We step onto the cliff top outcropping of rock and let the blue sky and lake vista envelope us. "This viewpoint doesn't even have a name," says guide Diana Blinkert of Visit Essen. "I just call it The Rock. We're so lucky to have found it off this little side path off the BaldeneySteig." This type of epiphany comes early – and often – on the Balden...

​ Frightened by war and weary of Covid, I went in search of another world. I found it in the Scottish Highlands. ​I was a 3-hour drive from my TV in Prestwick where the world seemed dominated by war, Covid and political indiscretion. In the silence and beauty of the Cromarty Firth in the Scottish Highlands at sunrise, I might as well have been...

A Wiltshire towns and villages map has been launched by VisitWiltshire, with a focus on sustainable travel and transport. Wiltshire is a county in South West England and borders with Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The map aims to raise awareness and encourage visitors to use sustainable means of transport w...

Free guided walks on Dartmoor are being offered by the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust. Dartmoor National Park is a vast moorland in the county of Devon, in southwest England. Dartmoor ponies roam its craggy landscape, defined by forests, rivers, wetlands and tors (rock formations). Trails wind through valleys with Neolithic tombs, Bronze Age stone ci...

Known throughout the world for its fine ceramics, the Dutch city of Delft also has close ties with the Royal House of Orange and it was the home of Baroque period painter and "Master of Light", Johannes Vermeer, for his entire life. Born in 1632, Vermeer began his career in the early 1650s by painting large-scale biblical and mythological scenes, b...

​ Freiburg is a vibrant, historic, university city and the capital of the Black Forest in the south of Germany. Spring is one of the best times for a city break in Freiburg. It is known for its temperate climate and reconstructed medieval old town, crisscrossed by brooks (bächle). The Gothic cathedral Freiburg Minster towers over the central square...