trips

A magnificent medieval cathedral in Somerset

“So this is where Officer Nick Angel [Simon Pegg] chased that swan.” As a fan of Hot Fuzz, I was excited to explore the cathedral city of Wells in Somerset, where much of the film was shot. This charming, compact and walkable city is awash with medieval architecture and magnificent buildings, such as the gothic cathedral, with one of the oldest working clocks in the UK (late 14th century) and the Bishop’s Palace and Gardens. Within easy reach of the Mendip Hills, Cheddar Gorge and the Wookey Hole Caves, Wells makes for a low-key alternative to tourist-soaked Bath.
Alison

Wild camping in the west Highlands

The Ardnamurchan peninsula, which includes the most westerly point in mainland Britain at Corrachadh Mòr, is stunning. With my partner, I spent a night wild camping by the shell-sand beach at Sanna Bay, surrounded by the machair grassland and wildflowers. It was absolutely stunning. We walked to Ardnamurchan lighthouse, spotted some dolphins, and swam in the sea in cold but crystal clear waters. The simplicity of the trip and not having to check in at any accommodation was a plus. I would recommend it to everybody.
Jox

Cinematic light and seabirds in East Lothian

North Berwick in East Lothian always feels like a proper holiday without needing a passport. Take the early train, walk straight down to the beach, then continue past the harbour towards the Scottish Seabird Centre, where the light over the Firth of Forth changes by the minute. If the tide is out, the views are cinematic with the sand stretching so wide. On clear early evenings Bass Rock turns gold and you wonder how somewhere so close to Edinburgh can still feel quietly remote.
Michelle

Rock-pooling and picnics in Devon

I visited Beer in east Devon last summer with three friends, all of us women in our 40s, and our six children aged between four and 11. It couldn’t have been a better choice. We stayed at the lovely large YHA hostel, which was relaxed, welcoming and ideal for families. The kids were charmed by the stream running through the village and spent hours rock-pooling on the beach, discovering tiny crabs and sea anemones. We also enjoyed the clifftop walk to Seaton with its incredible views. Don’t miss Woozie’s Deli for fresh treats – perfect for picnics by the sea.
Tara

A cycling tour of the Northumberland coast

We cycled the Northumberland coast from Newcastle to Berwick over four days. We visited Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh, two of the most impressive castles in the country, the mining museum at Woodhorn and the RNLI Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh, and swam from huge, empty beaches. Cycling over the causeway to Lindisfarne was the highlight, an incredible place to visit and awesome watching the road disappear under the sea (after we’d made it back to the mainland).
Ian

Ravenspoint community hostel on Loch Èireasort, south of Stornoway and home to nesting sea eagles and sea otters, feels remote even by Outer Hebridean standards. I shared the hostel kitchen with a father and daughter cycling the Hebridean Way, and a psychiatrist who seemed genuinely quite unsettled by the vastness of the landscape stretching all around. The hostel has a rich history – it is owned by the Co-Chomunn na Pairc, one of the original community co-operatives established in the 1970s, and the profits from it, the shop and tea rooms all go back into keeping vital services open for visitors and locals alike year-round.
Eleanor

Happy days in West Yorkshire’s Happy Valley

Sharing my obsession with Happy Valley, my teenage son agreed to a long weekend in Hebden Bridge. Armed with a list of filming locations, we scouted around Sowerby Bridge and Hebden, getting a buzz from the scenes we recognised. We climbed up to Heptonstall to visit Sylvia Plath’s grave, caught a film at the independent Picture House, and hiked along the river and on to the moors beyond Hardcastle Crags. An early morning run along the canal and the best pizza in town topped it off.
Lucy

Cliffs, castles and chips in Ayrshire

Ayrshire is beautiful, bucolic, full of family-friendly activities and often overlooked by Munro-baggers heading north to the Highlands. It has excellent local produce, coastal splendour and bountiful historic attractions. Start at Dumfries House with its marvellous gardens, enormous treetop adventure area and interactive water play (much of it free!). Visit the ruins of clifftop Dunure Castle, then stroll along the sandy Croy Bay to Culzean Castle, with its own gardens, play area and spectacular views of Arran and Ailsa Craig. Then pootle up to the Coo Shed for fab local ice-creams, before rounding off your day with some outstanding fish and chips from the Wee Hurrie on Troon harbour.
Dan Ashman

A village idyll in Snowdonia

My wife and I went for a weekend break in Trefriw on the River Crafnant in north Wales. It’s a peaceful village with lively pubs. We stayed at the Fairy Falls hotel, a perfect base for exploring the surrounding river and mountain walks, and for viewing the cascades.
Seamus

Winning tip: Hadrian’s Wall by bus and train

Exploring the Hadrian’s Wall area stands out for us among our UK trips, not only for the places we visited but also because we travelled by train, bus and on foot. This meant the holiday began once we’d boarded the first train, not just once we’d arrived at our accommodation. We stayed at the Sill youth hostel, arriving there using the AD122 bus from Hexham station. This bus stops at several Roman sites between Hexham and Haltwhistle – we used it to visit Housesteads, “Britain’s most complete Roman fort”. Another highlight was the Vindolanda fort and museum around a mile and a half from the Sill.
Sharon Pinner

From castles and coastlines to moorland views, we drove the Northumberland 250 in an electric car to see how easy it was to manage the rural route

‘We’re driving the Northumberland 250,’ I told my husband. He looked at me cautiously.

‘It’s the most spectacular route in England, past more than 20 castles, up the Northumberland coast and over the Lindisfarne causeway – which you can only drive at low tide. Then it nips over to Scotland, to a town where Mary Queen of Scots stayed, and back down through England’s biggest forest and the UK Dark Sky Reserve, and along Hadrian’s Wall.’

‘That does actually sound brilliant,’ he said.

‘We’re doing it in an electric car so we can see how easy it is.’

‘Oh no,’ he said.

With petrol prices rocketing, a road trip feels like a luxury too far at the moment, and I liked the environmental appeal of not bringing our exhaust fumes all the way north with us. But we don’t actually have an electric car so – confident that we would find enough charging points – we borrowed one.

Our Škoda Enyaq was a nippy SUV, that made short work of brine-soaked causeways, forest track off-roading and 20% hills, even with junctions at the top (oh, hill starts with an electric engine – where have you been all my life?). It promised as much as 300 miles on a full charge but, bearing in mind that most road trips end up at at least double the loop mileage, we plotted two charging points every day, and kept our fingers crossed that they would a) be working, and b) not have petrol cars parked in them.

Electric car charging on a UK road trip: what to expect

Charging electric cars is still a bit of a lottery – slightly different at every machine. You never rock up at a petrol station forecourt and wonder, ‘how does this pump work, then?’ – but you do with chargers. Most have an app you have to download to use them, so there are moments standing in the rain trying to get signal. A saving grace is other electric car users who are amazingly helpful. Less helpful are petrol drivers who park on the charging spaces.

Charging anxiety got me once, as I poured over the map on our way to Jedburgh, where only one charger showed as working, and nothing else was reachable, but it turned out fine – it was a fast charger so we only had to wait 15 minutes for the previous car to top up before we could.

The Northumberland 250 route: castles, coast and countryside

Northumberland has so many castles. One could get castle-fatigue if they weren’t so incredibly impressive. Bamburgh makes a play for Most Spectacular Castle Anywhere. Alnwick is where Harry Potter learns to fly his Nimbus 2000. Lindisfarne is so remote it becomes an island twice a day. Most deserve at least half a day to do them (and their entrance fee) justice, so my advice is pick one or two and see the rest in passing.

Dunstanburgh was my favourite – a mighty, atmospheric ruin we saw on a sunset walk from the fishing village of Craster. It felt like going back in time – there wasn’t another soul about. But I also loved smaller, free-to-visit places like Edlingham and Twizzel. In Alnwick we skipped the castle in favour of super-sized cherry scones at the Strawberry Lounge café and at Bamburgh we marvelled at the fortress from the beach, but visited The Potted Lobster for lunch instead (one of my best decisions: the Smoked Haddock Chowder).

Holy Island (Lindisfarne) took a little planning around tide times and we arrived in a rainstorm (a rare letdown in a sunny trip). Too wet to even leave the car, we returned the next day to see it in sunshine – the causeway was worth driving four times.

Leaving the coast at Berwick-upon-Tweed I worried the best was behind us, but the drive only got more beautiful. We skipped back and forth over the Scottish border, and headed through Kielder Forest along the 12-mile off-road track, Forest Drive, then down to the wide horizons of the North Pennines.

Where to stay on the Northumberland 250: hotels, lodges and pubs

Picking our pitstops was one of the highlights of the trip. I favoured places with EV charging, but in the end, we only plugged-in for one overnight, fast-charging instead in towns where we lunched. There is a charger on Holy Island, for instance, and one at Kielder Castle – remoteness is no obstacle. I loved the pace this brought to the trip, forcing stops in places we’d normally have driven straight through. It meant we discovered little gems, like Fountain Cottage Café in Bellingham.

We stayed in the lakeside lodge at Blossom Plantation (no EV charging), and drank cava in the hot tub under the stars. The Most Northerly Hotel in England, Marshall Meadows just beyond Berwick, is a ritzy venue and country house hotel. The Pheasant Inn at Kielder Water is everything you could want from a cosy fireside pub, family run with home cooking by Robin, favouring local ingredients – some from their own garden.

I finished the trip with three revelatory resolutions. One, that Northumberland was an epic holiday destination, offering far more than you can pack into five days. Two, that driving the route in an electric car is not only possible, but adds something unexpected – a more thoughtful way to travel. And three, that my next car will be electric.

The Northumberland 250 Itinerary: 5-day trip breakdown

Day 1

Newcastle to Dunstanburgh, via Alnwick, Warksworth and Craster

Highlights and stops: Edlingham Castle (free), Alnwick town for cream tea at The Strawberry Louge, Warkworth Castle, Alnmouth village and beach, Caster village and walk to Dunstanburgh Castle.

Overnight: Zambezi Lodge at Blossom Plantation, near Fallodon

Day 2

Dunstanburgh to Berwick-up-Tweed, via Bamburgh and Lindisfarne

Highlights and stops: Holy Island causeway / Lindisfarne (first thing, due to tide times), Bamburgh Castle, beach and lighthouse, lunch at The Potted Lobster. Berwick-up-Tweed for fish and chips.

Overnight: Marshall Meadows Manor House Hotel, Scottish Border

Day 3

Berwick to Kielder Water, via Twizel, Jedburgh and the Kielder Forest Drive (with a quick return visit to Lindisfarne first thing)

Highlights and stops: Norham Castle, Kirk O’Steil church, Twizel Caslte and river walk to Twizel Viaduct, Jedburgh town, Hindhope Linn waterfall, Kielder Forest Drive

Overnight: The Pheasant Inn, Kielder

Day 4

Kielder to Blanchland, via Hadrian’s Wall and Allenheads

Highlights and stops: Kielder Water and Northumberland National Park, Hadrian’s Wall, Sycamore Gap Tree Memorial, North Pennines National Landscape

Overnight: The Lord Crewe Arms, Blanchland

Day 5

Blanchland to Newcastle, to get the train home

Highlights and stops: Hexham (with its Abbey) Corbridge town, Prudhoe Castle

We drove the route – a total of 530 miles including all our detours and extras – in a fully electric Škoda Enyaq

A LUXURY UK holiday company offering trips to Europe and Asia has closed down.

Salamander Voyages – which is based in Belfast – has gone into administration.

The company used to sell private boat holidays in Turkey, Greece, Italy and Croatia.

According to The Gazette, administrators were appointed on April 22.

On its website, Salamader Voyages states: “After 23 years of wonderful sailing in the Aegean Sea, we are very sad to announce Salamander Voyages has taken the difficult decision to close its doors.

“Please note that on 22 April 2026 Scott Murray and Ian Davison of Keenan Corporate Finance Ltd were appointed as Joint Administrators of the Company.

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“For any creditor queries, please contact the Joint Administrators’ office by telephone (028 9023 3023) or email (info@keenancf.com).”

The luxury holidays didn’t come cheap though, with sailings costing from £3,000 per person.

Upcoming trips included a sailing of the Turkish Gulf between June 15 and 22, heading to “small villages, pristine secluded bays and less-known historical sites”.

And between October 5 and 17 there was another Turkish sailing in the western half of the Gulf.

Claudia Winkleman has even previously been a guest onboard, commenting: “The holiday was absolutely amazing. The boat is beautiful and the crew were outstanding.

“The most relaxing week of our lives. We love you Salamander.”