With Halloween approaching, we need you to send us your travel tips on eerie sites and ghostly tours. The best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break For our Halloween edition of readers’ tips, we’d love to hear about spooky spots, haunted houses and ghost tours you’ve experienced around the UK. Perhaps you enjoyed a guided (or self-guided) city ghost walk, visited a haunted castle or wandered ar

Smaller and less visited than Como and Garda, Lake Iseo harbours a gorgeous car-free island ideal for easy-going cycling and sightseeing Rust red and burnt sienna speckle the green mountain rising from Lake Iseo. Golden autumn sunlight shimmers on the water. Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, is a peak of sheer cliffs and dense forest, dotted with old fishing hamlets and hillside villages,

From Alpine valleys to belle époque towns, dip your toes in the therapeutic waters and steaming mineral pools at spa hotels offering centuries-old healing treatments In 2021, Unesco designated 11 historic spa towns across Europe as one transnational world heritage site , recognising their “exceptional testimony to the European spa phenomenon, which gained its highest expression from around 1700 un

An autumn break in the French mountain town of Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains offers thermal treatments and glorious walking trails before the winter ski crowds descend Mont Blanc is hiding behind the clouds, but the Aiguille du Midi spears the sky above a mountainside ablaze with russet, gold and tawny tones. The maples flare red; rowan trees are dusted with crimson berries. Our little group has trundle

From a historic bathhouse in Sweden to forest bathing in Croatia, readers share their favourite places to relax and recharge • Tell us about a small European ski resort – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher Tucked away off a pretty shopping street in a beautiful art nouveau building is one of Stockholm’s oldest spas, Centralbadet where a day ticket costs from £23. As winter darkness descends,

After electronics giant Philips left, the city reinvented itself as a multicultural hub for creativity and innovation, and the home of Dutch Design Week A baggily clad skateboarder’s wheels clatter across concrete floors, the noise bouncing off exposed pipes and iron girders. Vaulted skylights set in high ceilings illuminate the industrial space and its central kitchen, from which my main course –

Wildfires raged through the national park this summer, but much of the landscape remains untouched – and autumn is the perfect time to go In the Cairngorms national park, the bracken is changing from dark green to russet and umber. Birch leaves are lined with gold, while the Scots pines remain proudly green. Autumn is arriving with a little sigh of relief here, after a summer few will forget. The

As Michael Sheen prepares to bring Owain Glyndŵr to life on stage, our writer walks the peaceful national trail named after the last Welsh Prince of Wales Between the treetops, I can see the towers of a distant mist-shrouded castle. Is it possible I could make contact with the spirit of the great Welsh hero Owain Glyndŵr so soon, at the very start of our hike? We are not even on the actual trail o

From cycling in Berlin and the Black Forest to world-class cocktail bars in Cologne and magical North Sea beaches, readers share their travel tips • Tell us about a sunny autumn break – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher In an often overlooked corner of Germany, near the Dutch border, Münster is an absolute gem. Covered porticos will convince you you’re in northern Italy, gothic churches wil

A ride in a water taxi transforms a stunning hike from Lyme Regis to West Bay into a perfect circular route Many favour a circular walk, but you can give a linear one new shape with the addition of a novel form of transport. My wife Helen, our friend Tom Cox and I take the water taxi – a rigid inflatable boat (Rib) – from West Bay on Dorset’s coast to Lyme Regis, with a plan to walk back to our st

Converted from Victorian buffet bars, ticket offices and waiting rooms, these station pubs offer beautifully restored interiors, real ales and a slice of railway history No prizes for guessing what this pub used to be… The Old Ticket Office has high ceilings, walls painted shades of locomotive green and booths resembling train carriages; there are outdoor tables on Station Square. A live train dep

A new direct train service connects the far south of Sweden to the Norwegian capital in just over six hours, with the option of stopping off in the seaside town of Varberg or lively Gothenburg en route ‘This carriage is due for modernisation. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience 90s Germany style,” reads the sign on the door to the dining carriage. The couple inside aren’t missing theirs: they

Get inspiration for your next short break with our pick of self-catering accommodation, from a sleek Highlands retreat to a cabin with a hot tub on a Somerset vineyard • 15 great small hotels, inns and restaurants with rooms for an autumn stay in the UK *** Continue reading...

From a cosy Cornish inn with open fires to a boutique hotel in Northumberland, these new and revamped boltholes tick all the right boxes • 15 great cottages and cabins for an autumn escape in the UK Continue reading...

With autumn officially here, our readers savour days of fruitful mellowness, from Cornwall to Loch Lomond • Tell us about a great wellness experience – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher I love Loch Lomond in autumn. I’d start with a walk around Balmaha village and a stretch of the West Highland Way , pretending I’m there for the scenery rather than earning the right to eat something massive

From the foothills of the Pyrenees to the peaks of the Dolomites, you share your top views, meals and adventures at altitude • Tell us about a trip to Germany – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher No doubt your first thought on hearing the words “double-decker” is of a bus. But in the Swiss village of Stans, an old wooden funicular carriage ascends to the station, where a double-decker cable

The Bradford Pennine Gateway Trail, launching this weekend, aims to ‘change perceptions of Bradford’ by taking in the moors and the area’s new national nature reserve A grainy photograph, dated 1938, hangs in a frame on the downstairs wall of my B&B. It shows 100, perhaps 200, elegantly attired trippers sitting on the green at Shipley Glen in West Yorkshire. They’re picnicking, chatting, taking th

Your top culinary discoveries, from Bled cake in Slovenia to sardines in Portugal and seafood soup in Spain • Tell us about autumn days out in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher Last August, the smoky aroma of grilled sardines drifting over the beach in Portimão woke me up from my sunbathing on the beach. Attracted by the aroma of barbecued fish, we found ourselves in the old port w

You share your low-key alternatives to overcrowded hotspots, from an island city in the Med to a Norwegian art nouveau gem • Tell us about your trips in Europe’s mountains – the best wins a £200 holiday voucher Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna won me over precisely because it feels like Italy with the volume turned down. I stayed in a small family-run hotel near Via delle Volte , where mornings began wit

From secluded coves in Ireland to an evening passeggiata on Italy’s Aeolian islands, readers share their discoveries • Tell us about your most memorable food and drink discoveries in Europe Giant griffon vultures glided parallel with my bus as it reached the highest point of Cres , the least populated of the four main islands in the Kvarner Gulf at the very north of the Croatian Adriatic. Covered