Canada
A wilderness river of glass-clear water runs the old voyageur road through roadless boreal forest.
The gravel glows through metres of water as the canoe crosses a still reach. Ahead, the next rapids announce themselves long before they show.
Saskatchewan's Clearwater carries Class II to IV water and a Canadian Heritage River designation through country no road reaches, joined to fur-trade history by the Methye Portage. The park is pack-in, pack-out and recommended for experienced backcountry paddlers only. A commanding waterfall punctuates the run.
Solo
Only an expert solo paddler with filed plans belongs on this water alone.
Friends
A skilled crew shares the rapids, portages and firelight the route was made for.
Pack-in, pack-out: the park offers nothing, and every meal arrives in the canoe.
The voyageur shore-lunch spirit travels with the paddler's own pan here.

Cruzinha da Garça
Cape Verde
Twelve kilometres of cliff-carved path end at a fishing hamlet on black sand.

Les Calanques de Marseille
France
Jagged white inlets slicing into the coast like fjords filled with Mediterranean turquoise.

St Kilda
Scotland
Britain's most remote islands, evacuated in 1930, where a million seabirds outnumber the ghosts.

Loch Coruisk
Scotland
A loch locked inside the Cuillin mountains, reachable only by sea, the water black and still.

Port Renfrew
Canada
Giant trees and giant surf bracket a fishing town at the west coast road's end.

Île d'Anticosti
Canada
Waterfalls, canyons and fossil-rich shores spread across a Gulf island with one village and few humans.

Dempster Highway
Canada
Canada's only all-season Arctic road runs 740 unpaved kilometres to the Mackenzie Delta.

Kluane National Park
Canada
The world's largest non-polar icefields hide behind front ranges that only flights reveal.