TRAVEL

I am blindfolded and seated in a vintage armchair set in the center of a darkened, red-lit room with Gothic accents. An actor is performing nearby. I hear their voice, but cannot, of course, see them. I suddenly spring upward in my seat, alarmed at the touch of some sort of cloth — or perhaps a feather? — across my ankles.

I’ll never be entirely sure. For wearing the small veil across my eyes was a requirement to participate in “Poe: Pulse & Pendulum,” the debut offering from new troupe Theatre Obscura L.A. The company’s initial performance contains two one-act plays, modern interpretations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

While the stories are familiar to many, Theatre Obscura increases the levels of discomfort. In this room, I am at times unsettled, at once tracking the movements of the actors while attempting to remain hyper aware of any sudden touch or scent. “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the first half of the program, translates especially well to this setting, its dark sense of demented confinement keeping my nerves on high alert.

Conjuring such a state of anxiety was the point.

“If you take the visual away, it’s going to make you feel uneasy,” says Paul Millet, who devised the concept.

There are jump scares. Downtown event space the Count’s Den has been outfitted with about 50 speakers for the Obscura shows, which run through April 12. Some are visible before one puts on the blindfold. Many, though, are hidden under seats or couches, as the audio will trail the actors around the room, or perhaps a sudden crash or door opening will have me jolting my attention elsewhere.

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is a story of torture, and as the narrator, here played by Melissa Lugo, desperately speaks of a blade swinging above, actors will fan us, timing their waves with each swoosh of the audio. I was prepared for that one, as a fellow theatergoer nearby let out a soft yelp when the unseen gestures first arrived above their head.

For many, sight is the most coveted sense. “If you take that away, you’re already naturally uncomfortable,” Millet says. “So we lean into that. We know you’re going to be uncomfortable. We know this is not the norm. But get on that ride with us. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Discomfort, I think, helps to heighten the experience, and ideally allow it to trigger the emotional reactions that the story does.”

“Poe: Pulse & Pendulum” is two one-act, audio-focused performances of Edgar Allan Poe stories.

(Joe Camareno / Theatre Obscura)

Still, touch is limited in the show. Occasionally a rattling of a chair, but little more. The fluttering I felt near my ankles was to mimic the sensation of a running critter. The troupe will ask for audience consent, and participants can opt out. While I went in wondering if “Poe: Pulse & Pendulum” would seek to recall more extreme haunt experiences with lengthy waivers, Millet wanted to keep it light — an audio play, primarily, with just a few in-the-flesh signals.

“We want people to feel unease, but I don’t want anyone taken out of the story because a boundary or line was crossed,” Millet says.

Scent, too, is used with restraint. There are moments when guests will get a whiff of a fragrance that pairs with the storyline. Millet considers the first run of Theatre Obscure to be an experiment in how much touch and scent audiences may want to endure. Smell, he says, is tricky, as the aroma may linger and become a distraction.

Millet has been honing the concept since 2023. Previously, he was part of the team behind Wicked Lit, which ended in 2019 after running for a number of years at unique locations such as Altadena’s Mountain View Mausoleum. Those immersive performances would feature casts and guests walking the venue. Theatre Obscura, however, is fully seated.

“Poe: Pulse & Pendulum” focuses on the fear that something may happen to us when stripped of sight.

(Joe Camareno / Theatre Obscura)

And while the stories of Poe lend themselves to the Halloween season, spooky events increasingly occur year round. Long-running production “The Willows” is set to wrap in early April, and “Monster Party,” a period piece that takes guests to a devilishly extravagant cocktail party, is re-launching in mid-April. Millet, a longtime theater producer who has a day job in television editing, is hoping to stand out by avoiding “the glut” of horror events that occur each September and October.

Theatre Obscura may face challenges, namely persuading potential guests that “The Pit and the Pendulum” is more than simply a live reading with audio effects.

“You can feel the movement of the characters around you,” Millet says. “You’re in the environment with the story as it unfolds. You can experience it on a more visceral level.”

Blindfolded, I felt Theatre Obscura was mostly playing off our fears rather than giving in to them, largely keying in on our anticipation that something may happen to us when stripped of sight. Lugo in much of “The Pit and the Pendulum” circles guests, who are seated sporadically around the room, allowing each of us to imagine how close or far we may be from the hole we are told is at its center. Each show deals with claustrophobia in some way, either of a space, or of a mind.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is louder, more crowded. The sounds of crashing glass and creaky floorboards had my head working overtime to draw a floorplan, only to then have it distorted when actors would unexpectedly whisper in both of my ears to bring forth the protagonist’s nightmares. While I expected Theatre Obscura to be slightly more aggressive in its uses of touch and scent, it’s a show that asks us to live in our heads, and to sit in our own feeling of trepidation.

“I was intrigued,” Millet says, “with really trying to engage the audience’s imagination.”

Imagine waking up early, eager to peep dazzling carpets of brilliant orange flowers at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. Instagram posts promised a spectacle.

You drive to the reserve north of Los Angeles, but the rolling hills aren’t alive with color.

Bummer. The bloom is over.

Thanks to AI, and a local scientist, such disappointment may soon be a thing of the past.

This year, Steve Klosterman, a biologist who works on natural climate solutions, launched a “wildflower forecast,” powered by a deep-learning model, satellite imagery and weather data.

In a sense, Klosterman, of Santa Monica, developed the tool to meet his own need.

Last spring, the Midwest transplant was hankering to see some wildflowers. He assumed there was some online resource that offered predictions or leveraged satellite images.

“Surely, there must be something,” he recalled thinking. “But there was nothing.”

There are tools. The state reserve operates a live cam trained on one swath of land. Theodore Payne, a California native plant nursery and education center, runs a wildflower hotline, where people can call in and hear weekly recorded reports on hot spots.

“These are all essential resources,” Klosterman said. “At the same time, they’re limited.”

Klosterman isn’t green when it comes to plants. His PhD, at Harvard, focused on the timing of new leaves on trees in the spring and color change in the fall.

For a class project, a team he was part of built a website that predicted those leaf changes in the Boston area. It was a hit.

California poppies bloom in Lancaster, near the state natural reserve, in mid-March.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

To create the poppy bloom predictor, Klosterman turned to AI initially developed for medical imaging. He has harnessed it to instead analyze satellite images of the Antelope Valley.

The model scans 10-by-10-meter squares of land to determine whether poppies are present by their telltale orange color. (It also identifies tiny yellow flowers called goldfields.)

The model is trained on satellite images — which go back nine years — along with past weather data.

It then uses the current forecast, and recent flower status, to peer into the future.

If the mercury is going to hit 100 degrees and wind is picking up — and in previous years that led to withering flowers — that will guide the prediction.

Right now, the model can forecast five days out and is, as Klosterman puts it, “very much a work in progress.” It would be better, more powerful, if it had 100 years to learn from.

As more data are collected, it might someday be able to forecast a week or two out.

Right now, poppies are popping at the reserve in the western Mojave Desert.

It rained throughout the fall and into winter, and poppies need at least seven inches of rain to make a good showing, said Lori Wear, an interpreter at the reserve.

Snowfall in January seems to push them to another level, but that didn’t happen this season. So it’s a good bloom, but not extraordinary, she said.

Still, poppies — California’s state flower — blanket swaths of the protected land.

“It almost looks like Cheeto dust,” she said, “like somebody had Cheetos on their fingers and just smeared it on the landscape.”

Poppies here have typically peaked around mid-April, but variable weather in recent years has made it hard to predict, she said. Klosterman believes right now is likely the zenith.

Also blooming now: goldfields, purple grape soda lupine and owl’s clover. Wear described the latter, also purple, as looking like a “short owl with little eyes looking at you and a little beak.”

An SUV drives through blooms near the reserve. “It almost looks like … somebody had Cheetos on their fingers and just smeared it on the landscape,” said Lori Wear, an interpreter at the reserve.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

On Sunday, Klosterman experienced the blooms for himself, using his technology as a guide.

It offers predictions in two forms. The first is the amount of the valley — shown in a satellite image — covered in poppies and goldfields, expressed as a percentage. The other is an overlay of orange and yellow splotches on the land.

The map showed a fairly high concentration of poppies near a stretch of Highway 138. He went there and, lo and behold, vibrant flowers awaited him. He sent proof: a smiling selfie in front of a sea of blossoms.

Klosterman’s tool may help answer arguably more complex questions than poppy or no poppy, such as a more precise understanding of the conditions the flowers need to thrive.

Experts know rain is key, but it’s more complicated than that.

Steve Klosterman takes a selfie in a field of California poppies.

(Steve Klosterman)

Heavy rain can supercharge invasive grasses, crowding out the blooms. Natives actually tend to do better after several years of drought, once invasives not adapted to the arid climate die out. That’s what led to an epic superbloom in 2017, Joan Dudney, an assistant professor of forest ecology at UC Santa Barbara, told The Times in 2024.

Klosterman wondered if the recent heatwave would desiccate them. But his model didn’t show that, and neither did his trip. So it’s possible other factors play a significant role in their persistence, such as length of day.

The model could also shed light on what could happen to the flowers as the climate warms. Will they migrate to the north? Will there be fewer blooms?

To game that out, Klosterman said you could invent and plug in a weather forecast with higher temperatures.

For now, Klosterman’s forecast is limited to the Antelope Valley. But if it expands to other areas, and other flower types, it could help people like Karina Silva.

Silva woke up at 5 a.m. last Wednesday to travel from her Las Vegas home to Death Valley National Park, hoping to beat the heat and the crowds to the superbloom.

But several hours later, she and her husband, David, were still trying to find it.

The hillside behind her was sprinkled with desert golds, but the display fell short of the riotous eruption of flowers posted on social media. The superbloom ended in early March, according to park officials.

“I was just thinking it was going to be this explosion of different colors,” Silva said by the side of the road overlooking Badwater Basin.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been driving all over Los Angeles doing something I haven’t done in a long time: playing pretend.

I pretended I was in a medieval castle at a French cafe in Miracle Mile and that I was looking for trolls on a fern-filled hike in Griffith Park. I imagined that Tolkien’s elves built the creekside restaurant where I met a friend for brunch in Topanga and that I was eating alongside real witches in a forest-themed dining room in North Hollywood.

In a Whittier tea room, I poured a glittering potion that said “Drink Me” into a glass of Champagne and in Beverly Hills, I stared awestruck at the platonic ideal of a witch’s house, half expecting a bent old lady with a wart on her nose to come out and turn me into a toad.

It’s been a rough start to 2026 and these brief moments of make-believe have served as a joyful balm in sad and scary times. I’m not looking to bypass reality, but taking a break from it every once in a while can be a welcome reprieve. Fortunately, Los Angeles is especially good at creating transporting experiences that drip with fairy-tale ambience. This is the home of Hollywood after all, the land of artifice, the spot where Walt Disney dreamed up the Happiest Place on Earth. Seeking and finding moments of happily ever after, even if they last just a few minutes, is part of the city’s collective DNA.

So grab your broom and make sure to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind you. L.A. has plenty of magic to share. All you need to do is open your mind and explore.

WETHERSPOONS has confirmed that more pubs are opening in Spain, after the success of their first in mainland Europe.

Last month, the famous pub chain opened its first pub outside of the UK at Alicante Airport.

Following this, two more pubs will now open at Barcelona-El Prat Airport in the capital city.

The first one will be at Terminal 1, set to open by September 2026.

This will be followed by a second at Terminal 2 by January 2027.

Passengers will have to go through security to drink at them as they are both airside rather than landside.

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Little else is known about the pubs, including what they will be called, but they will have space for almost 600 passengers.

You can get an early drink too – they’ll be open every day from 5am to 11pm, including real ale.

The menu is likely to be similar to the Alicante menu, which is mainly the British classics with a few Spanish dishes as well.

Drink prices haven’t been confirmed, although the also similar to the Spanish pub, beers are around £3.50.

Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin said: ” We are delighted to have secured two fantastic sites at Barcelona airport.

“In the short time since opening our pub at Alicante airport has proven popular with travellers and we are confident we can replicate that at our two new pubs in Barcelona.”

He added that they aim to open more pubs in mainland Europe in the next few years, particularly at airports.

The Sun’s Assistant Travel Editor Sophie Swietochowski was one of the first to try the new Wetherspoons in Alicante, called Castell de Santa Barbara.

She explained: “The pub has pitched close to the gates for UK flights to draw in the near 650,000 Brits that pass through this airport monthly.

“Floor-to-ceiling windows flood the small space with light, while candy floss, glossy tiles give it a warm atmosphere.

“There’s a tea and coffee station in the corner, while behind the bar there’s not a whiff of scampi fries or Walkers in sight but instead European holiday favourite, Lays.

“This one boasts something that all other airport Wetherspoons do not, however – an outdoor terrace, where you can catch those last glimpses of Spanish sunshine before jetting off home to drizzly England.”

In the mean time, Spain is home to a dupe pub called Weatherspains, as well as 100 Montaditos which is dubbed the Spanish Wetherspoons.

Staying in the UK? Wetherspoons is also rolling out more pubs at a number of Haven holiday parks across the country.

Imagine cutting the cost of accommodation on your next holiday to about £5 a day. You can have a whole house, rather than just a bedroom. And you can go almost anywhere in the world and stay as long as you like, within reason. Welcome to house swapping.

You’re sceptical, I know. I was, too. Our terrace house was too small. Too overflowing with stuff. The 1980s kitchen was too old (and battered). We aren’t in a nice enough neighbourhood. Who would want to stay here? Lots of people, it turned out.

Our first swap was with a pair of retired Australian judges who had lived in the UK decades before. They came to our house first and, over a cup of tea and cake in our living room, we talked about where to find a good pint and the best fish and chips locally, as well as mastering the idiosyncrasies of how to run our dishwasher. They told us about their favourite local parks (warned us about snakes) and when to put out the bins, before we headed for our month-long stay at their house in Perth. It’s these conversations and connections that really make house swapping special.

Yes, we have stayed in some truly extraordinary homes. There was a house in Florida where we watched rocket launches while lounging in the pool; a clapboard cottage with a hot tub in the Stockholm suburbs; and a swanky five-bedroom villa in the south of France that we shared with friends. We couldn’t have afforded any of these if it were not for house swapping. In fact, the swaps themselves are free, but I pay $235 (£177) a year to use Home Exchange, a house swap booking platform, which works out at about £5 a night for the 35 or so nights I used it last year.

The greatest pleasure, however, is in the genuine relationships forged. Through the messages exchanged before and during the swap, friendships are created. You become, however briefly, part of each other’s lives. We have swapped pets and cars, and watered plants along the way. For a week, we became passionately involved in helping pick a summer school for our Basque guests’ kids. Warm welcomes are universal. We’ve had olive oil from the garden grove of a house in Greece and marmalade from Seville. In return, guests at our house can expect to find sparkling wine from Kent, Essex jam and a pile of Cadbury chocolate bars to try – French guests are big fans of the Crunchie.

Even in challenging moments we found friendship, such as when our shower sprang a leak and rained all over the dining table. We had to arrange an emergency repair via video call with our Spanish guests, an Albanian plumber and a UK insurer, all while frantically looking for a reliable phone signal in the countryside. The babel of languages resulted in a tube of silicone being applied and both parties leaving five-star reviews.

I won’t go back to hotels. I have saved tens of thousands of pounds over the past five years, but what has really hooked me is the interactions with hosts and guests that make my holidays more fulfilling. It’s like having a friend everywhere you go.

Q&A – Everything you need to know

Will I be comfortable house swapping?
If you’re precious about the things in your home or anxious about someone sleeping in your bed, a swap is not for you. Likewise, if spending the last day of your holiday cleaning is a deal-breaker.

How do I house swap?
For some sites, you pay a flat annual membership fee (£100-£200) to use a booking platform with thousands of homes. I use Home Exchange because it verifies member identities and offers some guarantees such as damage, theft and cancellation protection. Kindred is a smaller and generally more expensive rival, focused on upmarket homes. Instead of locking you into membership, it charges variable service and cleaning fees.

How does it work?
Classic swaps are simultaneous; you exchange houses on the same dates. But non-direct swaps are also allowed via a points system: you are awarded credits for stays at your house, which you can then spend to stay somewhere else.

What about scams and safety?
Everyone on Home Exchange is a host and a guest, so there is a high degree of trust. Most swaps don’t involve money, so scams are rare. The only exception is a cleaning fee, payable when the stay is at an end. If you’re asked for money in advance, it’s a scam.

How do I pick my accommodation?
This is time-consuming. The website looks similar to Airbnb, where you filter by availability, destination and the type of property you want, but you need to match with a host, too. Hosts and guests both have ratings from previous stays, but some people still like to phone or video call before agreeing to an exchange. Then once the exchange is agreed, there are messages to organise the swap and answer questions such as how to use the cooker or where the bedding is. Many hosts prepare a house manual. Cancellations are rare but do happen, usually due to illness in our experience. The one time it happened to us, Home Exchange helped us find a new host in the same city, and it will pay for a hotel in a true last-minute emergency.

Do I need to own a luxury house?
No. If you have a pool, hot tub or luxurious mansion, you will certainly get more offers, but flats and smaller houses near popular UK destinations (whether that’s Edinburgh, or the Dorset coast) do just as well. Most houses, like ours, are completely ordinary.

Do I need to put my stuff in storage?
Clear a few drawers, perhaps a wardrobe, for guests, and that’s it. Most of the houses on Home Exchange are family homes.

What about cleaning?
You do need to scrub that oven and clean that grout. Cleanliness expectations are high (and should be agreed upfront). We usually spend much of the last day of our holiday cleaning, and return to find our own house absolutely sparkling. Some hosts give you the option of paying a cleaner.

And DIY?
One of the fringe benefits of house swapping is that it has made us look after our house a little better. Sticky door handles and dripping taps need to be dealt with.

What if I break something?
We have broken small things, as have our guests; usually this is simply forgiven. Put more precious items away. For more expensive items, such as a TV or screen door, house swap platforms usually offer a level of cover, but you should make sure you have home insurance.

Will my home insurance cover my house swap?
Ask. Some insurers offer no cover, others offer it for a certain number of exchanges, or you may need to buy a bolt-on. House swapping is still relatively unusual, so persevere to get a clear answer. Insurers that cover holiday lets, such as Pikl, are also useful.

Are there legal restrictions?
Because no money is exchanged, house swapping is not restricted in the same way as Airbnb and similar services – except in Amsterdam, where only reciprocal swaps are allowed (so no paying with points). You do need to check visa rules if looking after someone’s pet – some countries (such as the US) may view this as providing a service and in breach of a visitor visa.

Other house swap sites
Keybento, Kindred, HomeLink

Rory Boland is the editor of Which? Travel

The cost of a family summer staycation can vary significantly

With the UK experiencing some milder weather this week, and with April just around the corner, many parents are likely thinking ahead to the summer holidays. As children are off school for, usually, around six weeks, the summer is an ideal time to take a family trip.

However, as anyone who has looked at going abroad over the summer will know, prices jump up significantly while the schools are closed. Going on a break in the UK, then, can be a more affordable option. But how much it will cost you depends on where you go – and prices can differ hugely.

We have compared the price of a week-long break at some of the UK’s best loved holiday parks. Prices are based on the cheapest accommodation available for seven nights, from August 7, for a family of four.

Starting with Center Parcs, a week’s stay in a Woodland Lodge at the Whinfell Forest resort will set you back from £2138. The lodge has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and an extra toilet, and comes with a dishwasher, brick-built barbecue stand, furnished private patio, safe, a cot and a highchair, a fully-equipped kitchen, a 40″ flat screen TV, and more.

Over at Butlin’s in Skegness, a family of four can book a Comfort Room for the same dates from £962. There are two bedrooms – one with a double bed, the other with two single beds – as well as a bathroom. However there is no kitchen, and no other facilities are mentioned on the booking site – and towels and housekeeping are not included.

And at Haven’s Marton Mere site, a family of four can book a break from £639 – although this jumps to £809 if you want access to swimming pools, activities, and entertainment venues. The cheapest accommodation is the Saver Caravan which is described online as having two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

Other facilities mentioned on the Haven website include a heater or gas fire in the lounge, a 32″ TV, an under-counter fridge, and beds being made up ahead of your arrival.

All of the above prices were correct at the time of publication. Across all three holiday parks there are a range of accommodation available, with these varying in price. The types of accommodation mentioned in this article were the cheapest available at the time of publication.

MANY hotels claim to be big on wellness, but the recently-opened Cotswolds escape Hyll has mastered it.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Where is Hyll?

Buried deep in the Cotswolds countryside, near Chipping Campden and fancy members clubs like Soho Farmhouse, Hyll is undoubtedly as stylish as its plush neighbours – only you won’t need to sell out for an extortionate members fee.

Named after the old English word hill, meaning elevated piece of ground, rural views are pretty spectacular from this retreat’s high perch.

There’s a car park on site or the hotel can arrange transfers from the train station.

What’s it like?

Not just a hotel, Hyll is more of a sanctuary where guests are gently encouraged to switch off – whether that’s with a board game in front of a freshly-stoked fire or with a scenic stroll around the 60 acres of manicured grounds.

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Views are just as gorgeous from within the Grade-II listed 14th century manor house thanks to its original stone frame, timber beams and framed artwork that wouldn’t look out of place in a French farmhouse.

What are the rooms like?

The 26 unique bedrooms (some in the main house and some in the courtyard) feel homely yet luxurious with plump feathered cushions, freestanding bathtubs and chic coffee table books.

If the strict colour palette of neutral browns and sandy tones doesn’t soothe you, a guided yoga nidra (a type of specific relaxation yoga) session sure will.

A series of wellness videos have been designed exclusively for hotel guests and are text to your phone ahead of bedtime.

What is there to eat and drink?

Eat in the dining room, living room, outside or wherever you please, thanks to the laid back “mi casa, su casa” ethos.

Dinner relies on local ingredients sourced from nearby farms, mills and distilleries.

Star dishes include Briar Hill Farm hogget served with salsa verde and baklava tart soaked in the hotel’s own honey.

Post dinner, retire to the marshmallow-like sofas next door with a book and signature cocktail – I liked the yuzu and plum sour, both tart and sweet.

Non-drinkers are catered for, too, with a decent selection of no and low cocktails including a sharp No-groni.

Breakfast is a farm-style mix of homemade granola and hot options like full English and scotch woodcock (scrambled eggs on toast, topped with salty anchovies) both on the menu.

Breakfast hampers can also be delivered straight to your bed.

What else is there to do?

Small books labelled ‘Do Nothing’ and ‘Do something’ are left on bedside tables with suggestions on how to fully embrace and unwind in the Cotswolds nature.

In-room massages can be booked on request and dogs are welcome in certain bedrooms and throughout living rooms and restaurants in the main house.

The essence of the place, in general, is to do very little.

I’d recommend just kicking back with a book – each of the three lounge areas are kitted out with bookshelves and artsy side tables covered in fiction and non-fictions reads that you can borrow for the duration of your stay.

Thanks to a partnership with Borzoi Books, these are refreshed on a monthly basis.

You can even arrange to take a book home with you, for a fee.

How much are rooms at Hyll?

Rooms cost from £210 per night including breakfast.

Is Hyll family friendly?

Kids are welcome but it’s not the most child-friendly of places.

Cost and additional child beds are available on request, however.

Is there access for guests with disabilities?

Although, staff are always on hand to help, Hyll is not the ideal place for wheelchair users.

Given the historic property is Grade II listed, a lift cannot be installed and therefore bedrooms are accessed via stairs.

Looking for a place to stay? For more hotel inspiration click here.

YOU can explore a Santorini-like island with whitewashed villages for a fraction of the price of the real deal.

Folegandros is an island in the Cyclades known for both pretty beaches and cheaper hotels than its sister island.

Unlike its neighbours Mykonos and Santorini, Folegandros doesn’t have an airport or huge hotels – the island didn’t even have electricity until 1974.

It’s been dubbed an ‘under-the-radar Greek island’ seeing much fewer visitors.

Santorini gets around 3.4million visitors each year, meanwhile Folegandros gets 50,000.

There’s still lots to see and visitors will find most of the island’s life in the main town of Chora of which is perched on a cliff around 200 metres high.

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It’s where most of the shops, restaurants, cafes and tavernas are found.

Make sure to try Matsata, which is a handmade fresh pasta, which looks similar to tagliatelle, that was founded on Folegandros.

Usually it’s served with cooked meats like rooster, rabbit, or goat in a rich tomato sauce and topped with grated cheese.

For those who want the best island view, take the steep, winding path up to the Church of Panagia.

CNN listed Chora in their top seven most beautiful villages in Europe, writing: “Santorini’s streets sag with admirers.

“But on Folegandros, a nearby island, you’ll find similar architecture—streets paved in slate, whitewashed buildings decorated with colourful flowers, the occasional Greek Orthodox church with a bright blue dome—without the crowds.”

Being a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, Folegandros has plenty of beautiful beaches and has been praised for its “emerald-blue” waters.

Some of the island’s top ones include Katergo Beach which has white sands and blue waters.

Visitors have gone as far as to say it’s the “prettiest beach on Folegandros.”

Another is Livadaki Beach which most visitors access by boat rather than foot.

Its remote location means it is less busy than other beaches on the island and it’s said to be an ideal spot for snorkelling.

Agios Nikolaos Beach is family-friendly with a small bar and taverna on the shoreline.

Depending on the season, the average price of a hotel in Santorini varies but typically ranges from £143–£251 per night – but luxury stays can be as high as £1,000.

While Folegandros does have some luxe stays, there are some more affordable stays too.

The Beachfront Cycladic House can be booked from £74 per night on Booking.com.

The holiday home has a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, a balcony and it’s just minutes’ walk away from multiple beaches.

Rooms at the Kallisti Hotel which is built in the style of a small village can be booked from £82 per night.

It has a swimming pool, bar, breakfast room and rooms with balconies with beautiful island views.

The easiest way for Brits to get to Folegandros is by a ferry from Athens which takes around four hours.

Brits can also fly from the UK to Athens in under four hours from as little as £22.

For more beautiful Greek islands, here are four better value islands where locals go on holiday with Santorini-like houses and secluded beaches.

And here are the alternative Greek islands that could save you £1,000 – including two spots everyone thinks are expensive.

Nate McFall has spent the past six years travelling the globe curating tourism content for social media, but he says a cold North East beach town is still one of his favourite places

A globetrotter who has dedicated the last six years to travelling the world claims the finest destination he’s discovered is a “cold little beach town” in the North East of England.

Nate McFall, whose videos focus on highlighting unusual accommodation and travel adventures, posted on Instagram where he admitted there’s nowhere quite like home.

“I spent six years travelling the world, and yet somehow this is still one of my favourite places I have ever been,” he opened in a clip filmed on the shoreline. “I didn’t realise when I left, but this place shaped me in more ways than I can explain.”

While he may have visited Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia recently, Nate maintains this chilly North East coastal spot still “hits different” whenever he returns.

“It was actually here about eight years ago that I tried surfing for the first time,” he went on, displaying a photograph from the moment in 2018.

“It was cold – like properly cold – but something shifted in me that day because if I could surf in the freezing cold North Sea, what else is possible?”

Nate admitted that throughout his journeys he had been “chasing something” he’d already discovered.

“This is Tynemouth,” he revealed. “A small coastal town, but it’s full of life. Wherever you look, people are enjoying this place running along the seafront, swimming in the sea and surfing.”

Nate also pointed out the wealth of coffee shops dotted around the town, noting that at weekends, Tynemouth’s Victorian railway station “turns into a bustling market” of people selling “delicious food, crafts and handmade trinkets.”

The traveller also declared Tynemouth home to the “best chip shop in England”. He made his way back down towards the beach to show the reasons why.

“It’s served out of what is basically a shipping container [called The View],” he explained. “There’s a fresh sea breeze and with fishcake in hand, I top it off by looking at 1,000 year old ruins [Tynemouth Priory and Castle] right next to me.”

Nate concluded by stating he’s utterly convinced the UK possesses beauty that countless people fail to appreciate.

Enjoying a chilli fish empanada from Riley’s Fish Shack, he closed: “It’s proof that you don’t always need palm trees or plane tickets. Some of the most unreal places are right here on our doorstep.”

Writing in response, one Instagram user enthused: “I love this – I’m from Whitley Bay and am a wild swimmer so am always at the beach when I visit home. It’s such a special place.”

A second person declared: “Love Tynemouth and Riley’s fish shack, on a summers night as it gets a little chillier, sitting around one of the fire pits with friends is such a good way to finish a weekend.”

A third commented: “Love this. I am in New Zealand. So many beautiful places in the world. No country has the title of best place. Tynemouth looks cool. I will visit it now when I next visit UK.”

And a fourth person praised: “Thanks Nate. Spent many lovely days at Tynemouth as a child. Haven’t been back in 50 years since my family moved to Florida, USA. But still have fabulous memories. Thanks so much for reminding me.”

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