A long walk in the wild east, a “remote” upland region of northern Portugal close to the Spanish border, the Côa Valley feels like “an enchanted, parallel world”, says Ben Buckland in The New York Times.
To explore it thoroughly, you could walk the 124-mile Côa Valley Grand Route, or GR45, which follows the Côa River northwards from its source to its confluence with the Douro. There are medieval castles along the way, and beautiful old villages with pleasant B&Bs, still thriving despite decades of rural flight.
Eagles and wolves roam the countryside, along with “sleek” grey Sorraia horses, reintroduced by the charity Rewilding Portugal. And near the trail’s northern end, there’s an even more extraordinary sight: thousands of “crisp” rock engravings of animals dating back up to 24,000 years, now protected as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
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Britain’s new marine marvels
As climate change warms Britain’s coastal waters, there has been a “huge influx” of spectacular species from seas to the south.
Keen to see some of them, I took a wildlife-watching boat trip from Brixham Harbour in south Devon, says Mark Stratton in The Telegraph – a day-long outing with Captain Ross Parham on his 42ft catamaran Spot On.
The sightings were plentiful, beginning with a sunfish – a “bizarre leviathan” with no tail and a round body that grows up to 10ft long. Later came “entrancing” pods of common dolphins (which are increasingly numerous here), and several 12ft-long Risso dolphins (“truly impressive beasts” with “bulbous, wrecking-ball heads”), which were seen doing “arching backflips” with “great splash landings”. The birds were dazzling, too – especially the Balearic shearwaters. Our “exotic” show concluded with a sighting of a 30ft minke whale.
The trip costs £135pp (naturetrek.co.uk).
A 1970s time warp on the Med
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’ve got a soft spot for 1970s urban planning, you might enjoy a trip to La Grande-Motte, says Mark C. O’Flaherty in The Guardian.
Conceived by the architect Jean Balladur, this “retro futurist folly of a resort town” lies on France’s south coast, 30 minutes’ drive from Montpellier. In the 1980s, it was seen as “gauche”, and later it gained a “trashy reputation”. But it seems to be undergoing a “renaissance”, and its “gleaming white” apartment blocks – like “Mesoamerican pyramids”, but with elegant balconies and lots of “intergalactic” curves – should please any “lover of postwar architourism”.
Stay at the three-star Hôtel Le Quetzal (refurbished, but still “fabulously vintage”), and make time for the more conventional sights nearby – notably the area’s salt marshes.
