What is your idea of easy hiking
The French Riviera has been copied and imitated a lot over the years. Nowadays, nearly every coastal country in the world appears to have a “Riviera” of its own – including Albania, for crying out loud. But there is one ingredient in the recipe for the French Riviera’s lasting appeal which is particularly difficult to…
I am not a great fan of books that list 100 Places To Visit Before You Die or some such. The whole concept is built on the false assumption that the urge to travel is driven by the same needs and motives in all of us. If you don’t believe me, just visit any holiday…
If you are looking for a reliable way to date cities, here is one clue: look at the churches: If the town centre is studded with churches that look somehow Gothic but not quite (“Neo-Gothic”: overcooked in parts, half-raw in others), then the city in question is mainly a child of the 19th century. If…
I do not think that too many people will argue with me if I say that Marseille is not the most charming town in Latin Europe. Nor is it the most “easy-on-the-eye”. One reason for the city’s relative unpopularity is that it rarely manages to convey a sense of place. Marseille has neither the leafy…
If you like forest hikes that are attractive and at the same time not overly strenuous, I bet you will like this one. It has, after all, everything that an Easy Forest Hiker could possibly expect. You will be entertained by glimpses of dense undergrowth that seem to come straight from the primeval woodlands of…
Here is something you probably did not see coming. After last week’s walk – which took in the moat around the old city walls of Treviso, the town’s scenic canals and the statue of a “nude female torso” that is freely dispensing water from her nipples – you probably thought we had dealt comprehensively with…
Bordeaux, the unofficial wine capital of the world, may have given its name to the most famous appellation in the world, but on the vinicultural map of the region, its territory is represented by a lone blank spot: Bordeaux is virtually the only place within the Gironde département where no commercial vineyards operate, and it…
Some cities leave you a choice of where to go for an easy hike. You can pick between a walk alongside a lake or a river, a stroll through the gardens of an ancient castle and a journey to a beauty spot up a hill. But not all cities are quite so generous. Some cities,…
Magnificent panoramas are woven into Turin’s cityscape like car factories and the river Po. Sometimes, you do not even have to leave the town center to enjoy these spectacular vistas … … but what you can see on any given day depends as much on the season (we took the picture above several years ago…
Lou Camin Nissart is the first of its kind in France: a Grande Randonnée, a top-category hiking trail, that goes around a town in a loop, similar to what the périphérique ring road does in Paris, only for hikers. And with far more pretty views, since the town in question is Nice, the scenic capital…
