Katendrecht: Rotterdam’s sailors’ quarter reinvented as cultural hub
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Travel | The Guardian

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A thin peninsula just south of Rotterdam’s centre, Katendrecht was once at the heart of the world’s busiest port, home to continental Europe’s first Chinatown and a lively sailors’ quarter. Where to eat and drinkView image in fullscreen Deliplein in Katendrecht. Farther down the waterfront, the newly opened Nederlands Fotomuseum is also in a renovated warehouse – formerly used to store coffee from Brazil – and is topped with a modern anodised aluminium structure. Where to shopIn the Bay House development, close to the Nederlands Fotomuseum, there are a number of designer fashion and vintage furniture stores. Don’t missVerhalenhuis Belvédère is perhaps the best place to get a sense of where Katendrecht has come from.

Tell us about your favourite lesser-known European island
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Travel | The Guardian

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For a true sense of getting away from it all, few things rival an island escape. For more information please see our terms of service and privacy policy. Share your travel tip using the form below. Share your experience Share your travel tip using the form below. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

Holafly Plans: The Best eSIM Plan for Long Term Travelers
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Nomadic Matt's Travel Site

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So when Holafly launched Holafly Plans, a single eSIM that works as an ongoing subscription across 160+ destinations, I was excited. Holafly Plans is a single global eSIM that covers more than 160 destinations on one ongoing subscription. Use the promo code NOMADICMATT at checkout to get 10% OFF Holafly Plans and 5% OFF all standard Holafly eSIMs. Use the promo code NOMADICMATT at checkout to get 10% OFF Holafly Plans and 5% OFF all standard Holafly eSIMs. FAQIs Holafly Plans different from a regular Holafly eSIM?

‘We keep wine in caves and cathedrals’: an eating and drinking tour of Burgos, Spain
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Travel | The Guardian

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View image in fullscreen Wine cellars at Moradillo de Roa. As we share wine from the porrón, a little light filtering through the air vents, Paola says she hopes increased tourism, whether for food and wine or scenic lookalikes, will help create more year-round jobs here. I end my tour back in Aranda, with a final wine cellar, this one beneath Don Carlos wine shop.

‘We burst into the arena feeling like warriors’: urban trail racing in Nîmes
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Travel | The Guardian

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Running through a retirement home is just one of the many surreal moments that participants signing up for the Nîmes Urban Trail (NUT) get to experience on this 24km race around the city, which takes place each February. I’ve participated in the Lyon Urban Trail for the last three years, pounding up and down stairs, helter-skeltering down the muddy slope of the city’s former ski piste, la Sarra, and jogging through the grounds of old forts. The people running the full marathon had been released into the (urban) wild half an hour earlier; I, surrounded by gladiators and crocodiles, was about to tackle the shorter, but still hilly, 24km race.

Hiking an unruly but beautiful new coast path in south-west Scotland
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Travel | The Guardian

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Three days into my walk along the Rhins of Galloway coast path and I was on love-hate terms with this new long-distance trail. The path is designed to improve access to this untamed, overlooked stretch of coast, which, as well as more lighthouses, features ancient promontory forts, RSPB reserves, ruined castles, spectacular beaches and exotic gardens (the Gulf Stream makes this one of Scotland’s warmest spots). On the first of these two tough days, for the final miles from Killantringan lighthouse to Portpatrick, the coast path falls in step with a section of the Southern Upland Way, which ultimately makes for Cockburnspath, on the east coast.

The Hebden Bridge I know was always a place for Riot Women
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Travel | The Guardian

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Now the lass spirit of the West Yorkshire town is on display again, this time in Sally “Happy Valley” Wainwright’s new BBC One drama Riot Women, which tells the story of a group of women in their late 50s who set up a rock band. At university (and spookily, Wainwright and I were both at York, though we didn’t know one another), I would regularly boast that I lived close to where poet Ted Hughes grew up (he was born in Mytholmroyd, just along the valley) and near to where his erstwhile wife and fellow poet Sylvia Plath was buried (Heptonstall, on the hill above Hebden Bridge). In a town with a penchant for revolving doors and pop-up shops, one of the joys of visiting Hebden Bridge regularly is that it’s never the same twice.

Splendid isolation: 10 beautifully remote getaways in the UK
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Travel | The Guardian

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Like the lighthouse, the cottage was built in 1857 and has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a kitchen and a lounge with a wood burner, and incredible sea views. They can be rented separately or together: the cottage sleeps four in two bedrooms; the house sleeps six in two bedrooms and a snug with a double sofa bed. Most of the rooms are on the ground floor, with traditional flagstone floors, a living room with a wood burner, kitchen and master bedroom, plus there’s a twin bedroom and toilet upstairs.

‘I step outside into a cacophony of nature’: an off-grid escape in the west of England
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Travel | The Guardian

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Back at the cottage, we lower ourselves into the outdoor hot tub, which has reached a tolerable temperature, and watch the stars gleam white as a blanket of darkness envelopes the cottage and a tawny owl hoots in the distance. So I occupy my time by reading the cottage’s literature, in which I discover that nearby, on the A465 to Hereford, is Lock’s Garage, described as “one of the great frontier stores in the whole country”. We spend the next few days in leisurely exploration – dog walks in the Big Wood surrounding the cottage, where there are signs of tree-cutting and squirrel traps on high platforms.

‘This is pretty therapeutic’: a pottery retreat in Spain’s Alpujarras
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Travel | The Guardian

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The course is a collaboration between Las Mecias’s Dutch owners, Laura and Nina, and Spaniards Milena and Julia from Tierra de Arcillas, a local ceramics studio. View image in fullscreen ‘We test the quality of the clay by removing stones, adding a drop of water, making a ball, then a tiny sausage, then a ring.’ The retreat was provided by Las Mecias and Tierra de Arcillas, which offer three-night, four-day introduction to wild clay workshops, including accommodation, three dinners, three breakfasts and two lunches, and over 15 hours of theory and practical instruction.

Black, Brummie and proud: a walking tour of the real Handsworth
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Travel | The Guardian

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It’s a chalky blue-skied August day in Birmingham, and while many of the city’s residents have flocked to the centre for the annual Caribbean music and food festival, I’m on a walking tour in Handsworth, the neighbourhood where much of the creative legacy of Birmingham’s Caribbean population was first felt. Since creating the Madiba tour in Handsworth, named after Nelson Mandela’s famous visit to the area (Madiba was his Xhosa clan name) the company has developed a plethora of walks, exhibitions, and educational workshops that highlight the history and legacy of the African-Caribbean community in Birmingham.

‘It’s more than a pretty backdrop’: crime writer Ann Cleeves on the magic of Orkney in Scotland
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Travel | The Guardian

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Just as there’s always a view of water in Orkney, there’s always a reminder of its neolithic past, and I would come to explore the islands’ history more deeply when I was researching my latest novel, The Killing Stones. Over time, we explored some of the smaller islands: Hoy with its dramatic cliffs, the tiny island of Papa Westray, home to the Knap of Howar, the oldest domestic stone dwelling in Northern Europe, and North Ronaldsay, where we stayed in the Bird Observatory’s accommodation, a reminder of the work that first took me north. double quotation mark I felt a longing to go north again in my fiction, a kind of homesickness for the islands, for the dark winters and the bright, light summers