Responsible Travel • 18th August 2021

Meeting the women farmers of Cape Verde

Mirilene spent her childhood running around the mountainous fields of the Ribeira Grande. To tourists, the volcanic and vertiginous river valleys of Santo Antao are known as hiking country. To Cape Verdeans, the island is better known for farming and fishing.

Responsible Travel • 8th October 2021

Svalbard: The shrinking outpost of the polar bear

The polar bear will see you first. It can smell prey from over 30km away, has the patience to wait you out, and has a lack of fear that comes with being at the top of the food chain.

Responsible Travel • 30th August 2021

The rewilding revolution in Europe

In her book Wilding, Isabella Tree calls England's crashing bird populations the “canary in the mine”. But thankfully, there are people listening to the warning signals – and they’ve been inspired to start ambitious rewilding projects.

Responsible Travel • 3rd January 2020

Walking the Western Valleys

Camille used to walk the Western Valleys Natural Park alone. She rarely kept still in the summer, plodding through the fir forests, meadows, river valleys and lakes of this corner of the Spanish Pyrenees. Camille died in 2010. She was the last of the native female Pyrenean bears.

Responsible Travel • 8th October 2021

The death of whaling in Iceland

There’s a sea change occurring in Iceland. Once staunchly pro-whaling – it was notoriously a hard-fought campaign point for politicians – enthusiasm for commercial killing has waned hugely in recent years. Only one company still has a whaling license, and it hasn’t caught a whale since 2018.

Responsible Travel • 18th February 2021

Going undercover in the Valley of the Mills

You've got to watch your step in the Valley of the Mills. Or steps – there are 3,000 of them chipped out of the rocks between Ravello and Amalfi.

Responsible Travel • 29th November 2019

The last of the Saxons

The church in Viscri is built for battle. Tower-topped walls have watched out for invaders since the 12th century. With each century that’s passed, another layer of armour has been added – bastions; a second wall; labyrinthine corridors – to shrug off marauding armies.

Responsible Travel • 26th February 2021

Keep on trekking: why we should keep seeing gorillas during the Covid-19 pandemic

Trekking is vital to the long-term survival of mountain gorillas and the communities that live near them. But the DNA of gorillas is so close to ours that they can catch our illnesses, so can we go gorilla watching during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Responsible Travel • 6th March 2019

Women guides: One thousand and one hurdles

We’ve got to be honest: when it comes to tour guides, the travel industry jumps on the unenviable bandwagon of massive gender disparity. Because while women make up almost 60 percent of the tourism workforce, female guides are like gold dust.

Responsible Travel • 10th April 2019

Baikonur Cosmodrome: The secret space race

Space travel in Kazakhstan isn’t as surprising as you’d think. This is a frontier country that’s spent centuries wondering what’s over the horizon – and then going there.

Responsible Travel • 12th February 2020

You're welcome: An introduction to culture in Cape Verde

There’s a lament on the air in Fontainhas. You’ll come to it, eventually – there’s only one road in and out of this village curled along a green ridge of the Ribeira Grande mountains.

Responsible Travel • 13th January 2020

Walking the Aisa Valley

On the jagged border of France and Spain lies the rugged Pyrenees. And in the heart of the Spanish Pyrenees, lies Western Valleys Natural Park. In the deep hush of the Western Valleys Natural Park, a valley cut by a long-gone glacier sits under a slumbering spell.

Responsible Travel • 22nd May 2020

Bears are back: Bear tracking in Greece

“Bears? In Greece?” seems to be the consensus when faced with the possibility that Greece is in fact the realm of a growing population of brown bears. This slow but steady increase in numbers is no accident.

Responsible Travel • 3rd March 2021

Ki position? Family adventures in Mauritius

“Ki position?” It’s a familiar Kreol phrase in Mauritius, meaning, “How are things?” Family terms are sometimes added, and you don’t always have to be related to be rewarded with these titles of respect: cousine, frère, and even mama and papa can be used between friends so close that they’re like family.

Responsible Travel • 12th February 2020

Following the leader in Cape Verde

For most travellers, Cape Verde means cruise. “It’s different for the islands of Sal and Boa Vista, because they are flat islands,” says Lidiana Mendes, founder of Travell With Purpose. “But for mountainous islands with delicate walking routes, this kind of tourism will eventually cause a long-term problem.”

Responsible Travel • 3rd February 2021

The return of the bearded vulture

The last time Lucy and Simon had guests, a bearded vulture with a wingspan longer than a grown man breezed above their heads as they were out snowshoeing. “Often, the first thing you’re aware of is a huge shadow on the snow.” “And you hear the gush of the wind, you’re that close.”

Responsible Travel • 4th February 2020

Forget flygskam: Under-30s are doing it by rail

What with the climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion protests and Greta effect, it only makes sense that rail holidays are the future. And in reality, environmental reasons take a happy second place to the actual adventure of travelling by train.

Responsible Travel • 22nd May 2020

101 Dalmatian pelicans

If you feel like you’re being watched, you probably are. Greece is the sanctuary of Dalmatian pelicans – hulking birds with a wingspan of up to 3.5m, a ruffled feather cap, and an unnerving habit of fixing onlookers with an uncompromising stare.

Responsible Travel • 8th April 2019

Bird watching in the Faroe Islands

The Faroese wait for the arrival of the first oystercatcher with bated breath. It heralds spring, fairer seas – and a whole lot of chain dancing and barbecuing to celebrate.

Responsible Travel • 22nd May 2020

At loggerheads: Turtle conservation in the Peloponnese

Seeing sea turtles in Greece is a near-mystical calculation of weather, moon, tides and seasons. The whims of the outside world add to the sense of chance – warming waters, boat collisions, plastic pollution and hotel construction on the beaches that sea turtles traditionally nest on.

Responsible Travel • 18th August 2021

Meeting the women farmers of Cape Verde

Mirilene spent her childhood running around the mountainous fields of the Ribeira Grande. To tourists, the volcanic and vertiginous river valleys of Santo Antao are known as hiking country. To Cape Verdeans, the island is better known for farming and fishing.

The Independent • 8th March 2020

How travel is levelling the playing field for women

It’s the same old story: although at least 60 per cent of people working in the tourism industry are women, they rarely make it into leadership roles. But we’re harbouring an embarrassingly well-kept secret: as an industry, travel provides one of the best chances of levelling gender inequality worldwide.

Travel Weekly • 7th March 2019

We have a responsibility to support women in travel

It comes as no surprise to most of us that over 60 percent of the world’s tourism workers are women. You just need to look around your workplace – whether that’s a shop, office or Boeing 737 – to see that the staff are overwhelmingly female. We also know where that demographic skew stops.

Responsible Travel • 8th October 2021

Europe wildlife travel guide

Wildlife holidays in Europe are only as good as their guides. Marine biologists reveal the mysterious lives of blue whales in the Azores, salty skippers sail to puffin colonies in Scotland, and conservationists explain how they track lynx in the Carpathian Mountains, and Norwegian Arctic.

Responsible Travel • 12th March 2019

Women only holidays travel guide

Trending, a fad, sexist (groan) – women only holidays have been called plenty of things. And they’re all way off-mark. We’d go more down the lines of enlightening. Empowering. Loads of fun. Because a lot of these holidays are what we love: pioneering trips with purpose.

Responsible Travel • 5th August 2019

Romania wildlife guide

Wildlife holidays to Romania have a fondness for the gothic. You might duck into cathedral-like bat caves, hide out in forests inhabited by bears, track wolves across moonlit valleys, or hike the snowy kingdom of the lynx.

Responsible Travel • 10th March 2019

Canada for families travel guide

Family holidays to Canada are of the storybook variety. You might find yourselves wandering through the Rocky Mountain backdrop of This Moose Belongs to Me, kayaking along Pacific Coast shores straight out of The Snail and the Whale, or following The Call of the Wild up to gold rush towns well north of the US border.

Responsible Travel • 7th January 2019

Antarctica & Falklands travel guide

The remote, stripped-down splendour of glaciers, one-man-band research stations and abandoned whaling stations – and then, suddenly, the bolshie chaos of colossal penguin colonies and calving glaciers erupting out of the silence.

Responsible Travel • 27th March 2019

Vancouver Island travel guide

Mainlanders affectionately refer to Vancouver Island as “the island”. But – in a typical case of Canadian understatement – “the island” is over 30,000km² of mountains, port cities, centuries-old rainforest and First Nation history. It’s so big, in fact, that the Canada-US border has to dip 100km south to accommodate its rear end.

Responsible Travel • 26th June 2019

Canada wildlife guide

The wildlife and backdrop grapple for first billing. Bears use skyscraper cedars as scratching posts, while whales dive for krill between fractured fjords.