We asked the experts to reveal the trips they are most excited about – from Papua New Guinea’s jungles to Greenland’s ice floes

Asia

1. Mountain biking, Cappadocia, Turkey

In Cappadocia, the thrill of hurtling along a trail on two wheels is amplified by its otherworldly landscape of rock pillars, known as “fairy chimneys”, many reaching more than 40 metres high, as well as its cave houses and ancient Byzantine churches. There are well-marked trails, both long and short, for all skill levels.

When? April to October are the best months

Book it: Argeus Tourism & Travel (00 90 384 341 4688; cappadociaexclusive.com) offers a year-round, four-day guided mountain-bike tour of Cappadocia from £583, including hotel accommodation, some meals and bike rent. Flights extra

2. Climbing Mount Ramelau, East Timor

While the situation in East Timor is relatively calm compared with recent periods of political strife, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office still advises against “all but essential travel” to the region. However, interest is slowly picking up again, and predictions are that 2010 will be a fantastic time to explore this land relatively untouched by tourism. Having suspended all trips to East Timor four years ago, Intrepid is re-introducing trips for 2010. The highlight of its itinerary is an ascent of Mount Ramelau – the highest mountain in East Timor – timed so you will reach the summit for sunrise.

When?April to October

Book it: Intrepid (020 3147 7777; intrepidtravel.com) offers a 15-day guided trip from £1,020, including accommodation, all meals and transfers. Flights extra. Departures on 4 and 18 July 2010

3. Frozen river trek, India

In winter the road into the remote Zanskar region of northern India is buried in deep snow, and the only route in is to walk along the frozen Zanskar River. Merchants have walked the route for centuries, but now the first handful of tourists are discovering this unique trek, known as the Chadar. Along the 55-mile journey you can visit villages that are completely divorced from modern life and explore Buddhist monasteries built into cliff walls.

When? January and early February

Book it: Project Himalaya (info@project-himalaya.com; project-himalaya.com) offers a 21-day trip from 1 January 2010 from £2,040, including domestic flights, meals, accommodation and transfers

4. Horse riding, Georgia

Georgia has some of the world’s most spectacular mountains as well as very fine horses, making it perfect for a horse adventure. Travelling into the remote Tusheti region, ride through some of the highest villages in Europe, past meadows and snow-capped peaks. You can stay in a 600-year-old defensive tower converted into a guesthouse.

When? June to September

Book it: Wild Frontiers (020 7736 3968; wildfrontiers.co.uk) has a nine-day horse trek from £1,195, departing 7 August, including full-board accommodation and transfers. Flights extra

5. Jungles of Papua New Guinea

This autumn’s fantastic BBC1 series, Lost Land of the Volcano, has put Papua New Guinea on the radar of intrepid travellers. This is the place to marvel at masked fire dances, explore dense jungle, snorkel azure waters and camp by an active volcano, Tavurvur. You should be used to walking hilly terrain.

When? Dry season is May to December

Book it: Baobab Expeditions (020 8951 2854; baobabexpeditions.com) offers a 10-day Papua New Guinea trip from £2,986, including accommodation, airport transfers, local transport/excursions, all meals. Flights extra. Departures on 2 April, 7 July, 10 September and 5 November 2010

6. Cycling Laos

Cycling is a great way to get off the beaten track in this increasingly popular country. Start in Luang Prabang, in north central Laos, and head to Hanoi, in north Vietnam, travelling along the banks of the Mekong river and past the intriguing Viengxay caves. When? October to March

Book it: World Expeditions (020 8545 9030; worldexpeditions.co.uk) has a 15-day guided Luang Prabang to Hanoi cycling trip from £1,350, including most meals, bike hire and sightseeing. Flights extra. Departures from January to December 2010

7. Loepard-spotting, Yala National Park, Sri Lanka

Yala is perhaps the world’s best place for leopard-spotting and, since the end of the lengthy civil war in May, tourists are returning there. As well as leopards, you can expect to see elephant, water buffalo, wild boar and more than 100 species of birds.

When? January to May

Book it: Real Holidays (020 7359 3938; srilankaportfolio.co.uk) offers a 15-day package, including Yala, from £2,285, departing 29 January 2010, including B&B accommodation, all flights and transfers

8. Tien Shan horse trek, Kyrgyzstan

For adventurous horse trekking you can’t beat Kyrgyzstan. You can ride high into the snow-capped mountains in the footsteps of nomads and Silk Road traders, then pick your way down through the juniper-lined valleys. You’ll need horse riding experience.

When? Trekking is best between June and September

Book it: The Adventure Company (0845 608 0889; adventurecompany.co.uk) offers a 14-day horse trek from £1,959, including flights, accommodation, activities and some meals. Several dates available in July, August and September 2010

9. Lake trekking, Bhutan

Despite being sandwiched between two super-powers, India and China, Bhutan retains a unique Buddhist culture and offers some of the best trekking of all the Himalayan kingdoms. Near Thimphu, there are a series of picturesque, high-altitude lakes, including Yutsho, known for its golden trout, as well as the famous Tiger’s Nest monastery. Moderate to high level of fitness required.

When? September to October

Book it: Footloose (01943 604030; footlooseadventure.co.uk) offers a 11-day trip, taking in all the above, from £1,850, including domestic flights, accommodation, most meals, sightseeing and guide. International flights extra. Visas can be arranged through Footloose

The Americas

10. Sea Kayaking, Greenland

Sea kayaking was invented in Greenland by Inuit hunters as a means of pursuing seals and whales, but today it is growing in popularity among holidaymakers keen to get up close to the majestic icebergs around the coast. It’s possible to hire a kayak in various towns in Greenland, but unless you are an expert, you should join a guided group.

When? July and August

Book it: Wilderness Journeys (0131 625 6635; wildernessjourneys.com) offers a 16-night trip from £2,595, including wild camping and guest house accommodation, all meals, kayaking equipment, guiding, transport and domestic flights. Departs 5 July, 29 July and 12 Aug 2010

11. Off the beaten track, Northern Peru

Although less accessible than the south, northern Peru is deeply intriguing – pre-Inca archaeological sites are abundant and still being discovered. Highlights include the Tombs of Sipan: discovered largely intact in 1987, with many precious gold and ceramic artefacts. Other sites include the Huacas del Sol y Luna (adobe pyramids) and the Gocta Falls, one of the world’s tallest waterfalls, while rare pink dolphins swim in this region’s section of the Amazon.

When? June to October

Book it: Sunvil (020 8758 4774; sunvil.co.uk) offers an 11-night trip from £4,090, including a private tour of the Tombs of Sipan, flights, transfers, accommodation, some meals and private excursions. Departures year-round

12. Island-hopping, The Falkland Islands

For many the Falklands will always conjure up images of war, but today they are increasingly a venue for tourism. You can stay in friendly B&Bs, walk in the unspoilt wilderness and immerse yourself in the local culture. Then jump on board an eight-seater plane to explore neighbouring islands where, if you’re lucky, you may encounter penguins, sea lions and orcas.

When? November to February

Book it: Adventure Life (00 406 541 2677; adventure-life.com) offers an eight-day island-hopping trip from £1,670, including accommodation, all meals and domestic flights. International flights extra. Weekly departures throughout 2010

13. Wild West by rail, United States

California’s picturesque railroads offer a fascinating way to see America’s Wild West, whisking you past giant redwood forests, rugged coastlines and historic gold rush towns that might otherwise take days to reach by car. Take the Sierra Railroad – created in 1897 to connect the Central Valley to the Gold Country – which crosses a section of the Sierra Nevada foothills, and the Napa Valley Wine Train, a restored 1915 Pullman train car, through the region’s beautiful wine country.

When? March to May and September to October

Book it: Ffestiniog Travel (01766 772 030; festtravel.co.uk) has a 10-day “Historic Trains of California” tour from £1,759, including flights, train travel, B&B accommodation, some meals, excursions and guiding. Departures 14 March, 11 April, 18 April 2010

14. Sailing expedition, south from Cape Horn

Instead of taking several short, budget holidays over a year or two, tour companies report more people booking one “ultimate” adventure, and a sailing trip to Antarctica is as ultimate as it gets. Small-scale expeditions allow you to explore places the bigger ships can’t reach. One three-week itinerary takes in Cape Horn, Chile, the South Shetland Islands – home to chinstrap penguins and sealions – and Deception Island, a spectacular volcanic island.

When? December to March

Book it: Victory Adventure Expeditions (001 5661 621010; victory-cruises.com) has an Antarctica expedition, taking in all of the above, on board a 12-berth sailing boat from $6,500, including all meals, harbour fees and guide. From 8 January to 1 February 2010 and 7 February to 3 March 2010.

Europe

15. Cycling St Petersburg to Venice

The Tour d’Afrique bike ride organisers (from Cairo to Cape Town) have started allowing riders to design their own tours, subject to minimum numbers. First for 2010 is the Amber Route, a 1,940-mile epic from St Petersburg to Venice tracing the old amber trading route across the Baltic States, then through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia, before finishing in Venice. Good fitness levels are required.

When? 11 July to 21 August

Book it: £5,430, including accommodation and food, but excluding flights. Register online at tourdafrique.com

16. Snow-shoeing, Sicily

Snow-shoeing on Mount Etna – Europe’s highest volcano – is becoming increasingly popular, with travellers keen to experience something different from the Alps. You’ll pass through the dense forest of Piano Provenzano, across ancient lava flows and to elevations with views across the Ionian Sea. You can also explore the historic town of Taormina. No previous snow-shoeing experience needed, but a moderate level of fitness.

When? November to March

Book it: Explore (0844 499 0901; explore.co.uk) offers a four-day trip from £645, including accommodation, some meals and guided walks. Flights extra. Departs 22 January and 19 February 2010

17. Walking the Outer Hebrides and St Kilda, Scotland

The Outer Hebrides and St Kilda offer wilderness walking with the wow factor, but they are remarkably affordable and on our doorstep – sure to make them attractive to eco-conscious ramblers-on-a-budget in 2010. Rugged and remote, you should base yourself on Harris and walk on the coastal hinterland, then explore Lewis (the two are actually one island) and visit the Standing Stones of Callanish. Take the three-hour ferry to Kilda for wonderful wildlife spotting.

When? May to September

Book it: Wilderness Scotland (0131 625 6635; wildernessscotland.com) offers a year-round, three-night self-guided walking trip to the Outer Hebrides and St Kilda from £350, including full-board accommodation, ferry transfers and route notes/maps

18. Trekking the Tour du Mont Blanc, France

The Tour du Mont Blanc is a circumnavigation of Europe’s highest peak through Switzerland, Italy and France. Book a self-guided trip from mountain hut to mountain hut – across passes, enormous glaciers and lakes. Above average fitness required.

When? The mountain huts are open late-June to end of August

Book it: Utracks (0845 241 7599; utracks.com) offers a seven-day self-guided trip from £530, including accommodation, all meals, luggage transfers and maps. Flights extra. Departs every Monday and Saturday from 19 June to 30 August 2010

19. Walking the Lleyn Peninsula, Wales

Wales is set to be a popular walking destination for 2010, not least the beautiful 95-mile coastal path from Caernarfon to Porthmadog. It is possible to walk shorter parts of the path; for example, there’s a great 47-mile walk that takes in the wild moors at Bwlch Mawr, the iron age fort at Tre’r Ceiri and the blustery Porth Oer cliffs. Round off your trip by hopping on a ferry to Bardsey Island.

When? June to September

Book it: Edge of Wales Walk (01758 760652; edgeofwaleswalk.co.uk) has a six-day, 47-mile walk, as above, from £56 per night (£30 per child), including B&B, minibus transport, maps and GPS. Available year-round

Africa

20. Walking in the Simien Mountains, Ethiopia

Trekking in the Simien Mountains is impressive but not overly technical. They are bounded on the north and east by a massive escarpment, in places more than 1,000 metres high. Expect to see an array of wildlife, from baboons to Ethiopian wolves. Moderate fitness level required.

When? September to June

Book it: Wild Frontiers (020 7736 3968; wildfrontiers.co.uk) offers an eight-day walk in the mountains from £1,595, departing 13 February 2010, including accommodation, all meals, domestic flights, services of a tour leader and a local guide. International flights extra

21. Exploring Mali

Everyone has heard of Timbuktu, but not everyone knows how to get there. On a tour of Mali you can visit this fabled city, trek among the villages of Dogon Country, visit the markets of Djenne, and ride by traditional boat on the Bani River to Mopti, a city on three islands. No fitness requirements.

When? November to January

Book it: World Expeditions (020 8545 9030; worldexpeditions.co.uk) has a guided 13-day trip from £1,390, including accommodation, some meals, private transport, Niger river boat trip and trekking in Dogon country. Flights extra. Ten departures from January to December in 2010

22. Gorilla trek, Rwanda

Rwanda has the largest number of habituated gorilla groups, and this number looks set to increase from seven to eight. The Susa group (made famous in the film Gorillas in the Mist) recently split, which means the creation of a new, independent gorilla family group in the Mt Karisimbi area looks likely. This means an even better chance of being able to obtain permits for this expensive, but incredible experience.

When? June to September

Book it: To Escape To (020 7060 6747; toescapeto.com) has a seven-night trip, combining the Mount Karisimbi area with the Masai Mara in Kenya, from £3,895, including all flights, full board accommodation, transfers, park fees and gorilla trekking permit. For departures until 31 March 2010 (excluding Christmas and New Year)

23. Exploring wilderness, Malawi

For an African country with such a beautiful expanse of wilderness that is safe and not overly expensive, it is amazing that Malawi is not more on the tourist map. Climbing the 3,002m summit of Mount Mulanje is a highlight, taking in forested gorges, waterfalls and tea plantations. Moderate level of fitness required.

When? Early May to late October

Book it: Wilderness Journeys (0131 625 6635; wildernessjourneys.com) offers a 12-night guided Malawi trip from £2,275, including kayaking, trekking, mountain biking, snorkelling, accommodation, all meals, park fees and transport. Fights extra. Departs 11 April, 16 May and 6 June 2010

24. Wildlife spotting, Botswana

Only an hour’s flight from South Africa, Botswana is likely to reap the benefits of football fans heading to the World Cup. Nearly all southern African mammal species are present in the Moremi Wildlife Reserve and Chobe National Park, which is home to the largest elephant population in the world. In Makgadikgadi Pans National Park wildebeest and zebra migrate annually.

When? August to October (for elephants). April to December (for wildebeest)

Book it: Tribes (01728 685971; tribes.co.uk) has a 10-night trip to Botswana, taking in Moremi, Chobe and Makgadikgadi, from £2,670, including accommodation, all meals, transfers and activities. International flights extra. Departures throughout 2010

25. Three peak trek, Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Trekking to the summit of Mount Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak (4,167m), has always been popular, but for a real adventure combine this with two less well-trodden peaks – Jebel Ouanakrim (4,088m) and Jebel Adrar n’Dern (4,001m). You’ll discover seldom-visited gorges and passes and spectacular views to the Sahara. Above average fitness required.

When? September to November, March to May

Book it: Exodus (0845 863 9601; exodus.co.uk) has a 15-day trip from £839 including flights, guided walks, accommodation, most meals and transfers. Regular departures from 2 May to 3 October 2010.

The guides

• Tim Greening KE Adventures (keadventure.com)

• Greg Witt Author of Ultimate Adventures: A Rough Guide to Adventure Travel (roughguides.com)

• Brad Atwal World Expeditions (worldexpeditions.com)

• Simon Grove Explore (explore.co.uk)

• Jonny Bealby Wild Frontiers (wildfrontiers.com)

• Tom Hall Lonely Planet (lonelyplanet.co.uk)

• James Ingham The Adventure Company (adventurecompany.co.uk)

• Richard Pfaffli Baobab Expeditions (baobabexpeditions.com)

• Stevie Christie Wilderness Journeys (wildernessjourneys.com)

• Darrell Wade Intrepid (intrepidtravel.com)

• Lloyd Boutcher Sunvil Traveller (sunvil.co.uk)

• Edan Harvey The Traveller (the-traveller.co.uk)

After five months and more than 4,000 miles, Mike reaches the end of his round-Britain ride – and considers starting all over again

For some, it’s visiting every football league ground, for others, tube stations. For me, by default, it’s British nuclear power plants. And there’s Dungeness B! The full set. I stopped to take a photograph, grateful for digital technology. I could imagine, in this day and age, that a man taking so many films of nuclear power stations into Snappy Snaps might have some explaining to do.

Through the flat, eerie landscape fringing Romney Marsh, covered in shingle, like a giant low-maintenance garden, the odd tuft of oatgrass and fan of viper’s bugloss clinging on for grim death. Through the Cinque ports of New Romney, Hythe and Folkestone, and then a steep dive down into Dover, and straight up again the other side onto the clifftops. I sat on a bench at Langdon Cliffs and looked down at the ferries and catamarans waltzing around each other gracefully in Dover’s port, before they passed between the harbour walls and arrowed towards the grey bluffs of Cap Gris Nez.

At South Foreland I ran out of Britain again and had to head north. Some 30 miles later, at North Foreland, I had to head west – the final turning point – along the Viking Coastal cycle trail. It skirted the base of the chalk cliffs of Minnis Bay, as if I was riding under the ramparts of some giant alabaster castle.

“Where’s that?” I asked a man in Herne Bay, pointing to a town in the distance across the water.

“Southend,” he replied.

“Southend,” I said, in whispered awe, in much the same way I imagine that Columbus did upon sighting the New World. “I was there five months ago. Can you believe it?”

The man, without the benefit of context, seemed able to believe it quite easily.

Through lovely Faversham, and then out into the fields and orchards, the feral escapees lining the lanes groaning with fruit. I stopped to eat some succulent wild pears and then cycled on to the marshland village of Conyer, and along the levees, floating across the sunken landscape, past the ribs of eviscerated boats sticking out of the mud like dinosaur carcasses.

Gillingham, Chatham, Rochester – a sign read “London 30″. At Gravesend, the Thames reappeared, not wide and majestic, as it had been the last time I’d seen it at Whitstable, before the Isles of Sheppey and Grain had obscured it, but imprisoned by concrete banks. I felt faintly claustrophobic, flushed with a sense of loss, grief even, for the absent vastness of the sea, my constant companion for almost half a year.

I passed the gigantic Bluewater shopping centre, then the Dartford Bridge and Erith. I was being sucked into London. Thamesmead, Woolwich, then there, beyond the Thames Barrier, were the towers of Canary Wharf. The Woolwich ferry shuttled back and forth across the river. I considered jumping on it and going round one more time.

Greenwich. New Cross. Red buses. Sirens. Very familiar streets now. My town. Not my town. I stopped at a red light and looked down at my bike. I thought about the places it had taken me to – across the bouncing bridges suspended in the sky, past the castles of Northumberland, to wild Cape Wrath, through the Assynt mountains, the lonely, windswept Outer Hebrides, around the majestic sweep of Morecambe Bay, the Gower peninsula, up and down the murderous hills of Devon and Cornwall, to Land’s End, and, finally, Bermondsey. It seemed impossible that this piece of steel could have carried me through all that.

At Tower Bridge, a friend was waiting for me. We had a few beers at a riverside pub. He asked how the trip had been, but it already seemed like a fast-receding dream and I struggled to remember much detail.

We walked up to Blackfriars Bridge, where it had all started five months before. All I had to do now was ride across the Thames and the circle of Britain was complete. The rain had started to fall gently. I felt reluctant to cross, as if this were the best book I’d ever read and this the last precious page.

Finally, I said farewell to my friend and rode onto the bridge, feeling dazed, heading for home alongside the cycling commuters, as the rain started to fall more heavily.

• MILES THIS WEEK 285. Total miles 4,625

• CONTACT: Mike stayed at the Zanzibar in Hastings (01424 460109; zanzibarhotel.co.uk)

Corsica’s infamous GR20 trail takes walkers the length of the island in two weeks if they can conquer the terrain – and cope with the basic mountain huts

There are several ways to react when a friend suggests you take on something described as “Europe’s hardest long-distance trek”. A straightforward refusal, for example, or a plucky pledge to give it a try once you’ve trained sufficiently – say, for five years. It takes a particular mix of ignorance and bravado to instead shrug a shoulder and nonchalantly ask: “How bad can it really be?”

One hundred and seventy kilometres traversing Corsica’s steepling spine. Nineteen thousand metres of ascent and descent. Fifteen days walking for a minimum of six hours a day. These numbers seemed abstract when we decided to take on the Grande Randonnée (GR) 20. To men of greater trekking experience – the sort who wouldn’t have had to borrow their rucksacks off mates, or then filled them with iPod chargers and beach towels rather than freeze-dried spaghetti and crampons – they would have served as a dread warning of what was to come.

Not us two. With one straight from a job with a Parisian luxury goods company so cushy he gloried in the soubriquet “Champagne Nick”, and the other held together by bandages after foolishly attempting to complete a full decathlon in a single hour, those bare statistics hinted only at charming mountain vistas, heroic tales of derring-do among sun-baked peaks and impressively muscled legs to show off at the next available barbecue.

Two days in and reality has sunk its teeth into our sweaty behinds. In 13 hours of toil, we have yet to encounter a section of flat path that stretches for more than 10 metres. Only rarely have we encountered a path at all. Instead, the red and white daubs of paint that serve as trail markers have sent us scrabbling up nightmarish boulder fields, sliding down vertiginous scree slopes and inching across precipitous rock faces. Walk? There isn’t the opportunity. This is rock-climbing without ropes. There are astounding panoramas – don’t look down — but we’re too busy not tumbling into them to appreciate it all.

“Is this a joke?” gasps Champagne Nick, dropping his rucksack to the ground and falling on top of it. He jabs a finger at a brutal cascade of enormous granite lumps that stretches up and away to the horizon. Having set off at sunrise, we have already hauled ourselves up the equivalent of one and a half Ben Nevises. Strung out down the bare valley below are a handful of fellow trekkers, plodding upwards slowly like pack donkeys. A 900m descent over treacherous loose stones is still to come. How bad could it be? Very.

The GR20 – or “Jhay Air Vang”, as the locals pronounce it – does not mess about. From the very first step it climbs at a dizzying rate, through dense maquis forest and then larico pines, past shepherds’ huts and hoofprints left by wild boar, up through the wispy coastal clouds and away into the silent, mountainous interior.

In winter it’s impassable with snow, in high summer sweltering, which is why insiders recommend late June and early September. And while it’s possible to split it in half and do just the north or south sections, the traditional route cuts from Calenzana in the north-west, a 10-minute taxi ride from Calvi, all the way across to Conca in the south-east, returning via dusty bus two weeks later.

It deserves enormous respect. Unfortunately, we have barely given it a second thought. Two thousand metres up at Bocca Piccaia, with grey, jagged peaks the shape of Stone Age spears emerging and then disappearing in the mist below us, we cling to one of the few handholds on the fissured rock face for dear life while playful gusts attempt to nudge us into the abyss. “This is beautiful,” I hiss at Nick, “but insane.” 

There is a happy shout behind us. Three clean-limbed French girls are skipping along the skinny ridge with all the ease of gymnasts on a high beam. Close behind is a middle-aged Belgian man wearing a raver’s bandana. The previous night he had introduced himself as his country’s biggest retailer of industrial castors (”All sizes. They are amazing things”). He spots us and waves delightedly. “Let’s run the descent!” he yells, and bounds off at suicidal pace.

It takes us three more sore-legged hours to catch up with them at the end of the stage. We are ready for hot showers, rub-downs, gargantuan meals and beers so cold they could please a penguin, but this is the GR20. There are no four-star hotels, no charming converted farmhouses to stay in. For the majority of the route, the choice is simple: a mattress on the floor of a tiny wooden refuge at €15 a pop, or a tent pitched in the stony ground that surrounds it.

At first glance these refuges seem charming – reminiscent of the sort of bucolic Alpine hut that Heidi might have stayed in with her grandfather. There are tinkling goats, spectacular prospects across summits and valleys and ancient bearded guardiens to provide you with student-style cooking at extravagant prices. Unfortunately, there are also 25 pairs of stinking walking boots, the Mediterranean’s most primeval toilets and sleeping quarters so cramped you may as well lick your neighbours’ feet at the start of the night and get on with it. 

With lights off at 8.30pm, you’d expect to get your fill of sleep. That fails to take into account the international snoring contests which break out as soon as darkness falls. The only noise that’s more disturbing comes around 2am, as 20 sleep-deprived individuals queue outside the single latrine toilet.

Freeze-dried food might be light in the backpack, but it’s heavy on the guts. As a chill moonlight lights up the trees overhead, the small wooden cubicle shakes to what sounds like a series of balloons being burst in a vat of custard. Nick glances at the three French girls standing wearily behind us. “I think I might find a private bush,” he whispers.

The trek’s daily rhythm is soon established. At the first hint of dawn, the refuge comes alive with the blinking of head-torches and the zipping of fleeces. Food is rehydrated and boiled to destruction, weak coffee glugged down, toilets devastated. As soon as there’s enough light to see the broken ground under your boots, the little groups set off – some in somnolent silence, some with cheery song, others loudly discussing the Parisian champagne market in a desperate attempt to forget about blistered toes and decathlon-induced injuries.

For at least two hours, there will be an uphill so relentless that it’s like being on a mountainside treadmill. What breath is left will be taken by the sort of view normally available only to helicopter pilots and people watching Lord of the Rings on DVD. At some point an eccentric veteran will overtake, wearing high-cut denim shorts and clip-on shades, drinking wine and offering a slice of saucisson as he breezes past. That anyone might attempt a lie-in, or breakfast at leisure, seems unthinkable. The unspoken orthodoxy seems to be that the GR is a beautifully backclothed trial as much as a trail, which makes it both mildly shocking and all the more captivating when we fall in with the Lebanese posse.

Georges, Marc, Raph and Nabil are schoolboy friends out for a middle-aged adventure. While others mix rehydration sachets, they pass round the malt whisky. While others retire with ear-plugs as soon as the sun goes down, they crack out the eau de vie and actually look like they’re having a good time.

The Cirque de la Solitude is the most notorious single section of the entire GR20. People are so scared of it that they huddle in petrified groups the night before, exchanging horror stories and then going to bed even more prematurely than usual. Not the boys. They buy endless bottles of Corsican wine from le guardien, pull cartons of duty-free fags from their backpacks and invite us to paint the refuge red.

The Cirque turns out to be both gorgeous and terrifying at the same time. After 800m of rope-free climbing up, there’s 300m of straight down – straight down as in sheer rock-face, without even any pretence of a path. As a sop to the cowardly, there are some old chains bracketed into the smooth granite. As a teaser, there’s nothing but the occasional spiky outcrop between you and the valley floor 1,200m below. The eau de vie hangover lends it all an air of enjoyable farce. After inadvertently essaying a spontaneous abseil that is a lucky ledge away from full flight, Nick gulps: “That’s the closest I’ve ever come to losing my life,” and instead of lighting a flare and waiting for mountain rescue, we all laugh uproariously and clatter onwards.

For all the tribulations, the rewards are remarkable. The terrain is like nothing else in Europe, the set pieces the sort of thing that have even grizzled veterans swooning like knock-kneed novices. Adrenaline overcomes exhaustion, camaraderie keeps the aches at bay.

When we reach the overnight stop at Bergeries de Vallone, a large rock pool is discovered in the nearby river and cans of Pietra beer bought from a shepherd at a mark-up of just 400%. Lebanese charm and free alcohol persuade the French girls to join us for the GR version of a pool party, and as the sun slinks away behind the darkening mountains and water boatmen zip across the flat surface of the river, a sozzled sense of satisfaction comes over us all. The Jhay Air isn’t so bad after all, we decide.

In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to accept the bottle of cherry brandy from the shepherd. Whether that alone is responsible for the lung-splitting reworking of the song YMCA as GR20, the midnight javelin competition with our walking poles and the demolition of a giant wheel of fresh goat’s cheese we may never know, but things are never quite as good again.

Maybe it’s the Lebanese bailing out – like many others, they’d decided to do just the northern half of the trek – or maybe it’s the dodgy water source from the refuge at Manganu that leaves us all vomiting for a deeply unpleasant 36 hours. Perhaps it’s the unbroken routine of trek, refuge, bad food, poor sleep, trek, refuge. Whichever, with a week and a half gone and no end in sight, a grim, humourless mood of resignation overtakes every walker.

That the landscape gradually softens to a succession of lush oak forests and rolling pastures conversely makes the going harder. While the crag-clambering had been sadistic, the challenge of getting through each stage kept the mind fresh. When it’s just a case of slogging onwards, day after near identical day, motivation is harder to maintain. Fatigue fills our rucksacks with lead. Each jarring downhill stride hurts a little bit more. Of those who had started at the same time as us, only the French trio remain en route. Deep into the south part of the island we try to push the doubts away. Having come this far, we aren’t going to be among the 75% who fail to make it to the finish.

That’s the plan. The Manganu parasites have other ideas. With the downhill run to the coast at Conca just three days away, the vomiting and exhaustion return with a vengeance. Unable to pick up our bags, unable to lift our heads from our knees, we hear the white flag being raised overhead.

“Arse,” says Nick glumly. “Stomach,” I reply. He looks at me and grins. “Does it count if you finish in a taxi?”

• Tom Fordyce’s book (with Ben Dirs) about his attempt to become a sporting world champion, We Could Be Heroes, is published by Macmillan. To order a copy for £10.99 with free UK p&p go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6847

Essentials

Tom Fordyce travelled as a guest of the French Tourist Board (uk.franceguide.com). Refuges on the GR20 cost about €15 a night and can be booked through the Parc Naturel Regional de Corse (parc-corse.org). Further English-language route and planning information is available from Corsica for Hikers (corsica.forhikers.com/gr20).

Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Bastia, a two-hour bus ride from Calvi, from Gatwick, Manchester and Bristol.

Kevin Jackson, author of Bite: A Vampire Handbook, lists his top tips for the county

Leper chapel, Cambridge

If it’s eeriness you’re after at this time of year, Leper chapel fits the bill nicely. You’ll find it just outside Cambridge, on the road to Newmarket, and as its name suggests, it was once the place of worship for a hospital devoted to sufferers of leprosy. Its doors are locked much of the time, but a sign tells you how and where to pick up a key. In recent years it has made a highly atmospheric setting for a variety of dramatic productions, and there are rumours that a local vampire group has applied to stage an event there in 2010.
cambridgeppf.org/leper-chapel.htm

Wandlebury hill fort and the Gog Magog Hills

Just a few miles south of Cambridge, with a fine view over the city from certain points, this area in and around a prehistoric hill fort is a splendid place to walk by anybody’s standards, but has been a particular magnet for occultists ever since the 60s, when the maverick archaeologist and advocate of pendulum power, TC Lethbridge, declared that he had discovered the forms of three solar gods hidden just beneath the turf. The fact that conventional archaeologists have declared these figures entirely imaginary has never daunted psychogeographers and other modern antiquarians. While there, be sure to visit the grave of the Godolphin Arabian, great-grandsire of a noble strain of racehorses.

St Wendreda’s church, March

Churches with angel roofs are something of an East Anglian speciality, and all are well worth the visit, but the one at St Wendreda’s is of mind-expanding intensity. If you can manage it, count the roof figures – there are 120 in all – carrying emblems of the Passion, musical instruments or shields. The church dates mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries. Uplifting, moving, unforgettable.
stwendreda.co.ukBite: A Vampire Handbook by Kevin Jackson, is published by Portobello Books (£9.99)

Bedford Old and New rivers

So-called because the Earl of Bedford was the head of the group of speculators who set about their creation. Running roughly from Earith north-east towards Wisbech and King’s Lynn, these are the largest of the many artificial rivers that were built in the 17th century by English and Dutch engineers to help drain the Great Fen (pictured above), from which much of modern north-eastern Cambridgeshire – including Downham Market and March – has been recovered. Before then, the Fen was a swampy area of sedge and eels – a grey and chilly version of the Florida Everglades. The drainage was a huge act of public engineering, a heroic enterprise – though the locals who were forced out might have had a quarrel with that view. It makes a bracingly bleak walk; or if you’re feeling lazy, you can drive alongside it via the B1098 from Chatteris or the B1411 from Ely. A good place to start might be . . .

The Prickwillow Engine Trust and Museum of Fenland Drainage, near Ely

This is the sort of museum that would no doubt make James May feel as if he’d died and gone to heaven. The heart of the collection is a set of six large diesel-pumping engines, five of them rescued from pumping stations around the Fens, and one – the Mirrlees engine – that was used in Prickwillow itself (installed in 1924). As well as a collection of smaller engines, the museum also boasts a series of historical maps, photographs and displays outlining the history of the great drainage, and there are plenty of additional exhibits, including local agricultural tools. An ideal afternoon out for anyone with the faintest feeling for industrial archaeology.
01353 688360, prickwillow-engine-museum.co.uk

The Queen’s Head pub, Newton

A superb example of the entirely unreconstructed village pub: stone floors, blazing open fires and walls festooned with antlers and other animal trophies. The food is excellent, particularly the thick and tasty soups which bubble away perpetually, subtly changing consistency and flavour as new ingredients are added. Take friends from abroad – they will swoon. Or go alone, and fantasise that time has stood still for centuries.
Fowlmere Road (01223 870436)

The Day of the Dead festival is one of Mexico’s cultural highlights, when for once cemeteries are bursting with life, nowhere more so than in the capital

A melancholy man lovingly decorates the grave of his dead wife with marigold petals and prepares for an all-night vigil. A raucous family in the same cemetery remembers their dead relative with alcohol, chilaquiles and song. A three-year-old excitedly carries a sugar skull to his kindergarten where he will proudly put it on the school altar. A protest group sets up an altogether more sombre version outside a government office to demand justice for murdered young girls.

Mexico’s El Día de Muertos is colourful, poignant, mystical, political, contradictory, satirical, macabre and rather childish – all at the same time.

The classic place to immerse yourself in Mexico’s Day of the Dead are the islands in Lake Pátzcuaro in the central state of Michoacán, populated by indigenous Purépecha. The mist from the lake mingles with the mysticism of the indigenous culture to produce a particularly intense experience. But finding a place to stay can be a nightmare, and to get away from tourist trinkets you have to get yourself to the most remote islands.

Perhaps the purest sense of the celebration’s pre-hispanic roots requires a trip to the Mayan town of Pomuch in the Yucatán peninsula, where relatives exhume the bones of dead loved ones to give them a brush up for the year to come. While the prize for the most aesthetic celebration may well belong to the city of Oaxaca, long renowned for the quality of its local artists who use coloured sawdust in extraordinarily intricate altars set up on pavements.

But of all the many options available you can do a lot worse than choose the easiest of all: Mexico City. It may not sound very exotic, but it does drive home just how adept the Día de Muertos (which is really two days, sometimes more) is at reinventing itself for each new era and remaining at the centre of Mexican popular culture.

The origins of the festival stretch back to the different ancient Mesoamerican cultures who lived in the area but shared a fascination with death. None more intensely than the Aztecs who dominated central Mexico for centuries, and held a specific fiesta for the dead in the middle of the year that the Spanish colonial powers moved to coincide with the Catholic holiday of All Saints’ Day on 2 November.

At the core of the celebration are the ofrendas, or altars, which are said to guide the spirits of the departed back to Earth for a brief sojourn among the company of those they left behind. For a feel of how much preparation goes into them, pop into a market from the last week of October until the spirits go back where they came from on 2 November. Any market will do, outside the business districts, from the historic centre to the southern barrio of Coyoacán.

There you will see locals struggling under the weight of huge bunches of bright orange cempazúchitl flowers (local marigolds) and a very smelly bright purple flower, that act as beckoning beacons. Then there are the piles of pan de muerto, a sweet round decorated bread that provides the spirits with sustenance when they’ve found their way.

Most of the stalls are dedicated to the more humorous side of the whole endeavour that became a key element of the urban celebration in the 20th century. There will be models of skeletons getting drunk in cantinas, sculptures of ornately clad female versions, and sugar skulls with space to write your name on the forehead in coloured icing.

There is a lot of Halloween paraphernalia, too. But rather than smothering local traditions it has simply been incorporated into the general cacophony, rather like the Catholic theme imposed by the conquistadors who ensured it all happened around All Saints’ Day.

Public ofrendas are easy to find in Mexico City, beginning with those laid out in the great Zócalo (plaza) in the centre of town. But my favourite is the Muertos exhibition at the Dolores Olmedo museum in the far south of the capital. The central theme changes each year. In 2008 it was icons from the golden age of Mexican cinema – represented in skeletal form.

Set up by one of the main patrons of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the museum also has an impressive permanent collection of their works set in grounds where peacocks roam and xoloitzcuintli (hairless dogs) pose.

For me, the highlight of being in Mexico City on the night of 1 November (the heart of the ceremony) is the chance to drive about another 30 minutes down the road and spend a couple of hours or so in the cemetery in San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, on the semi-rural edge of the city. Stretching up from the edge of what remains of the lake system that once filled the Valley of Mexico, many residents still farm the artificial islets known as chinampas that were the basis of Mesoamerican agriculture in the area. Definitely worth a wander around if you get there before dark.

Activity in the cemetery itself doesn’t really get going until well after dark, but it is worth the wait to see how this traditional community still within the confines of the metropolis fondly remembers its dead. By midnight, it is literally buzzing with activity as families arrive laden with brooms, buckets, flowers, candles and everything else they need to set up their ofrendas on top of the graves. Each is different, and some are stunningly creative. The collective result is both beautiful and rather otherworldly, without being overly solemn.

Some families sit around eating and drinking tequila, chatting about the departed and singing their favourite songs. Minstrels and mariachi bands wander along the paths offering a more professional rendition for a fee. Children play between the graves and the elderly sit wrapped up in heavy blankets preparing to wait the night through. If you speak Spanish, most people are happy to tell you about their dead and their traditions, although there are also those deep in silent thought and more melancholy tributes who obviously want to be left alone.

The cemetery is open to anybody who wants to go, and I have never seen any sign of irritation with strangers taking photographs although it is advisable to discretely ask permission before taking closer shots. The first time I went, in 2000, there were no other outsiders. The last time, in 2008, I spotted several other foreigners wandering around with cameras. But the cemetery is a long way from being overrun, unlike the much more famous village of Mixquic further down the road.

When you eventually draw yourself away, look back as you drive off towards the concrete jungle to see the orange glow above the cemetery fade into the black night.

• To get to Xochimilco and San Gregorio the best option is to hire a car for the day, or hire a taxi by the hour and ask the driver to wait. Return flights from Heathrow to Mexico plus seven nights at the ultra sleek and self-consciously cool Condesa DF from £805, booked with ebookers.com (0871 223 5000). Flight only from £560. The 10-room boutique hotel, Casa Vieja in the Polanco district from US$300 per night. Remember, it’s worth negotiating for a better deal at the moment.

High spirits: more deathly festivals around the world

London, UK

Celebrate the Day of the Dead at the British Museum, which is currently hosting an exhibition about Aztec ruler Moctezuma currently reignings at the latest exhibition there’s no better place to . Festivities include a carnival parade of dancing skeletons (1.30pm and 4.15pm, meet in the Great Court), an authentic mariachi band, face-painting, workshops, and storytelling for both kids and adults, plus a spectacularly firey danse macabre duet on stilts.
1 November, 11am-5pm, free. britishmuseum.org

Philippines

The devoutly Catholic Philippines goes all out for the Day of the Dead (Araw ng mga Patay) on 1 November. Grave visits start a few days before, and cemeteries take on a festival feel with live music, boozing and picnics. One of the country’s most impressive graveyards is the Chinese Cemetery in Manila, where the most extravangant tombs have running water, electricity, TVs and even swimming pools. The guards give guided tours if you ask (around P100).
Chinese Cemetery, 4km north of Binondo (Chinatown), off Aurora Boulevard.

Japan

Obon is a Buddhist festival celebrated in Japan in mid-July or mid-August, depending on the region, when the spirits of dead relatives are believed to return home for three days. Prayers are said, graves are cleaned, and offerings of vegetables, fruit and sake are left for the spirits. It’s also an excuse for the living to consume plenty of the same. Town squares and temples are strung with red lanterns, and host dances, bonfires and fireworks, with stalls offering food and games. Kyoto (14-16 August, kyotoguide.com) is a great place to witness the fun, with rafts set on fire on the river. In nearby Kibune, Hirobun restaurant in the north of the village features cold noodles sent down a long, bamboo chute to be caught at the bottom by diners with chopsticks.

China

The Qingming festival celebrates the end of spring, and is a time for locals to tend family graves, place offerings and burn fake money to be sent to relatives in the underworld. Celebrations include singing, dancing and flying kites, and at night the graves are strung with lanterns. Taiwan and Hong Kong are good places to experience the atmosphere. Next year’s Qingming takes place on 5 April. Also in Hong Kong, China and parts of Asia – particularly Malaysia – the Hungry Ghost festival runs for a month from around mid-August. Ghosts are said to return to earth, and must be appeased with offerings of food, burning of fake money and roadside fires.

USA

The witchiest city in the world, Salem, is the setting of one of the most varied Halloween fests of the annual calendar. During October, the Festival of the Dead hosts a huge psychic fair and witchcraft expo. There’s a Retro Zombie Ball, Salem’s Authentic Séance, Mrs Firefly’s School for Little Witches, plus a Mourning Tea party to sip brews in honour of dead relatives and a gourmet “dinner with the dead” that’s held in silence. This year’s event finishes tomorrow but find details at Festivalofthedead.com

Sitting in a cemetery, the chapel suite at the Old Lock-Up may sound scary, but it’s a big, light and welcoming room

“I’ve only just been able to get through,” says Tony Wheeler, when he picks me up at Cromford Station. “The police closed the road – there’s been a murder.” This is not what anyone wants to hear, and especially not before spending the night alone in a Gothic chapel.

The car purrs out of the station and a few minutes later we come into Wirksworth. The optician’s window is Halloween’d up with black tissue paper, fake spiders and masks.

Tony and his wife Viv run The Old Lock-Up as a B&B. It looks like a perfectly normal house from the street – if you disregard the old metal Police sign by the front door – but was built in 1842 as a magistrate’s house, then used as a cop shop. It has four barrel-vaulted cells within its sturdy gritstone structure, into which assorted drunks and criminals were chucked before being released or sent for trial at Derby Assizes.

The Wheelers have lived here for almost 20 years, and along with creating a sort of mini-museum in the breakfast room, hallway and bar area, have two rooms for B&B guests upstairs, two more in a coach house behind, and a separate suite in the chapel, located in a small cemetery next door. This is where I’m sleeping (or possibly sitting bolt upright in terror) tonight.

From the street, the chapel is visible through wrought-iron gates. A sign on the gatepost says: “This private cemetery is open to visitors to the graves.” One of those is right up against the chapel’s front wall. “To the memory of James Fryer of Cromford,” it says. Baptists built the chapel, Tony informs me (not entirely reassuringly), because they couldn’t negotiate coffins around a narrow entrance into the church. Has anyone had trouble sleeping in here, I want to know? Well, one guest reported being woken at 2am by a loud crash. A grave had toppled over, the hefty stone breaking into several pieces. That’s put my mind at rest, then.

Through the arched door and stone hall – relief: it’s one big, light and welcoming room. Cast-iron lancet windows with lacy cafe-style curtains look out across the cemetery to farmhouses which dot the slopes of Black Rock on the High Peak Trail. Chocs, in a gold box, and tiny perfume bottles sit atop a Victorian washstand. Tea and coffee and a mini fridge occupy one little nook, and behind a louvred door, a skinny bathroom (bit of damp, nose tells me), another.

Supper is simple and good in a local bistro called Le Mistral, which displays its wines in a rustic cabinet (and sells mixed cases if you are so inspired).

The graveyard shift approaches. Clutching my chapel door key I determinedly do not look at The Old Lock-Up’s fox-head door knocker as I pass. No owls hooting, good show. Inside the chapel a plethora of lamps cast a homely glow, it’s warm as toast. Time to inspect the books and DVDs before bed. Nothing by Stephen King, instead a lighthearted mixture of Barbara Taylor Bradford, Rabbi Lionel Blue and feelgood movies. I jump in to the big old wooden bed, snowy with what my info calls “percale linen”.   

Sunlight catches the red stained glass in the morning. The room is suffused in romantic pink light. Honestly – I don’t know what I was worrying about.

Don’t miss Round off with a walk in St Mary’s Church for the carved Saxon coffin lid built into the south transept wall.

• North End, Wirksworth (01629 826272/929, theoldlockup.co.uk). From £40 per person B&B. Pick-up from Cromford rail station available. No children. Dinner at Le Mistral (01629 824840), around £20.

sally.shalam@guardian.co.uk

Ghost-hunting’s not for wimps, as we find out on hair-raising tour of a haunted Devon manor house

Kate Wallace’s death wasn’t peaceful. Legend has it she was shipwrecked off the coast of Ilfracombe, north Devon, when returning to the town in 1695. She was nursed, coincidentally, by her parents, but was so badly bruised that they did not recognise her. Three days later, she died, but only after her father, William – who, as a shipwrecker, had lured her ship to its doom in the first place – relieved the unknown woman of all her valuables. Upon realising who she was, the poor man was so overcome he entombed her body in a room in his house, Chambercombe Manor, where she stayed until 1865 when her dusty skeleton was discovered by some unsuspecting tenants.

So between her and Lady Jane Grey – another former visitor at Chambercombe who met a similarly grisly end – it’s not surprising that ghost-hunters here get pelted with stones, pushed into corners by freezing blasts of air and are run out of the house by moaning voices.

“I don’t believe in demons,” says head ghost-hunter Jayne Hendy. “But I do believe in demonic spirits. They’re like people, you just need to know how to handle them.” She says this as I clutch two dousing rods, metal apparatus used to locate spirits and other paranormal activity. It is stage one of our paranormal training with Haunted Happenings, which throughout the evening will see us conducting lone ghost vigils in a scullery, having a séance in a spooky bedroom and taking a ghostly tour of the grounds. My rods and I don’t communicate well. If there are any currents of unearthly radiation in Chambercombe, I’m the human equivalent of a nuclear bunker. It’s not a situation I am keen to remedy. Despite the cheery gingham and bright lights of the Lady Jane’s tearooms where we begin our night, there’s little getting away from the fact that Chambercombe is creepy.

“Don’t worry,” says Jayne cheerfully as we skulk into the house behind her. “If you’re scared, first look for a logical explanation for the sensations you’re feeling, such as a massive spider climbing over your face. Something like that.” After some consideration I decide that yes, this is a marginally preferable outcome to meeting a disgruntled member of the undead.

Jayne is a medium and a paranormal investigator with 25 years of spirit experience behind her. Together with Haunted Happenings founder Hazel Ford, who runs similar events up and down the country, she will be chaperoning us through the night. Some of the group are old hands, discussing recent sightings of spirits and whole tables shaking. But most of us are just curious first- or second-timers. One man wears an expression of bored disbelief and carries a very scientific-looking instrument which resembles a Geiger counter. I resolve to stay near him.

We begin our hunting in the main bedroom – a room dominated by an oppressive, intricately carved four-poster bed and a baby’s cradle which has been known to rock by itself. Next door is where Kate Wallace’s body was bricked up. I can’t decide which part of the room scares me least, so I hover uncertainly by the end of the bed. Error. Jayne elects me to feel a certain part of the air near her which is icy cold. The whole room is icy cold. But this bit is definitely colder. According to Jayne, it is also five foot seven. I withdraw my hand and scuttle off to a corner, fearful of having groped Kate Wallace.

Sitting on the floor we begin the séance, and after 10 or so minutes there is a faint knock coming from outside the door. Jayne urges the assumed spirit to come in; I urge it to stay put. More minutes pass, during which time floorboards creak and other members of the group report feeling cold air blowing on their hands. Later on, I return in a smaller group with a spirit board (like a Ouija board) and we try to communicate with whoever was looming around the room earlier. The board spells out “Sofia” who says she is seven. I’m so interested in what Sofia is doing up at 2am talking with us that I forget to be freaked out by the fact that the planchette is moving apparently of its own accord. The guys at Haunted Happenings do this well: there is very little sensationalism in their actions, keen as they are to manage expectations.

Dissatisfied with Sofia, who bade us farewell pretty swiftly, confirming that child attention spans have not changed much over the centuries, we move to the Great Hall and sit quietly around a large, heavy wood table. A glass in the centre of the table begins to move. Whoever is guiding it seems keen to talk to one member of our group. Suddenly some pebbles come skittering across the floor. I jump out of my skin as we clatter around trying to find an explanation. No large spiders are apparent. But the house used to be inhabited by violent smugglers and shipwreckers – tunnels from the beach coming right into the room where I sit. I reckon they must have quite a good throwing arm.

By now it is 4am, and being on edge for eight hours is taking its toll. Yet clearly the spirits are not in the mood for talking or scaring the bejesus out of us tonight, which in many ways adds some authenticity to the proceedings. The part of me which wanted to believe is unsatisfied. The part of me which likes being able to sleep soundly at night most certainly is. And the cheery breakfast back in Lady Jane’s tearooms does a lot to make me rationalise events. Pebbles? I muse while I scoff croissants: obviously it was just the wind. Yes, that makes sense. Doesn’t it?

• Haunted Happenings (0115-972 9312) runs overnight ghost hunts across the UK from £45pp. Cottages at Chambercombe Manor can be booked through Country Holidays (0845 268 0773, ref 14651) from £119 for two nights (sleeps 2). Larger cottages available.

A range of new flights from London are being offered to Brits looking for a break from the winter temperatures.

According to Stansted Airport, a range of airlines including easyJet will be providing flights to Fuerteventura, Norway and Spain.

Passengers with Blue Air and Turkish Airlines will be able to enjoy flights to Romania, Greece and Istanbul Sabihagokcen.

Skiers looking for winter breaks will be able to take advantage of a new route operated by Titan Airways to Switzerland and France.

Nick Barton, Stansted’s commercial and development director, said: "Despite these challenging times for the aviation industry, the launch of these new routes just shows what our airline partners can do as they adapt to the changing market conditions."

Airlines can still make profits by providing passengers with value for money and a wider variety of choice, he added.

Cheap Flights and Travel News – © 2009 – Just The Flight

From ruined churches to haunted henges, we list Britain’s most macabre places to scare yourself this Halloween

Dorset: supernatural spirits at Knowlton church

The ruin of Knowlton church, a few miles north of Wimborne Minster, is one of the most atmospheric places in Dorset, not to mention reputedly one of the most haunted. Originally constructed in the 12th century within the earthworks of a Bronze Age Neolithic fort, the church is surrounded by a ditch, which legend states is there to keep the spirits in rather than intruders out, and may have been built with stones taken from a henge that once stood on the site. The village of Knowlton thrived until the late 15th century, when the Black Death wiped out the inhabitants.

• Knowlton church is 7 miles north of Winborne Minster on B3078.

Kent: Ghostly babies crying at Reculver

Listen carefully on stormy nights and babies can be heard crying on the wind that blows around the Reculver towers. These twin towers are all that remains of the Saxon church of St Mary’s, built on the site of a Roman fort. The old local tale of whimpering children was given some substance in the 1960s when archaeologists excavating the Roman fort found a number of babies’ skeletons. It has been suggested that the children were buried alive as sacrifices, possibly to protect the occupants of the fort from harm.

• On minor road north of A299, 3 miles east of Herne Bay.

Sussex: Kingley Vale’s ancient haunted Yew forest

An incident recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes how, in AD 874, a marauding band of Vikings ravaged the Chichester countryside, “and the citizens put them to flight, and killed many hundreds of them”. Kingley Vale, four miles northwest of Chichester, is the suggested site of the battle, and the grove of ancient yews there is supposed to be descended from 60 trees planted on the graves of those who died in the fighting. At night the trees are said to change their shapes and move stealthily about the valley, mingling with the ghosts of slaughtered Vikings and Saxon defenders.

• On footpaths from B2141, four miles northwest of Chichester.

Norfolk: The ghost of Anne Boleyn at Blickling Hall

Before the current Jacobean mansion replaced it, Blickling Hall was a medieval moated manor house, which came into the possession of the Boleyn family in 1437. It is said that the spirits of Anne and her father return to haunt the hall each year on the anniversary of her death. Anne, Henry VIII’s second wife, was executed on May 19 1536 for alleged treason and adultery.

• 1 mile west of A140, 8 miles south of Cromer.

Worcestershire: Gruesome human remains at Worcester

The library at Worcester Cathedral was founded in Saxon times and today holds a fine collection of medieval manuscripts, post-medieval books and archive documents. It also houses a curious artefact. During the Danish raids of the 10th and 11th centuries, Worcester was terrorised by waves of marauding Norsemen. According to a story passed down for generations, a Dane was caught hiding in the cathedral after a raid and, as retribution for the destruction wrought by his countrymen, was flayed alive. His skin was tanned and mailed to the inner side of the main doors a warning to other invaders.

While 20th-century analysis of material on several Saxon doors revealed their cladding to be nothing more sinister than cow hide, a small piece of material from Worcester Cathedral’s doors was analysed by Birmingham University in the 1980s and verified as human skin. The remaining portion can be viewed by appointment.

• 3 miles west of Junctions 6 and 7 of M5.

Cambridgeshire: Wicken’s diabolical dogs

Between Wicken and the marshes of Spinney Abbey, a large shaggy dog is said to roam. This is Black Shuck, who appears all over East Anglia in various guises. In Cambridgeshire, he is diabolical and sinister and those who encounter him should look the other way, since his appearance is said to warn of a death in the family. However, Black Shuck is not the only apparition to add to the ghostly reputation of Wicken Fen, one of Britain’s oldest nature reserves. A priory once stood on the site of Spinney Abbey Farm and, on still nights, spectral monks have been seen and heard chanting across the fen, and strange lights bob towards Spinney Bank.

• On A1123, 7 miles northwest of Newmarket.

Cumbria: Legends of witches and wizards at Little Salkeld

Legend has it that Michael Scot, the 13th-century wizard, came across a coven of witches holding their sabbat outside Little Salkeld, and turned them all to stone. The stone circle, known as Long Meg and her Daughters, still stands. By tradition, if anyone can count the stones twice and arrive at the same number, the enchantment will be broken. Also, if Long Meg herself is ever broken, the stone will run with blood.

• 5 miles northeast of Penrith on minor roads north of A686.

Wales: Victims of the hangman’s noose haunt Abergavenny

The Skirrid Mountain Inn dates back to the Norman Conquest, and its bloody past has given rise to some spine-chilling occurrences. Following the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion against Catholic James II, the inn served as a court for the notorious Judge Jeffreys, and 180 rebels were hanged there in 1685. The wear marks on the beam below the staircase, which carried the noose, can still be seen. Numerous investigators have experienced paranormal activity in the building. Meanwhile visitors report a variety of strange goings-on, including cold spots, glasses that appear to fly from behind the bar and sudden feelings of constriction around the neck.

• 18 miles southeast of Brecon on A40, Skirrid Mountain Inn is in Llanfihangel Crucorney, 5 miles north of Abregavenney on A465.

Scotland: an unsettling drive Electric Brae, South Ayrshire

Motorists driving along Croy Brae in South Ayrshire, sooner of later usually slow down or stop in confusion. The scenic road along the brae is one of the most disorienting places on earth. Approaching from the north is an uncanny experience. The road appears to slope downwards and drivers assume that their cars will go faster, but if they apply the brakes they are likely to grind to a complete halt. Despite every appearance to the contrary, the road runs uphill, not downhill. Unable to believe what has happened most motorists not only come or a stop but find their cars slipping backwards, “uphill”.

Travellers approaching from the south have the opposite experience. Thinking they are heading uphill they accelerate – only to discover they are speeding along faster than intended. The cause is attributed to an optical illusion caused by the surrounding topography.

• On A719, 9 miles south of Ayr.

Scotland: The spooky legends of Rannoch Moor, Highlands

The sombre 20 sq miles of peat bog, ancient forest and water, surrounded by dark mountains, are associated with tales of legendary heroes, bandits and supernatural beings. William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in turn used it as a base to wage warfare against the English, and for centuries it was a safe haven for brigands who preyed upon travellers. It was once commonly believed that fairies, ghost-dogs and strange creatures roamed the moor or lived beneath the black waters. Even in the 20th century, many people passing Schiehallion – the “Fairy Hill of the Caledonians” at the eastern end of the moor – reported being followed by a dog-like shadow that seemed to materialise from nowhere.

• Crossed by the A82, 15v miles north of Tyndrum.

• This is an edited extract from The Most Amazing Haunted and Mysterious Places in Britain, which is published this week by Reader’s Digest.

 

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