and religious… an activity which has been curbed by the pandemic. With plague afoot in the land and a populace kept subdued by and in thrall to a privileged elite, there is something distinctly medieval about Britain at the dawn of the 2020s. We might not get […]

In the mid-nineties I was living in Penge, south London, and I was on the dole. A pretty harsh double whammy in anyone’s book. I’d spend my days laying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, finding my swooning self-pity resonating at regular intervals with a particular sound that drifted in from outside; a mournful, […]