France
Porquerolles
Car-free island tracks through umbrella pines to beaches with Caribbean water, an hour from the mainland.
The ferry drops you at a small harbour and the engine noise stops. Porquerolles, off France's Mediterranean coast, replaces it with pine-scented air, cicadas and the crunch of white sand on tracks that lead through umbrella pines to coves where the sea runs Caribbean-clear. No cars beyond the odd service vehicle, no traffic sound — just the island breathing.
Porquerolles is the largest and most visited of the three Îles d'Hyères, and since 2012 it has been classed as the heart of the Port-Cros National Park, which is why it has stayed the way it is: one working village around the harbour square, and beyond it a wild island of steep southern cliffs, sandy northern beaches, cultivated plains of vines and orchards, and the old forts that once guarded the coast. Bicycles hired at the port follow the authorised tracks to several of the beaches and forts. The island is inside a national park and run like one: the tracks are managed, fresh water is scarce, and those rules are what keep it the way it is.
Couple
Bike to Plage Notre-Dame through the pine forest, swim in the clear shallows, share lunch at the harbour. The island pares a day down to essentials and makes them enough.
Family
The north-shore beaches shelve gently and the traffic is bicycles. The authorised cycle routes reach several of them and a fort or two; the steeper paths are for older legs.
Friends
The tracks fan out to different coves — split up in the morning, compare discoveries over rosé at the harbour in the evening.
- No cars, no high-rises — just pine-shaded tracks connecting white-sand beaches with Caribbean-clear water, inside a national park.
- The island's single village has a handful of restaurants and a square for pétanque — that is the nightlife.
- Vines and orchards fill the island's cultivated plain, and the island's own rosé is poured at the harbour.
- Bike hire at the port puts the authorised tracks under your wheels — beaches on the north shore, forts on the heights.
Riste d'aubergines — the island's own slow-cooked aubergine and tomato — from the market gardens of Les Jardins de Porquerolles.
Fig preserves from the island's conservation orchards, spread on bread at the harbour for breakfast.
Esperance
Australia
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Telegraph Cove
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Fathom Five National Marine Park
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Shipwrecks show through Georgian Bay water clear enough to read their decks from the surface.
Crescent Island
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Marais Poitevin
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Sarlat-la-Canéda
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Honey-coloured stone and truffle-scented market air in a medieval town preserved almost by accident.
Carcassonne
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Double ramparts and a crown of towers silhouetted at dusk like a medieval fever dream.
Noyers-sur-Serein
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Timber-framed houses and carved lintels in a village wrapped inside a bend of the Serein.