10 of the best October half-term activity holidays in the UK

Now that the kids are back at school, it’s time to start planning the next break. Here’s our pick of family adventures, from cycling Hadrian’s Wall to sailing on the Norfolk Broads

The great seascape: from Glasgow to Skye by kayak

In 1934 two men paddled from Glasgow to the Hebrides on some inner tubes and bits of wood. Today the trip is safer but equally spectacular

Magical mystery tour: a wild camping weekend on Dartmoor

A guided hiking and camping trip with a Dartmoor devotee gives this small group a real connection with one of the UK’s last wildernesses

Time for a micro adventure: 15 action-packed day trips in the UK

Get your adrenaline fix paddleboarding, island-hopping, mountain biking and lots more …

10 of the best quieter spots in Europe: readers’ travel tips

Our tipsters suggest beautiful, remote and relaxed escapes as Europe starts to welcome back visitors

The dashing Russian adventurer who fought to save indigenous lives

Lauded by Tolstoy and idolised by the Soviet Union, Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay campaigned for the suppression of slavery and challenged deceitful Europeans

To the lighthouse – one of the UK’s toughest bike rides

The Cape Wrath Challenge at the northern tip of Scotland was dreamed up by a postwar enthusiast who thought that bike touring clubs were turning soft

Alexandra David-Néel, the first European woman to see Lhasa

The scholar and opera singer who sneaked into Tibet in the 1920s was also an anarchist, ran a casino and adopted a Buddhist monk

‘Things have to change’: tourism businesses look to a greener future

While the pandemic has dealt travel a severe blow, some hope it can be an opportunity to introduce slower, fairer, more sustainable holidays

The corner of Minnesota that’s there by mistake

Northwest Angle is a wedge of the US marooned in a lake and reached via Canada – remote and raw, with pleasures hard-won

Lady Hester Stanhope: meet the trailblazing Queen of the Desert

The aristocrat abandoned her privileged background for a life of Middle East adventure, dressing as a man, visiting harems and leading archaeological digs

I cycled across Europe to Istanbul – and learned to live in the moment

On this epic slow ride to Istanbul, following the Rhine and Danube rivers, our writer ‘turned the pedals and waited for the world to unfold’

Bourdain to Buena Vista Social Club – readers reveal their travel heroes

Writers, chefs and musicians have instilled a wanderlust in our readers but so, too, have heroic grandads and intrepid aunts

Anton Chekhov’s travels … the ‘greatest work of journalism of the 19th century’

The playwright’s arduous journey to a Pacific island in Russia’s far east resulted in a non-fiction masterpiece

‘The solitude of quarantine enthrals me as much as wilderness’

Author Dan Richards, who has travelled to the ‘ends of the earth’, says he is now applying similar coping skills to being alone and indoors for weeks