England
Staithes
Salt-blasted cottages crammed into a ravine so tight the sea is the only way out.
The fishing village grips the cliff like something the sea hasn't quite managed to dislodge. Staithes hunkers between two headlands, its cottages stacked so tightly that high tides once reached the ground floors — and occasionally still do.
Captain Cook worked as a shop boy in Staithes before running away to Whitby and the sea; the shop itself has long since been claimed by the waves, but the harbour he stared at while weighing out sugar survives. In the 1880s the Staithes Group — Britain's own Impressionists — settled here to paint the light, the boats and the working fishermen, and studios still occupy the converted net lofts above the beck. The Cleveland Way passes through the village, and the walk south to Port Mulgrave crosses abandoned ironstone workings reclaimed by wildflowers and rabbits, while the harbourside pub famously takes the sea over its doorstep when the tide turns angry.
Solo
Staithes has the quality of a place that doesn't notice you — the harbour works, the tide turns, the gulls wheel, and you're simply there among it all. Walk the Cleveland Way north and the village shrinks to a smudge on the cliff.
Couple
The tangle of lanes, the artists' studios and the harbourside pubs make an intimate discovery — compact enough for an afternoon, memorable enough to stay with you for years.
- Cottages stack so tightly the sea once washed through the ground floors.
- Cook weighed sugar here before running away to the sea that took the shop.
- Artists still work net-loft studios in the light that drew the Staithes Group.
- The Cleveland Way south crosses industrial ruins reclaimed by wildflowers.
Crab sandwiches in the pub that floods when the tide is angry.
Freshly smoked kippers, their scent drifting through the alleys at dawn.
Arniston
South Africa
A tidal cave hides beneath whitewashed cottages, broad enough for an ox wagon.
Sidi Ifni
Morocco
Spain left on the last day of June 1969, and the Art Deco is still standing.
Parque Nacional Bernardo O'Higgins
Chile
Boats enter a roadless maze of fjords, rain and Patagonian ice.
Datça Peninsula
Turkey
Two seas collide at a wind-raked cape where almond blossom blankets the hills each February.
Buttermere
England
A mirror lake ringed by fells so symmetrical the reflection is indistinguishable from the real.
Grasmere
England
Wordsworth's lake enclosed by fells, where the gingerbread recipe is kept in a bank vault.
Arnside Knott and Silverdale
England
Rare butterflies float above limestone pavement while quicksand lurks on the shore below.
Malvern Hills
England
Elgar's ridge, where spring water flows free from taps carved in the rock.