Since 2010, we’ve been sharing with you, easy hikers of the world, tips on where to find trails wherever your holidays bring you. We’ve walked and hiked trails in Paris, Barcelona, the French Riviera (among the many), and of course, in the land of hikers, Germany. Choose from these top easy hiker tips that proved to…
Underneath and between the City’s futuristic skyscrapers, a 2000 year old structure is still weaving its way I suspect that some of you may have heard about the Berlin Wall. I also believe that far fewer will be aware that London has a wall, too – which was equally the product of a foreign invasion…
Why it may be a good idea to call on local assistance for your trips around the Ossola Valley For our final walk in the Ossola valley, we hiked a small piece of the Via dei torchi e dei mulini – the “trail of wine presses and mills”. The Via Tappia Trail of Wine Presses We started…
Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 15 sculpted stations of the cross on the Sacred Mountain of Domodossola provide a fascinating experience, even in the rain – or, perhaps, particularly so One thing you have to say for the Alps, they don’t do much by halves there. Europe’s highest mountain range has proper…
How to brighten up a cold, wet and miserable day in the Italian Alps. In the unlikely event that an extraterrestrial were to land in front of my house, driven by the need to find out what earthlings found so recreational by walking from one place to another and demanding the briefest possible explanation of…
An expedition down the Toce river reveals that the Orridi di Uriezzo are actually quite beautiful One of the main forces that have shaped the landscape of the Ossola valleys is water. During the last ice age, all valleys – main valley and seven side valleys – were covered by approx. 1 km of ice…
D is for Domodossola This week, we are off for a few days of hiking in the northern Italian Ossola Valley (near the Swiss border), but before we put on our boots for the more “serious stuff”, we went for a brief walk through the town of Domodossola, our base for the duration of our stay….
Returning, after some time, to a place where you have been before can be an interesting experience Last week, we were back in Paris for two days after a two-year absence and, before that, a two-decade-long stint. We were surprised how much had changed in such a relatively short while around our former neighbourhood: the…
A multi-site exhibition in Nice celebrates the past and the present of France’s second most famous and most attractive boulevard The past is a foreign country, the novel “The Go Between” famously begins, and although we all know that “they do things differently there”, we are often insufficiently aware of the size of the gap…
… and when the twain finally did meet, two worlds collided – and two rival viewpoints of history. Two trillion dollars have been spent. This is not a trifling amount, even for one of the world’s richest nations. Still, East Germany – after 25 years of reconstruction – has preserved an Eastness about it which…