trail

Assam, India – Debiram Panika, a 37-year-old daily wage labourer from northeastern India’s Assam state, would speak to his wife and two daughters on video calls every day from Dimapur, a town in neighbouring Nagaland state where he worked.

But when his phone rang at about 11am on July 19, there was panic in the voice of his 30-year-old wife, Dipika.

“I could only see my wife telling me on the video call, ‘This is it for us. We are going to die,’ before the call was disconnected,” Panika recalled, speaking to Al Jazeera.

It was the last time they spoke. Moments later, rising waters from the nearby Dikhow River, which snakes past their village in Assam’s Sivasagar district, surged into their bamboo-and-mud home with a ferocious current and swept away Dipika and four-year-old daughter Radhika.

“The water came flooding like sea waves, and they were gone in a flash,” Panika said, as he stood in front of the ruined home he has since returned to.

Sivasagar is part of the eastern Assam region, also referred to as Upper Assam. Incessant rains between July 18 and July 20 submerged the region and the neighbouring Naga Hills of Nagaland.

Monsoon floods usually impact northern and western Assam, and parts of central Assam, the worst. But several Nagaland districts bordering Upper Assam received heavy rainfall on those three days, leading to dozens of landslides. This intense run-off swelled Naga Hills-origin rivers and caused devastation downstream.

The resultant floods killed more than 100 people, destroyed 2,700 villages, and displaced 700,000 people across the state. The state government says 1.2 million people were impacted in all, their lives disrupted.

Most waters have since receded, but Radhika’s body is yet to be found.

“I look for Radhika every day in the bushes, tirelessly,” Panika said, holding back his tears. “Her last words, calling me ‘Papa’, are still reverberating in my ears.”

Panika’s other daughter, Ridhika, 10, was at a relative’s place a few metres away when her mother and sister were swept away by the flood. Ridhika held onto a bamboo bush and was later rescued by locals.

‘Apocalyptic event’

Several riverine villages in Sivasagar have been wrecked by debris carried down by the waters of the Dikhow from the surrounding Naga Hills.

Tens of thousands of tree trunks lie piled up in places that used to be homes, as lush rice fields, the main source of livelihood, have been washed away.

Kukil Das, a 30-year-old Facebook vlogger in Debiram’s village of Nepali Khuti, told Al Jazeera that “the torrent of the flood was like an apocalyptic event seen in the movies.

“Trees as tall as 30 to 40 metres (100-130ft) came down from the hills, flooding the river, and wiped out everything as they crashed against our homes,” he said. “There is no home left. It was a tsunami.”

Das and his friend Shravan Prasad, from the neighbouring Bihubor village, said they saved at least 1,000 lives by using boats the two villages had at that time.

“We put together a group of friends with the seven boats and started rescuing people turn by turn for two days and nights without food and water,” Prasad said.

Das said the floods forced residents to take shelter on the roofs of concrete homes they could find, as cries for help and the sounds of the river washing away homes echoed in the neighbourhood.

Laxmi Sharma, who owned one such concrete house, said she provided shelter to at least 60 people on her terrace after the river water gushed into Nepali Khuti.

“People ran towards the roof of my building. We thought we were going to die,” Sharma, 46, told Al Jazeera. “But it is a miracle that we are still alive even though my house was barely out of water.”

Not everyone could escape the flood’s wrath, though.

In Sivasagar’s Simaluguri village, two friends – Reihana Ahmed, a Muslim, and Ratul Swarna, a Hindu, both in their 30s – were swept away in the torrent.

When Ahmed, a mother of two, was drowning as the deluge entered her village, Swarna, who did not know how to swim, jumped to save her without thinking about his life.

The two friends were later found dead in the paddy fields. “It was humanity that won in a disaster like this,” Ahmed’s husband Aminul Haque said with a sorrowful smile.

‘Human-made flood’

Besides the eroding banks of the Dikhow River in Prajabasti, another flood-affected village, 75-year-old Asor Ali sat in disbelief next to his wife, Jamila Khatun.

“Even the generations preceding me have not seen a flood like this,” he said, staring at the flowing river. “Even the 1950s earthquake that triggered the floods here did not do so much damage.”

A magnitude 8.6 earthquake hit Assam and Tibet across the border in 1950, altering the region’s riverine system. Nearly 5,000 people died. Since then, Assam has witnessed frequent floods, which intensify during the monsoons, says Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, a researcher on the basin of the Brahmaputra, the region’s major river: The Naga Hills rivers that flooded Upper Assam are its tributaries.

But residents say this year’s deadly deluge is not just a natural phenomenon.

Biren Gogoi, 43, says rampant stone and sand mining in regional rivers, coupled with aggressive deforestation and coal extraction in Nagaland’s Mon district, triggered the devastation.

Global Nature Watch, an open-source online platform that provides real-time data on deforestation across the world, showed that Nagaland lost 14 percent of its tree cover between 2002 and 2025, with Mon district bordering Assam’s Sivasagar being the most affected.

According to the latest report published in 2023 by the Forest Survey of India, Nagaland has lost about 794.88 square kilometres (306.9 square miles) of forest cover between 2013 and 2023.

Al Jazeera travelled along the Assam-Nagaland border and saw signs of deforestation on the hills and mining activities in both the states. Satellite images also confirmed rampant coal mining in Nagaland’s Mon district, and stone mining crushers on Assam’s side, especially in Bihubor, one of the epicentres of the Assam flood.

While Mon’s Deputy Commissioner Wennyei Konyak acknowledged the possibility of illegal mining in the district, he added that the land was protected under Indian laws to uphold the rights of Indigenous tribes, and therefore government interference in the area was limited.

“I would not blame mining activities for the flood. It was just the wrath of nature,” he told Al Jazeera.

But experts and political leaders in Assam say mining played a direct role in the floods.

Debabrata Saikia of the opposition Congress party, who is the legislator from Sivasagar constituency, accused Assam’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of allowing illegal excavations for stone and sand on the Dikhow riverbank, resulting in a cratered wasteland that worsened the floods.

“This unchecked plundering of riverbeds and hills under the ruling government has engineered this into a man-made disaster,” Saikia told Al Jazeera.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, however, rejected the allegation on August 4, blaming excessive rainfall in Nagaland for triggering the Upper Assam deluge. On August 14, Ranoj Pegu, a cabinet minister in the state’s BJP government, blamed erratic rainfall due to climate change for the deluge.

Rahman, the Brahmaputra river basin researcher, believes that while the climate crisis played a role, the flood was “purely human-made”, caused by the fracturing of the landscape.

“The unrestrained stone extraction from the Dikhow riverbed has damaged the river’s natural cushion,” Rahman said. “That means the river loses the capacity to resist high flows of torrents that break embankments and cause floods.”

An official document from 2022, seen by Al Jazeera, also highlights mining as a factor in possible large-scale floods downstream on the Assam side.

Al Jazeera reached out to senior district officials in Sivasagar as well as state government officials for their comments on allegations of unchecked coal mining but did not get any response.

Back in Prajabasti village, Ali, the septuagenarian, is mentally preparing himself for future floods.

“It will happen again, so long as there is greed for land and coal in humans,” he said. “Nature pays them back.”

Growing up in a hiking family with a history along the Appalachian Trail, I became obsessed this summer with 91-year-old Dale “Greybeard” Sanders’ attempt to recapture his record as the oldest person to complete the more than 2,190-mile trek across 14 states. Known as “thru-hikers,” these backpackers walk the entire trail within a 12-month period. Each week, I’d search online for videos showing Greybeard’s journey, a pep in his step or the grueling grind across the miles. The current recordholder, M.J. “Nimblewill Nomad” Eberhart, who knew my parents, achieved this feat at age 83 in 2021, taking the honor from Greybeard, who set a record at age 82 in 2017. I wasn’t surprised to learn the two men were close friends; they even look alike, with their long white beards and sparkling eyes.

But Monday morning this week, with only 142 miles remaining, Greybeard announced he was heading home for rest in Tennessee. He’d spent a night in a Maine hospital due to complications from a fall and then learned his mother-in-law had died. “When it rains unfortunate incidents, it seems to come in buckets,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

These age-defying records and pivots felt personal.

It wasn’t accidental how the Appalachian Trail became my family’s backbone.

When I was about 7, my parents brought my younger siblings and me to Springer Mountain in Georgia, our daypacks filled with cans of Vienna sausages, boxes of raisins, a change of clothes and a sleeping bag.

“If you continue on this trail, you can walk all the way to Maine!” my dad said, pointing northward.

The path felt like a magical forested portal far from coastal Alabama where we lived. As a child, I couldn’t imagine how hiking would shape my parents as they got older: their physical fitness, spiritual connection to nature and access to community — all assets in aging well, according to extensive research. But more importantly, the outdoors would help them, and ultimately me, learn to adapt to change. That’s a survival skill for us all.

With the trail name “Fairhope,” my brother Laurence became the first in our family to complete the Appalachian Trail in 1992, followed by my parents, known as “Annie and the Salesman,” in 1994. Then my sister married a thru-hiker from north Florida.

“Hiking is a walking meditation, a way to carry everything we need,” my mom told me. “We may not leave you much money, but our legacy will be lives of adventure.”

Pursuing a trifecta of long-distance hikes after the Appalachian Trail, my parents completed the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada and nearly half of the Continental Divide Trail when I had my own health crisis. An amniocentesis revealed a serious genetic defect in the chromosomes of the child I was carrying — years before the current extreme restrictions on abortion care. When my parents happened to call from a payphone near the trail, I shared my heartbreaking decision to end the pregnancy.

“We’ll find a way there,” my mom said.

I don’t remember much discussion about abortion when I was younger, and I believe the community of young hikers over many years helped shape my parents’ evolving mindsets on many issues (as well as my mom’s newfound comfort cussing with her Southern drawl).

Somehow they hitchhiked to find a rental car and drove cross-country to Warren Wilson College in western North Carolina, where I still live and teach environmental education. This is a work college where all students hold jobs on campus like farmer, fiber artist and genetics lab tech. Like the trail, it’s a place with steep learning curves.

“Sometimes you have to change course,” my mom said, “when you sense the right path to take.” While she spoke, she held my 3-year-old, who would stay home with my dad while we drove more than five hours to a hospital in Virginia.

More than a month after returning to the Continental Divide Trail, my mom came down with a severe stomach virus, which my father caught a few days later. Much like Greybeard’s pivot, they decided to pause the hike. “The trail will still be here, but mom had a feeling it was time to go home,” my dad said.

Less than a year later in 2003, my mother, 58, was killed in a cycling accident, hit by a teen driver in Fairhope, our hometown. With time and a few trial runs, my dad returned to hike for a month on the Continental Divide Trail without her.

“I was never lonely, but I missed her every day,” he said.

In 2005, wearing a reflective vest and biking on the shoulder of the road, my dad, 64, was hit and killed by another teen driver. At their gravesites, we placed two metal sculptures, the “Final Blaze,” gifts from the Appalachian Trail community, many members of whom came to shovel earth upon the graves.

Since then, I’ve corresponded with Nimblewill Nomad, the record holder and caretaker of a hostel at Flagg Mountain, the start of the Pinhoti Trail in Alabama. There he has dreams to create a community where elders who are hikers can live together in the montane longleaf pine ecosystem.

“Your parents’ heart was years ago divinely placed in trust, in a chest — yours,” he wrote to me years after their deaths.

Now 60, I have outlived my mother, and I’m also surrounded by young people — my two daughters and my students — just as my parents were on their long-distance adventures. My undergrads are rightly fearful about the climate crisis but working in community to find their way. They’ve read the research documenting how the outdoors, including urban green spaces, improves cognition, social connection and physical strength, while decreasing depression and anxiety in all ages, but especially seniors. Nature helps humans adapt to change, and not everyone has proximity to it.

My students also know the Trump administration has cut funding for and even decreased the size of our public lands. They’ve met alums with careers in conservation whose federal jobs no longer exist. And we’re still recovering here from Hurricane Helene, a devastating climate disaster almost two years ago.

But what I know for sure, I tell them, is we must join with others to protect both people and places, even when we don’t know how this path will end. That’s my parents’ legacy to me.

While prepping for classes this week, I checked updates from Greybeard, who was home under the care of his physician for exhaustion after the rugged southern mountains in Maine — but he was cleared to hike again and intended to complete the trail. Regardless of the record-breaking deadline of Sept. 6, he’s adapting to a new “finish plan” and shared this truth for us all: “Together we will conquer this seemingly impossible task.”

Mallory McDuff is the author of several books, including “Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love.” She teaches environmental education at Warren Wilson College.

Canterbury for Evensong. Is there a more delightful cluster of syllables in the English language? Old English, I should say, as æfensang comes from that tongue, an update on the Latin-derived “vespers”. But whatever you call the service, Canterbury Cathedral does it in style. How beautiful the singing from the choristers in their white and purple. How beautiful the light as it honeys the stone of the quire. I had been in the city only an hour or so, and considered this early evening worship a sort of overture for my stay.

What a relief to get inside the great stone building. The lovely old city was horrible with heat. A statue of Chaucer on High Street appeared overdressed in robe, cloak and hat. He held out a page inscribed with the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales: “When in April the sweet showers fall … Then people long to go on pilgrimages.” The bronze had been hot to the touch and I began to suspect that I’d made a mistake starting my own pilgrimage at midsummer.

Walking to the cathedral, I had passed the former site of the Royal Fountain, where the travel writer HV Morton stayed in 1939. Morton chose the inn because it was quiet, Canterbury being very noisy in his experience, forever busy with tourist traffic. “And who can deny,” he wrote, “that the mobility given to masses of people by the cheap motor-car and the motor-bus has revived a wave of secular pilgrimage in Protestant England within the past 20 years and multiplied relics in a way unparalleled since the heyday of the Middle Ages?”

One could voice similar sentiments now. Pilgrimage is having a moment and has been for a while. According to YouGov research for the British Pilgrimage Trust in 2025, 3.7 million British adults have already made a pilgrimage, and almost one in five are considering making one. What is going on?

Torin Brown is the man to ask. The pilgrim officer at the cathedral meets many arriving in the city on foot and others for whom it is the start of a long, challenging walk. “We’ve seen a resurgence in pilgrimage in the last 10 years, especially since Covid. People are looking back to the old ways in their search for meaning. Even those who declare themselves atheists are engaging in this ancient religious ritual of walking to sacred spaces.”

Canterbury’s popularity as a pilgrimage site was accelerated by the murder in the cathedral of archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170 and his speedy elevation to sainthood. His shrine was among the most popular in Europe.

There are a number of historic routes to Canterbury, among them the Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester, the Old Way from Southampton, and the Augustine Camino from Rochester. Sarah Mullally, the new archbishop, spent six days walking from St Paul’s Cathedral ahead of her installation in March this year. My plan was to walk the English leg of the Via Francigena, which links Canterbury with Rome. This would mean reaching Dover in a day – about 20 miles. I had an OS map, the Via Francigena app, and a pilgrim passport, which Torin stamped before my departure. “You are now part of this wonderful history and tradition of pilgrimage,” he said.

I wouldn’t be leaving until the following day, so there was time for a proper look around the cathedral. They were tuning the organ, the building echoing with eerie drones and groans, which somehow gave a medieval air. I sat in the nave, beneath a vault built during the reign of Henry IV, and watched as a woman with a silver bob worked her way down the south aisle, cleaning memorials and tombs. She had a feather duster in one hand, a yellow cloth in the other and carried a pale blue handbag in the crook of her left arm. Her name, she told me, was Cilla.

“I’m one of the Holy Dusters! We’re the lowest of the low!” In the cathedral hierarchy, she said, the volunteer cleaners were below the florists and the welcomers. “And the older I get, the more that suits me.”

Cilla didn’t seem the sort of lady whose age one asks, so I contented myself with observing that the building was beautiful. “Isn’t it! I grew up in Salisbury, so I’m used to a more modern cathedral, but this is growing on me. Well, it would after 47 years.”

And she went on her way up the north aisle, dusting recumbent effigies of archbishops and deans, not neglecting to wipe beneath the ruff of Sir John Boys, who died in 1612. Forget memento mori, here was the true equality of the grave, every great man coming to the same humble pass – his stone face tickled by the feathers of the Holy Duster.

Next morning, I was out at first light. The heatwave was intensifying and I wanted to get ahead of the sun. A gull sat high on the cathedral gate, looking down as I touched the scallop shell, symbol of pilgrimage, carved into the wooden door.

The route is waymarked with the logo of the Via Francigena: a pilgrim carrying a staff. It follows the North Downs Way, so you can also look for the acorn sign.

Mist lay in the fields, working its alchemy. Copses became floating islands. Pylons were robot ramblers; I envied the length of their stride. Still, despite my shorter pace, I reached Shepherdswell by 8am and refilled my water bottle from a tap set into the church wall.

I had thought of stopping at this village and catching the train to Dover. To press on meant another 10 miles. But I was too much in love with the idea of walking to the coast – until the land, not my legs, gave out.

Over the next hours, I had cause to regret that decision. The sun, so gentle at rising, turned vicious. Nine felt like noon. What would noon feel like? The earth in field paths was hard and cracked. Nodules of flint lay around like bones. I considered lying down and adding my own. Pilgrimage? More like an act of atonement. Henry II, in penance for Becket’s murder, walked barefoot into Canterbury and was whipped by the monks. That was my whole vibe now.

Once in a while, I’d pass a garden and someone would look up from watering their roses and say good morning. I said it back, but wondered: “How can it still be morning?” Worst of all was a man floating in his pool, happy as a hippo in a mudhole. I was too Scottish and reserved to ask if I could join him.

Arriving in Dover at midday, I went to the museum to get my pilgrim passport stamped. If continuing the Via Francigena, I’d catch a ferry to Calais. But I had another destination in mind. I passed a sign saying Welcome to England and another for Dame Vera Lynn Way and then there they were – the White Cliffs. So bright, so beautiful. The Channel was a blue haze; France a shadow.

I hope one day, before long, to be on the other side of that water, exploring the cathedrals of Europe. But, for now, this footsore pilgrim was on a more humdrum quest: ice-cream and a pack of blister plasters.

Estel Farrell-Roig travelled to Romania with Intrepid to take on a section of the Transilvanica Trail, a 1,400 kilometer long route that crosses Romania diagonally from Putna to Drobeta Turnu Severin

It’s not every year you turn 32. It’s also not every year you celebrate it by hiking around Romania.

Transilvanica Trail was sold to me as Romania’s answer to the Camino de Santiago, a walking route that stretches across northern Spain, which is enjoying a huge surge in popularity.

In its totality, the Via Transilvanica, or “the road that unites”, is a 1,400 kilometer long route that crosses Romania diagonally from Putna to Drobeta Turnu Severin.

As fun as that sounds, my journey was a little shorter. Guided by Intrepid, I was taking on five days of the route, managing around 10km a day. That might not sound like a lot, the idea of that much hiking made me nervous.

I needn’t have been.

What unfolded was a trip like no other, which left me desperate to go back for more.

Day 1

My alarm went off at 4.30am, ending a night at a Stansted Airport hotel. While this certainly felt brutal, the prospect of being on a flight without a three-year-old still seemed like a luxury to me. Compared to my usual journeys filled with Paw Patrol, drawing, toys and snacks, this was such an easy, smooth ride. I just slept.

Landed in Cluj-Napoca, trip leader Raluca bundled me into a minibus and we headed north.

Before setting off, we are fed (something the Romanians are very good at, as I will quickly learn). I loved the delicious pepper and mushroom soup with sour cream, while the roast chicken with potatoes was so full of flavour too. Little did I expect what a culinary journey I was about to embark on.

Day 2

Up at 8.30am after a good night’s sleep, I enjoyed a typical Romanian breakfast at the family-owned Pension Elegance at Guru Humorului.

The hotel itself is not pretentious – and not what we would probably class as a 4* hotel in the UK – but it is comfortable and homely. My room had a small balcony overlooking the gorgeous countryside. What else could I ask for?

First stop was the UNESCO-listed Sucevița Monastery. The painted monastery is home to 80 nuns and is gorgeous. Even having grown up in a country of Catholic churches, it was unlike anything I had seen before.

Afterwards, it was time to start hiking. The weather was a bit misty, but thankfully not rainy. Our hike started at Palma Pass checkpoint and led us through spruce forests. I found the hike on the first day rewarding and exciting; I felt pleased with myself for comfortably managing the 10km walk.

I was definitely ready for lunch by the time we stopped at Popas la Cosma, one of the guesthouses along the trail, famous for its authentic local dairy products made by shepherds. They could not have been more welcoming, showing us the accommodation and how they prepared the food. As well as the usual beds, there was an option to sleep in the hay barn.

We were served a delicious selection of meats and cheeses, as well as a yummy salad, but I am so glad I left room for dessert because the pancakes, filled with sweet cheese and blueberries, were incredibly moreish.

Day 3

A 45-minute drive away, we transferred to Sadova trailhead via Vatra Moldoviței. The second day of hiking – around 11km – was definitely the most challenging one of the three, most likely because the sunny, warm weather made the journey feel completely different from the previous day.

The process of walking through the woods, placing one foot in front of another, helped clear my head. By the end of our second day of trekking, I felt calmer and clearer-minded than I had in months.

The lunch stop at La Moara Bucovina restaurant was the best meal I had in Romania, without a doubt. Not only was the location breathtaking and the hosts incredibly warm and friendly, but the food was also excellent from start to finish. The highlight was a sarmale, a traditional Romanian dish consisting of stuffed cabbage rolls with rice and mince.

Our room for the night was at Hotel Dorna in Vatra Dornei, a ski resort town. Excited to be in a bit of a livelier place for the first time, I explored the beautiful, but quiet town before dinner.

Day 4

On our third day of hiking, we drove to the Mestecăni trailhead, where there is a small, ridiculously cheap souvenir shop. I bought two mugs, three painted eggs and a jigsaw puzzle for £10.

Despite it being our third day of walking, the day’s hike feels easier. Perhaps my legs had gotten stronger. The highlight was the wildlife we saw, including a frog and a couple of snakes.

The lunch spot was another idyllic guest house with staggering, far-reaching views. As well as serving scrumptious food, Gigi Ursu Chalet has a lovely terrace where you can sunbathe on a sunny day. Happily, the rays were shining for our visit, providing a perfect atmosphere for me to meet the two resident puppies and a gorgeous, friendly back cat.

Day 5

Our last day was another travelling day, driving about three and a half hours back to Cluj-Napoca. Having some tasty pasta for lunch in a sunny square, we had a bit of time to explore the city centre before having to head to the airport.

The Via Transilvanica may not yet compete with the Camino de Santiago or Via Francigena, the iconic pilgrimage that links Canterbury and Rome, it has something else. A rawness and a quietness that come from walking through parts of the world far from where most ever tread.

It was sadly time to head back to the UK, but this short trip will stay with me for a long time – and inspire me to go on more hiking holidays.

Book it

Intrepid Travel’s 10-day Hiking in Romania: Via Transilvanica Trail costs from £1,616pp which includes accommodation, ground transport, services of a local leader, guided hikes and some meals and other activities. Book at intrepidtravel.com or call 0808 274 5111.

‘Uh oh, look at these!” I call to my friends, Annie and Mike. “Ominous,” remarks Annie. Mike raises an eyebrow. We’re hiking the Pevensey Levels, marshland first drained in 772, home now to sheep and cattle, but also water spiders, living underwater in air-filled webs. The ground is pocked with endless impressions of horseshoes.

“It’s almost as if an army came this way,” I say.

And we laugh, but only because we missed that army by 959 years. Annie, Mike, Fflos the dog, and I are on our first day of following the 1066 Country Walk across East Sussex, beginning at Pevensey, ending in Rye. At the midpoint is the town of Battle, where we have rented an outbuilding conversion for three nights. Battle is known as the probable site of the Battle of Hastings: the brutal killing field where about 2,000 Normans, 4,000 Anglo-Saxons and 700 horses died one day in October 1066, according to various sources, leading to William the Conqueror defeating King Harold for the crown of England.

History commands an immediacy outdoors that it doesn’t in books. You ask different questions on foot. We were on the Levels at the same time of year, September, as the Normans: did they note the blackthorn heavy with sloes? Spot blackbirds feasting on blood-red hawthorn berries? Hear the wind in the rushes alongside the River Pevensey? Did they remark how faded yet abundant this land was on the cusp of autumn? Doubtful, but the contradictions of war-making in such a gentle place – gentle light, gentle breeze, birdsong and river currents – make an impression on us. We notice how the landscape offers the same russet, sage and ochre hues as the Bayeux tapestry.

The 1066 Walk covers 31 miles, and we’ve given it four days: Pevensey to Herstmonceux, 6 miles; Herstmonceux to Battle, 11; Battle to Icklesham, 9; and Icklesham to Rye, 5. Our second day is the longest and steepest, and yet my favourite, as it establishes a pattern that continues throughout. We pick up the well-signposted route in the green secrecy of Wartling Wood, carpeted in acorns, lined by blackberries, and follow it around sunny fields. We emerge into the neat village of Boreham Street, plunge down a holloway guarded by beeches, and roll out into more fields with windswept, distant horizons. The impression is of a settled, well-inhabited landscape – a feeling augmented by morning tea at the Ash Tree Inn in the hamlet of Brownbread Street – but another deeper, more enduring impression underlies it.

Perhaps because the route is designed to call the distant past to mind, with every shift of scene we experience a slippage of time. One moment we’re walking down a contemporary street being passed by speeding cars, then we slip through a small opening in a hedge and plunge not only into fields or woods, but out of the present into time immemorial. There’s a constant weaving in and out of darkness and light, wildness and cultivation, close-grown tunnels of greenery and wide-open, windy spaces, and with each shift comes a hurtling from present to past and back again. The effect is of a temporal quilt sewn with our own footsteps. We encounter few other walkers to break the spell.

Elasticity of time is most apparent on Tent Hill, where, as Mike puts it, “the reward to effort ratio is quite good”. Sources suggest one army or the other – no one knows which – camped here, hence the name. Instead of troops, we discover an ancient horse chestnut with branches so immense they have touched the ground and put down roots of their own, creating a family of trees around a living, central ancestor. Joining their company is occupying past and present at once.

Because Mike has had the good sense to rent accommodation at Abbey View Cottages – there is indeed a view of Battle Abbey’s towers – we set forth on day three from our own digs. Another plunge off a country lane lands us on a bridle path in Battle’s Great Wood, where Mike announces: “My fungi sense is twitching.” Soon he is giving a mushroom tutorial: fly agarics; edible boletes and parasols; great penny buns (“the Rolls-Royce of mushrooms,” Mike pronounces).

And then the temporal hopscotch continues. One minute we’re crossing a golf course, the next we’re in deep countryside with venerable oasthouses tucked into hill folds. Shortly before arriving at the welcoming Three Oaks pub, we come upon one of artist Keith Pettit’s 10 Bayeux tapestry-inspired sculptures on the route: six hollow, Celtic-carved oak pillars planted inside with hawthorn. Together they form a circle of growing, living wonder on a hillcrest.

Our final hike brings us to medieval Winchelsea, rebuilt by Edward I in the 1280s after the original town was washed away. We have traversed apple orchards and spent the morning in mellowness reminiscent of Dutch landscape paintings. To our joy, the modern stained glass windows of Winchlesea’s St Thomas church, created by Douglas Strachan as memorials following the first world war, bloom on the route like colour-saturated rainbows.

From Winchelsea, we head to Rye across the silted-in, coastal lowland that would have been underwater in Edward’s day. With Rye in eyeshot, we depart from the official 1066 Country Walk to detour past the ruin of Camber Castle, pressed into the flatland by a big, heavy sky. Begun in 1512, finished in 1544 and demolished in the 1640s by parliamentary forces in the English civil war, it’s a reminder of vulnerability – the waves and threats of invasions this coast has seen – and hubris, simultaneously.

With a final shift of perspective – pastureland to townscape – we fetch up in pretty, comfortable Rye, town of Henry James, antique shops and good food. We are more energised than exhausted, and grateful we didn’t have to conquer this place with anything more than our imaginations.

The Bayeux tapestry is on display at the British Museum from 10 September to 11 July 2027’ tickets now on sale. Abbey View Cottages sleeps four, from £200 a night; rooms as the Ship Inn in Rye from £75.

Pamela Petro is the author of The Long Field, published by Little Toller (£14). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Even before the first naira changes hands or the first customer calls, Musa Lekki reaches for his phone. It is 5:32 a.m. on a Tuesday, and like many smartphone users, he begins his day with a glance at his phone screen. The 42-year-old provisions trader lives in Yola, northeastern Nigeria, and runs a small wholesale business supplying neighbouring shops and customers with rice, beverages, and household goods. 

As he unlocks his phone, there is already work waiting for him. A supplier has sent a voice note. A customer wants to confirm a payment. Another customer has placed an order. Before he has even left his bed, Musa is responding to messages and preparing for the business day ahead.

What appears to be a routine start to the morning is also a series of digital interactions. Within minutes of waking up, Musa has engaged with systems that recognise his phone number, device information, account credentials, and network location.

Each interaction leaves a data trail. A phone call generates telecommunications records. A bank transfer creates transaction logs. A utility payment produces another digital entry. Individually, these fragments may seem insignificant. Together, they form an increasingly detailed portrait of everyday life, which is increasingly mediated and supported by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) rails, a set of foundational digital systems that form the backbone of modern societies, enabling secure and seamless interactions between people, businesses, and governments. 

Musa does not think about any of this. Most mobile phone and internet users do not. 

“During the day, I use my phone for transfers, calls, and ordering goods, and by night I check my account balance before closing for the day,” he said.

As Nigeria expands its digital identity and payment systems, everyday activities such as making calls, sending money, paying bills, and accessing services are becoming increasingly dependent on interconnected digital infrastructure. Musa’s daily routine shows how Digital Public Infrastructure is reshaping daily life, expanding access to services while also raising questions about privacy, transparency and accountability.

What Musa sees is a phone. What he does not see is an invisible infrastructure that increasingly determines who can communicate, who can make payments, who can access services, and who can participate fully in modern economic life. By the time he goes to bed, several institutions will have processed fragments of his personal information. Many of those interactions will happen without him ever knowing.

This is how millions of Nigerian residents increasingly navigate life as data points within systems they rarely see.

The identity that travels ahead

At 6:45 a.m., Musa calls a supplier in Kano. The conversation lasts less than three minutes. It is a routine business call, yet that call depends on a national identity system. In 2020, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) directed all mobile network operators to link users’ Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards to their National Identification Number (NINs) and to bar those who did not comply. Musa’s line was among those affected. 

“There was a time my SIM was restricted because of an issue with my NIN linkage,” he recalled. “I couldn’t make calls for some days and also lost customers, until I sorted it out.”

The experience taught him something many Nigerians have learned: The ability to make a phone call increasingly depends on proving who you are. Identity is one of the key layers of a DPI. In Nigeria, the NIN is the foundational identity document, managed by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

As of December 2025, the NIMC reported more than 127 million NIN enrolments nationwide, making it one of Africa’s largest digital identity databases, while over 172.67 million SIM cards had been linked to NINs. 

Nunaya David, a senior enrolment officer at the NIMC, Yola, said, “NIN is increasingly required for banking, telecommunications, social programmes, and several government services.” Identity is no longer simply something Nigerians carry in a wallet; it is increasingly verified continuously in the background.

The money moves, the data moves too

Shortly after 7 a.m., Musa pays ₦45,000 to a supplier. The transfer takes less than a minute. Money leaves one account and appears in another. With a few taps, Musa has interacted with another stack of the DPI: the payment layer. Behind that transaction, the payment infrastructure operated by banks, fintechs, and the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) performs multiple checks.

“Once a transfer is initiated, the request passes through several systems before reaching the recipient,” Hakeem Abdulkareem, a tech specialist with NIBSS, explained. “These systems communicate with one another to confirm and complete the transaction.”

Identity verification, fraud screening, account authentication and transaction routing all happen in the background. Most of it occurs within seconds. The customer sees only a debit alert while the infrastructure works in the background. 

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, electronic payment channels now account for the majority of retail payment activity, with internet transfers, mobile payments and point-of-sale transactions becoming increasingly dominant. Data from NIBSS show that Nigeria recorded ₦284.99 trillion in electronic payment transactions in the first quarter of 2025, representing a 17.7 per cent year-on-year increase compared with ₦234.49 trillion recorded in the same period in 2024. This reflects how deeply electronic payments have become embedded in everyday economic activity. Each transfer generates records that move across banks, payment switches, and settlement systems, creating the digital trail that allows modern commerce to function.

A market built on digital trust

For Musa, these systems are largely invisible. What he sees are payment alerts arriving on his phone and customers walking through his door. By mid-morning, those customers have started to arrive. One of them is Aisha Bello, a 21-year-old student at Modibbo Adama University, preparing for a new academic session. Like Musa, she relies on digital systems she rarely thinks about.

Her school registration requires identity verification. Her bank account relies on Bank Verification Number (BVN). Her mobile line and BVN are all linked to her NIN. 

As she pays Musa electronically, two very different lives intersect through the same digital infrastructure. Neither sees the systems operating behind the scenes, yet both depend on them.

The same is true for Grace Ezra, a nurse at Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital in Yola. Like Musa and Aisha, she increasingly relies on digital systems to manage her salary payments, telecommunications services, tax records, and pension contributions.

Frank Akabueze, a digital identity expert, describes Nigeria’s journey as a gradual shift from fragmented systems to interconnected ones. “We have moved from having several disconnected identity systems toward greater integration.”

Increasingly, a person’s ability to study, work, save, communicate, and transact begins with a digital identity record. This speaks to the third layer of DPI, interoperability, the ability of different digital systems to speak to each other securely. 

The invisible checks 

Around noon, Musa buys airtime through a mobile app. Moments later, he pays an electricity bill. The transactions feel routine, but each leaves a digital footprint. Each creates records, generates data and triggers some form of verification.

Airtime purchases, utility payments, transfers and merchant payments may appear unrelated, but increasingly they travel through interconnected platforms that rely on identity verification, payment infrastructure and data exchange mechanisms working together in the background. The power of DPI lies in the ability of these systems to communicate with one another. This interoperability allows a verified identity, a payment instruction and a service request to move across different platforms within seconds.

Esther Kolo, a staff member at Opay, a leading digital financial services provider in Nigeria, explains that many customers only notice verification during registration. “Most people notice identity verification during account registration, but checks can also happen when account details are updated or when unusual transactions are detected. In many cases, these checks happen in the background.”

The reality is that verification does not end after account creation. It becomes part of daily life. The systems simply become invisible. Every interaction leaves behind another record. Those records may sit in various databases, often connected in ways users never see. By midday, Musa has become far more than a trader buying and selling goods. He is part of a growing collection of records moving across this ecosystem. 

When identity becomes the gatekeeper 

Later in the afternoon, Musa receives a call from his younger brother. He is trying to resolve a problem involving identity records required to open a bank account. 

Across Nigeria, mismatched records, incorrect dates of birth, missing details, and verification failures have become common sources of frustration. As systems become more interconnected, a discrepancy in one database can sometimes affect access to services that depend on another.

Such complaints have become familiar in identity management centres and online forums, where citizens report problems ranging from incorrect personal details and outdated biometric records to difficulties validating identity information across different systems. According to Nunaya of NIMC, “The person may experience delays in accessing certain services until the issue is resolved.”

As more services become interconnected, identity functions as a gatekeeper. When systems work properly, access becomes easier. When records fail, opportunities can disappear, sometimes without warning. The same infrastructure designed to enable inclusion can also create new barriers. 

For instance, in August 2025, Catherine Bello, a beneficiary of a humanitarian cash assistance programme in Adamawa, was unable to receive support because a minor discrepancy between her name on the beneficiary list and her National Identification Number (NIN) record caused the verification process to fail. Similarly, others have recounted losing access to mobile services and facing banking restrictions because their NIN, BVN, and SIM records did not match across government databases.

Who is watching the data trail?

As evening approaches, conversations throughout the day prompt Musa to reflect on something he rarely considers: who actually has access to all this information? His answer is uncertain. “I know my bank, telecom company, and government agencies have my details. Honestly, I don’t really know who else can access the information or how it is being used.”

Digital rights advocates say Musa’s uncertainty underpins the challenges facing millions of Nigerians. As more services become digital and become interconnected through digital identity and payment systems, citizens often have little visibility into how their information is shared, stored, or processed across institutions.

Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, a digital rights advocacy organisation, said the challenge is not only the collection of personal information but the lack of transparency surrounding its use. 

“Many people provide information to access essential services without fully understanding where that data goes, who can access it, or how long it may be retained,” he said, adding that public trust in digital systems depends not only on efficiency and convenience but also on clear safeguards, transparency and accountability.

As identity systems, payment systems, and service delivery platforms become more interconnected, questions about transparency become increasingly important. 

According to Vincent Olatunji, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), for identity management to be effective, there is a need for harmonised policies, secure technologies and inclusive systems. “The more systems are connected, the greater the impact if information is mishandled or exposed,” he noted. 

Reports have shown how vulnerable these systems can be when safeguards fail. In 2025, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism uncovered websites that offered access to Nigerians’ sensitive personal information, including NINs, BVNs, photographs, and other identity records, for small fees. One platform reportedly sold access to personal records for ₦70-₦150, while another provided unauthorised identity-related services despite not being licensed by the NIMC. 

These incidents illustrate the risks that emerge when large volumes of personal data are concentrated within interconnected digital systems without proper safeguards. 

Olatunji of NDPC noted that the Nigeria Data Protection Act has established rules governing how personal information should be collected, processed, stored, and shared. Citizens have rights and organisations have obligations, but awareness is limited. “Organisations are generally expected to explain why information is being collected and how it will be used,” he explained. 

Under the Act, citizens have several rights over their personal information. These include the right to know why their data is being collected, the right to request access to personal information held about them, the right to seek correction of inaccurate records, the right to withdraw consent for certain forms of data processing, and the right to seek redress when their information is misused. The law also requires organisations to explain how personal data will be used and gives individuals the right to lodge complaints with the NDPC when they believe their rights have been violated.

In practical terms, these rights mean that citizens are not merely sources of data, but they are entitled to ask questions about how their information is used, request access to records held about them, and challenge organisations that fail to protect their information. Yet awareness of these protections remains low among ordinary users.

Musa says he has heard of data protection laws but does not know what rights they give him. Like many Nigerians, he uses digital services every day without fully understanding who controls the information he generates.

Before bedtime, by 9:45 p.m., Musa checks his account balance for the final time. The day is over. He has made phone calls, received payments, sent transfers, paid utility bills, purchased airtime and verified identities. Each action took only seconds. Each left a record somewhere. Some records sit inside telecom databases. Others exist in banking systems, payment switches, identity registries and government platforms. Together they form a digital version of Musa’s day, one that is often more detailed than he realises.

“Many people do not realise how often their identity is being checked behind the scenes,” Frank noted. 

This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.

The fluorescent green gaiters seemed a ridiculous suggestion, but prove a godsend as we plod across the sand. “I bet you’re glad I told you to get a pair of these bad boys now, aren’t you?” my friend Luke jokes. We’re marching across a wide, crescent-shaped, honeyed beach. The sun is high in the sky and slivers of light flicker through a thick sea fog, as 6ft waves crash and fizz, their white foam licking the towering limestone cliffs.

I’m in Portugal, in the west Algarve, with two friends, hiking part of the Rota Vicentina, or Fishermen’s Trail, a 140-mile (226km) trek that runs from Lagos to São Torpes in Alentejo. Traversing cliffs that lead to wild, remote beaches like this one is part of the trail’s calling card. As the name suggests, it was originally carved out by fishers to reach otherwise inaccessible fishing spots along the Atlantic Ocean. Now it’s part of the Rota Vicentina, a hiking and cycling route spanning 466 miles across Portugal.

Already, this corner of the Algarve feels a far cry from downtown Lagos, where we’d been woken up the night before by noisy tourists after one too many Super Bocks. Our official starting point is 25 minutes away in Salema – a fishing village set within the Vicentine Coast natural park.

The sedate seaside haven is perhaps how the rest of the Algarve was before mass tourism arrived in this part of the Iberian peninsula following the opening of Faro airport in the 1960s. More than 20 million tourists visited the Algarve last year, 5.7 million of them from the UK.

Visitors to Salema drift in and out like the tide, pottering along cobbled streets, past traditional blue-and-white fishers’ cottages, stopping to indulge in fresh seafood on the terraces of family-run restaurants overlooking the long, empty beach flanked by chalky cliffs.

Tempted to postpone the first day of hiking to idle away the hours, we instead polish off a load of pastéis de nata and a bica or two down at Pastelaria Solmar, then set off. For the first few miles, we wend along a relatively flat, clay-coloured coastal path, following the blue-and-green striped Fishermen’s Trail logo that should lead us to Sagres.

Keeping the sea to the left (we’re heading north), it’s easy to navigate. Magical, too, with views stretching as far as the eye can see, across an Atlantic Ocean glinting in the summer sun. Occasionally, we have to scramble up or down a steep, rocky embankment. But the rewards, a series of serene beaches that seem to get better with every mile, make it worthwhile. Given the remote location, these pretty coves attract only the hardiest beach-goers, and the odd naturist.

Over the day’s almost 12-mile hike, we hardly see another soul. So, when we arrive at Sagres, we’re ready for some human interaction. The seafaring town is where slave trader Henry the Navigator spent the final years of his life. Nowadays, Sagres is better known for its enviable surf breaks.

“I’m ready for a Sagres in Sagres,” Luke says, as we drop our bags and freshen up at Alojamento Mareta, a modest two-bed apartment that hovers on a cliffside with a blushing garden and sea views (about £78 per night). We mooch around looking for somewhere for dinner and a cold beer.

Sagres doesn’t have any sense of coherent organisation; its scattering of cafes, restaurants and bars appear to have been sketched out by bored teenagers when the city planners were on holiday. Instead of joining a growing gaggle of surfers waiting for live music to start at Three Little Birds, we order piri-piri chicken and a glug of local wine from the family-run Cafe Conchinha and retire to bed.

Waking early, we zip down to the empty Mareta beach for a meditation session led by another friend, James, before plunging into the icy sea. As if the morning isn’t already wholesome enough, we head to the Laundry Lounge – a boho, wooden-clad laundrette-cum-brunch spot – for a 90-minute yoga session and some breakfast before getting back on the road.

We make our way to Cabo de São Vicente, where a 19th-century lighthouse sits perilously on an isolated rocky headland whipped by the elements. Mainland Europe’s most southwesterly point was known as the “end of the world”. It’s not hard to understand why. There’s nothing but an endless melange of blue water and craggy cliffs bathed in a golden light. It’s little wonder that the Greeks and Romans believed it to be a sacred promontory.

Later, we cut inland across a pancake flat expanse of arid shrubland with only the odd purple thistle for colour. Then, after 12 miles or so, we arrive in Vila do Bispo, a dusty, eerily quiet town, like something from a spaghetti western. Low-rise, pastel-coloured houses seem worn by time and old dusty cars sit beneath purple wisteria on cobbled street corners.

Fish, hung out to dry on washing lines, flap around in the wind as we wander the streets looking for somewhere to eat. We stumble across Pisco, an unassuming restaurant with a cosy atmosphere – whitewashed walls hung with art and crammed with wine bottles – where the vegetarian menu has excellent Mediterranean dishes, sourdough pizzas and organic wines.

Charging back towards the coast the following morning, we arrive at perhaps the most picturesque part of the hike. On the cliffs above Praia da Pena Furada, a vast, windswept beach, we perch on the cliffside for a moment to admire tall sea stacks battered by waves, the wind whistling through them as gulls swoop like kites overhead. It feels more like Steinbeck’s California than the Algarve. But for the hissing of the sea, everything is silent.

We barely say a word to one another until we land at the impossibly long sandy beach of Bordeira near Carrapateira a few hours later. The atmosphere here couldn’t be more different. The beach is busy with Portuguese holidaymakers and surfers. It’s the perfect antidote to hiking fatigue, so we settle in for a well-deserved burger at the hillside beach bar Amadobar as low-fi rock drifts from the speakers and surfers paddle out to distant breakers.

Our digs for the night, which we make our way to after sunset, are about 20 minutes from the beach. Carrapateira Lodge (about £52 per night) sits in the centre of a small, charming whitewashed town with a scattering of restaurants, bars, cafes and surf shops. We dine alfresco on the cobbles just off the main plaza at O Pontal, getting to work on plates of tender octopus, roasted salt cod and beef entrecote to sustain ourselves for tomorrow’s final push.

When we arrive at Arrifana, our final destination the following afternoon, we’re beat. The parish town is settled on the hillside in the Aljezur municipality. Like Carrapateira, it’s popular with surfers. It feels closer to the Algarve most visitors know in some ways, but it’s still relatively low key. A single lane road helter-skelters down to another postcard-worthy beach, where there’s a sprinkling of bars and restaurants. Shattered, we round off the trip watching sunset at Café Restaurante Sol E Mar, a no-frills bar that spills out on to the headland overlooking the beach, which is busier than others we’ve passed but not as crowded as other Algarve hotspots I’ve visited. No rowdy Britons in sight – except us three.

My wife and I moved from London to Marseille a little over five years ago when our British passports still conferred “right to reside” in France. That first winter on the beach, in short sleeves, as our daughters played in the topaz-coloured Mediterranean and the sun set across an ever-clear blue sky, I understood why this part of southern France has always been popular with artists.

I was recently speaking about this with the painter Fanny Nushka and her sailor husband, Benoît Bouchet, on the terrace of Café la Muse in Marseille’s “coolest” neighbourhood. She said: “It took a long time to go back to blue. It’s like being in Paris and painting the Eiffel Tower. It’s dangerous to paint the Calanques [limestone coves] as an artist from here.”

We moved to Marseille for the same reason that has attracted countless artists: it’s cheaper to live here. Marseille’s affordability enables Fanny to paint full-time and Benoît to sail without being away from his family for weeks. Benoît runs daily catered cruises on a listed sailing yacht, Le Don du Vent. For €135, you get a taste of Mediterranean luxury with swimming, snorkelling and sunbathing in the unspoiled sea coves around Marseille, pausing briefly for wine and a lunch prepared onboard.

Céline Ghisleri, co-president of Provence Contemporary Art, which represents 62 arts organisations in and around Marseille, tells me the city has always had a dynamic art scene. However, the turning point came when Marseille was named European Capital of Culture in 2013. Since then, large institutions such as Frac Sud, Mac and the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (Mucem) have expanded the city’s offering with bigger exhibitions from more widely recognised artists.

This summer, the Mucem’s exhibitions are Bonnes Mères, a collection of contemporary and historical works on the theme of motherhood, and Clément Cogitore’s fascinating Ferdinandea, l’île éphémère, a body of work centred on the brief existence of a volcanic Mediterranean island. At the end of August, the art fair Art-O-Rama will be hosted at La Friche La Belle de Mai. La Friche (the Wasteland) was a tobacco factory and is now an enormous warren of a multidisciplinary arts centre that is always buzzing, especially in the summer when they set up a movie screen and food trucks on the roof. La Friche is emblematic of the art scene in Marseille: absolute chaos, but somehow it works.

Outside Marseille, Plein Sud, a network of contemporary art organisations between Monaco and Montpellier, produces a guide with travel itineraries. It’s how I discovered the charming Gallifet art centre in nearby Aix-en-Provence, which is only about 40 minutes from Marseille but exists in a completely different universe.

You couldn’t be further away from Marseille’s port city energy than Aix’s daily market at Place Richelme, where you can grab a coffee and, if you are lucky, an outdoor seat at the patisserie and salon de thé Maison Weibel. For lunch, I recommend Drôle d’Endroit (Funny Place). It is tucked down an alley off a sidestreet, but the meals are always pleasing and the atmosphere friendly. Another solid choice is Tita for Levantine street food.

As tiny and quiet as Aix is, it has an abundance of museums, such as the Granet Museum, the Caumont Art Centre and the Vasarely Foundation, but they tend to lean heavily on art that historians have already anointed. For example, it wasn’t until 1984 that the Granet acquired any works by the local boy done good, Cézanne, whose preserved studio is just up the hill.

That’s why it was refreshing to find Gallifet trying something different. The owners, Nicolas Mazet and Kate Davis, have a mission to bring contemporary art to conservative Aix. Located on the ground floor of an 18th-century townhouse, the courtyard’s striking red sculpture of a swimmer mid-stroke, by Diadji Diop, hints that Gallifet is more than just a home (the owners live above the art centre).

This summer’s exhibition features a retrospective of the photographer François Halard, with more than 100 works spanning more than three decades. Until the end of September, Gallifet also hosts a seasonal restaurant and chef’s residency. This year, two Paris-based chefs, Lisa Desforges and Bruno Hammerle, will use Provence’s abundant and delicious ingredients to create menus including entrees such as smoked ricotta gnocchi with peas and a peapod veloute. Gallifet also offers two apartments (from €200 and €160 per night), both decorated with pieces from previous exhibitions and filled with Provençal features such as marble fireplaces and tomette terracotta tiles.

A little further up the Rhône, Avignon nestles against the river, enclosed by preserved medieval walls. The Palais des Papes overlooks the renowned vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to the north and lavender fields to the south. Each July, the town is taken over by the Avignon festival, one of the oldest performance arts festivals.

After a visit, take a walk along the most picturesque and charming street in Avignon, La Rue Peyrolerie. A winding medieval cobbled alley leads to an equally charming restaurant, L’Épicerie, situated in a square beside a small 14th-century gothic church with an ornately carved walnut-wood door. The cuisine is classic French, served in generous portions by friendly staff. Every time we visit Avignon, we dine here and have never been disappointed, but be warned that the terrace fills up quickly. This is a well-known and well-loved spot among locals. Another safe bet for outdoor courtyard dining is Numéro 75.

The most notable address for contemporary art in Avignon is the Lambert Collection, housed in two stunning 18th-century townhouses, Hôtel de Caumont and Hôtel de Montfaucon. The collection is the legacy of Yvon Lambert, a celebrated gallerist and collector who made his reputation in the latter half of the 20th century championing American artists such as Nan Goldin, Donald Judd, Lawrence Weiner and Cy Twombly. The collection continues to support up-and-coming local artists in its Antechamber of Summer exhibition. This year’s exhibition is by Melika Sadeghzadeh, an Iranian artist living and working in Montpellier.

Just south of Avignon, Arles has at its centre a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheatre, which hosts plays and concerts. The Vincent van Gogh Foundation and Luma host several exhibitions throughout the year, but the real treat comes in July during the Rencontres d’Arles. For 50 years, venues across town, from galleries to grocery stores, have showcased a wide range of contemporary and historical photography.

Recently, we went to Arles for its Festival of Drawing. After a wander through the picturesque medieval streets of the Roquette district on the east side of town, popping into venues as we went, we discovered the tiny restaurant Páou in the quaint Place Paul Doumer. The menu promised sharing plates starring local produce and wines. So we sat down for another meal at another terrace table, under another clear blue sky.

It wasn’t my intention, but I played a role in shutting down John McCain’s Straight Talk Express.

It happened on a warm July afternoon as McCain traveled from a West Virginia airport to a rally in Ohio.

I had headed to the back of his bus with a small group of reporters, where as always McCain warmly motioned for us to squeeze in beside him on the couch.

The questions meandered across more than a dozen topics, but I asked if he agreed with his advisor Carly Fiorina’s recent statement that it was unfair for some health insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control — because McCain generally opposed those kinds of mandates.

Liberals and late-night comedians would later revel in McCain’s on-camera discomfort — the widening of his eyes, the awkward silence while he clutched his jaw and formulated an answer. But I had come to respect McCain’s frankness and his willingness to admit he didn’t always have an answer. Watching the question morph into an embarrassing “gotcha moment” for cable television, my stomach churned and my cheeks grew hot.

By July, I had covered McCain for almost seven months. I could recite many lines of his stump speech by heart, dreamed about his events at night and spent so much time scrolling through campaign e-mails on my BlackBerry that my fiance joked to our friends about the other man in my life.

Over those months, McCain had artfully created a sense of intimacy with the reporters who traveled with him. He barbecued for us at his Arizona cabin, and opened up about matters as personal as his faith and his son’s girlfriends. On one of my first days covering McCain, another reporter protectively warned me that it was important to be judicious with the material I used from McCain’s bus rides to keep the conversations in context.

Although the relationship was mutually beneficial, McCain offered accessibility and openness that was rare, if not unprecedented, in modern presidential politics. Now, as the presidential campaign plunges into its final days, that intimacy — real or imagined — has evaporated.

—

I joined McCain during the icy December days in New Hampshire when his confidence about a comeback seemed almost delusional. Inside the steamy windows of his campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, McCain held court on a gray horseshoe-shaped couch at the rear, where we listened with rapt attention.

Back then, his staff often didn’t bother to listen to his rap sessions, which became an education for reporters on his world view. Early on, we learned to detect his disdain for some of his opponents — Mitt Romney and Barack Obama — by the way he lavished praise on others — Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee or Hillary Rodham Clinton — in the same sentence.

He leavened policy discussions with funny stories from his school days when some knew him as “McNasty” or reliving his daredevil exploits as a young naval aviator. He was unguarded and charming, occasionally solicitous about our lives.

One winter afternoon when Cindy McCain joined him and he was stuck with three newly engaged reporters, he gave us a 10-minute treatise on honeymoon spots.

At the top of his list was Costa Rica, where he had done a zip-line canopy tour. Second was Montenegro and Dubrovnik, which he called “one of the really stunningly beautiful places in the world.” Third was Fiji: “The people are extremely friendly; they used to be cannibals, but the British cured them of that bad habit,” he joked. “We’ve gone to Fiji with our kids lots of times.”

In an aside about the Galapagos Islands, he veered into his last encounter there with sea lions: “I’m not making this up — I was swimming, and there was this group of female sea lions, and this one male sea lion, and the next thing I know this guy’s face is right where my hand is. . . . So I swam away and he bit my flipper. I swear to God. . . . He thought I was some kind of competition.”

“Where did you guys go on your honeymoon,” I asked.

“Uhh,” McCain said. “Hawaii,” Cindy interjected.

“Canada?” McCain joked, pretending to fumble. “I get my marriages mixed up.”

Cindy good-naturedly rolled her eyes. “We had a great time,” he said, grinning, before telling us about their honeymoon spot.

For several months, he would often lean in and ask the same question: “Did you set a date yet?”

—

McCain’s energy and sense of fun were most on display when he was surrounded by the regular characters in his entourage.

Before the primaries, there was Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, who was so unassuming that McCain’s bus driver once asked me what he did. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) loosened McCain up before debates or big events by subjecting himself to McCain’s unmerciful teasing. McCain loved to tell the story of Graham’s Ambien overdose on an international flight and how he had to be elbowed awake during a subsequent meeting with a head of state.

For the first half of the year, strategist Steve Schmidt and McCain speechwriter Mark Salter were regular fixtures in the press cabin. They offered honest observations about the direction of the campaign off the record, and lots of spin on the record.

We would persuade them to tell their own stories at the bar in the evenings. Salter had colorful tales of his days as a railroad worker in Davenport, Iowa, when he had hair past his shoulders and worked for a foreman known as “one-armed Ronnie.”

Schmidt could do dead-on impressions of his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, and had fascinating stories about managing the confirmation process of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. — always off the record.

They would complain about campaign coverage one moment and have drinks with reporters hours later. During a stop in Selma, Ala., I fell while out running and ended up with bleeding palms and scraped knees but no Band-Aids. Schmidt and Salter showed up at the hotel’s dining room with gauze and antiseptic.

—

At the time of that July bus ride with McCain, there was broad disagreement among his staff about whether the endless hours of questions were helping his quest for the White House.

In the driveway of the airport motel on the evening of the Viagra question, McCain’s aides made an argument that would shape their attitude over the next four months: If reporters were going to ask about issues that they deemed irrelevant to voters, why should the campaign give them access to the candidate at all?

Salter told me I had made the case for those who thought McCain should curtail his exposure to the press.

McCain aide Brooke Buchanan sarcastically asked whether contraception was next on my agenda. And Steve Duprey, the candidate’s usually jovial traveling companion who often visited the press cabin bearing Twizzlers and chocolate, twisted my question into what I interpreted as an accusation of bias: “Are you going to ask Obama if he uses Viagra?”

Later that summer, the frequency of McCain’s news conferences dwindled to late-afternoon, end-of-the-week affairs where he began calling more often on reporters he didn’t know.

We now watched from afar at most events — listening for the few sentences that would change each day in his stump speech. We would catch glimpses of him through the window of his SUV from five cars back in the motorcade or watch him get off the plane.

At the height of vice presidential speculation, we rushed the staff cabin of the plane, frustrated that no one was around to address the rumors.

“What do you want, you little jerks?” McCain said, using his former term of affection, before turning away.

—

On a recent Sunday during a brief stop at a Virginia phone bank, I got unusually close to McCain in the line of people waiting to shake his hand.

Tape recorder out and within a foot of him, I asked if he could talk about his new economic plan, which he was to unveil that week. The man who once asked me about my wedding date returned my gaze with a stare, shook the hand of the strangers to the right and left of me and continued out the door.

I remembered Graham’s explanation in January about why McCain spent so much time with reporters. He said that McCain felt too many politicians had become like a guy in a toothpaste commercial — you knew what he was selling but not what was behind the smile.

What McCain didn’t like about other campaigns and wanted to change, Graham continued, was that “nobody gets behind the curtain.”

Whether it was McCain’s fault or ours, the curtain had been drawn tight.

—

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Imagine the Swedish landscape and a stereotypical scene of idyllic red cottages with white trim, foregrounded by a lake of glimmering blue, might spring to mind. Beyond perhaps, adding depth, lies a band of birch and spruce, and a midsummer view of wooded islands.

Now, add to this image the sight of two half-naked men lunging from a tiny sauna cabin into the cold shock of a lake. One screams. The other ducks his head under, pops up, shivers, then does it again. His skin has the pinkish tinge of salmon, but he’s smiling.

Those swimmers are my friend John and me (I’m the one grinning), and we’re quickly learning that the subversive joy of cold-water swimming – and stripping off in nature – are Swedish obsessions.

We’re on the first day on the Lelångenleden, a 112-mile (180km) cycle route of newly linked trails, which takes riders from the Bohuslän coast, north of Gothenburg, through the lakes of Dalsland and deep into the coniferous forests of Värmland, where the country is wilder still. The promise is traffic-free gravel roads and a segment that runs along the embankment of the discontinued Lelången railway, as well as a journey punctuated by stops in lake towns so charming they could easily be creations of Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lindgren.

But we’re up for a sterner challenge than the recommended four-day itinerary. Our plan, researched and booked online using West Sweden Trails’ helpful planning tool, is to split the route into three sections of about 40 miles each and cycle for up to five hours a day. Along the way, we’ll be staying in quiet hotels and a campsite where the food is as important as the lake setting.

“You won’t be alone,” says Erik Josefsson, founder of the Dalsland Experience, the tour organiser and bike shop that rents us our gravel bikes and bikepacking gear – for the next three days, we’ll be living out of frame and saddle bags. “Why not?” I ask Josefsson, a little disgruntled. “Sorry, I meant to say there’s plenty of wildlife in the forests!” comes the reply.

West Sweden’s burgeoning cycling scene is largely thanks to the ambition of the regional tourist boards. Now in development, the Västkustleden will be a new national cycle path between Gothenburg and the Norwegian-Swedish border, while the 105-mile Ljungleden opens this month and links together two of Sweden’s most popular trails (the Kattegattleden in Gothenburg and the Ätradalsleden in Falköping). More and more Swedes want to spend their summers cycling, and the Lelångenleden – affordable, family-friendly and largely flat – is tipped to become the next top-tier trail.

We start in the coastal village of Uddevalla, overlooking the beaten metal blue of the Byfjorden, setting off from the Strandpromenaden, a beautiful seaside boardwalk below granite cliffs – a few years ago, it was named Sweden’s most beautiful road. Then, before we head north, a 15-minute detour takes us to Gustafsberg, Sweden’s oldest seaside resort, with a beach, a jetty, a colony of crimson-tinted bathhouses and a historic lido converted into a hostel.

After four hours in the saddle, the fully serviced eco-campsite at Ragnerud Lake, at the foot of the Kroppefjäll plateau in Färgelanda, is a welcome stop for our first night. We check in to a cosy red cabin, then take canoes out on the lake and enjoy a restorative sauna, before watching the sun’s glorious rays cresting the treetops as the light fades. There is a very special quiet and otherworldliness to Sweden in the late summer.

Overseeing this wilderness are campsite owners Linus Bergström and Marielle Örtengren, who grew up on the lake, and the location offers access to one of southern Sweden’s largest hiking destinations. On their doorstep is 200m years of geology and 80 miles of trails.

The campsite’s sustainable restaurant Ragnerud Kök showcases the gifts of the forest – mushrooms, lingonberries, dill flowers. We share plates of kroppkaka (boiled potato dumplings) with chanterelles and brown hazelnut butter, and beef with beetroot and mushroom cream. Then it’s lingonberry-poached pears with forest marmalade. “We hike, we pick mushrooms. Then there is the pure thrill of jumping into the cold lake,” says Linus. “We love the simplicity of the forest and the slow pace of life.”

On untamed gravel roads the next day, red waymarkers guide us to the Dalsland Canal, a system of natural lakes and locks connecting 157 miles of waterways, where cold water swimmers regularly strip off, leaving John looking sheepish. Our cycle route soon morphs into the canal towpath, and we pass a lock house turned summer cafe that’s selling waffles and ice-cream, and lock keeper’s cabins of stone, wood and iron, which can now be booked for overnight stays.

At the end of the 19th century, the variety of terrain – bristling forests, silent mountains, quivering lakes, almost alpine landscapes – prompted Prince Eugen of Sweden and Norway to describe Dalsland as a microcosm of his homeland. As a prominent landscape painter, the prince captured the soul of the place better than most, and his description fits the Sweden we wheel through. With more lakes than anywhere else in the country, our map shows hundreds of spreading fingers, with depths of inky blue.

We stop for the night in the former lumber town of Bengtsfors, checking in at First Hotel Bengtsfors before heading for dinner at Storgatan 19, a cocktail bar with a menu fit for a Tour de France winner. “Seasonality is vital,” co-owner Oliver Tveter tells us, and I order a lifetime-best skagen (prawn salad, but served on a potato pancake) and fallow deer with pickled pumpkin.

The woods around the town are so vast, breathing and beckoning that they can fool you into believing you are being followed, especially in the slanting, shifting early morning light. For all that, it’s not frightening, but a landscape that enlivens the senses. Often, there are roe deer running earnestly across the road – once, I brake hard to avoid a collision.

What’s more, there is a sense that time is not linear in Dalsland. When we cycle deeper into the dense coniferous forests on our last day, it is as if the clock has been wound back. The red barns and lonely church on Lake Västra Silen look like period pieces. When we surface again from the woods to arrive in a blaze of Lycra in the little mill town of Gustavsfors, we have to push onwards for our fika (social coffee break) as it’s Sunday and all the cafes are shut. Any thought of modern-day Sweden has largely been erased.

On our last afternoon, near journey’s end in Värmland, the gravel slowly welcomes us back into the 21st century. I had worried there wouldn’t be enough to do on our trip, but in the end there are so many interruptions – lakes that quiver like jelly, photo stops for elk signs, cold swims everywhere – that we have to clock-watch until the end.

As we reach the road to Årjäng, where our trip finishes, I gaze back and strange half-certainty comes to me. That I’ll return to west Sweden as soon as I can – maybe even on a bike.

The trip was provided by West Sweden tourist board. The Dalsland Experience organises guided and self-guided itineraries and rents gravel bikes and bikepacking gear. Itinerary planning information can be found at Lelångenleden. Ragnerud camping pitches from £20; cabins from £75. Doubles at First Hotel Bengtsfors from £96 B&B. Lock keepers’ cottages from £200