Adventure is a hugely subjective thing when it comes to travel. On the one hand there are nice railway tours of France badged as adventures. On the other are people like Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who knew a thing or two about extreme voyaging, and who once said: “Adventure is just bad planning.”
For me, and I expect most of us, adventure falls somewhere between the two. It represents an activity or unusual destination that allows us to explore our comfort zones — to feel a tingle of excitement, perhaps even to venture towards the edge of things before stepping back into safety. The UK adventure travel sector — the largest in Europe, representing a whopping 19 per cent of the global market — has cottoned on. Well, why wouldn’t it? Just outside our front door is one of the world’s most diverse adventure playgrounds: Europe.
You may scoff, but skim through these new European trips (for clarity, we’re sticking to continental Europe). At adventure’s softer end are an ebike ride through the overlooked borderlands of Portugal and an opportunity to do Hornblower impressions among the fjords of Norway. There are guided strolls into the bucolic wonderland of Transylvania and a chance to tour the Loire valley on two wheels. Lovely.
Move up a grade and you can set yourself a modest challenge. Fancy a walk in Robert Louis Stevensons’s footsteps through the beautiful Tarn gorge in southern France? How about staying with shepherds and families in the Accursed Mountains of the Balkans? We’ve found trips to make it possible. At the top of the scale are minor expeditions: Corsica’s GR20, a coast-to-coast road-bike tour across Puglia and Basilicata or a mad opportunity to replicate the new Mission Impossible movie.
What unites them all is that they’re tailored for pleasure. Each trip values accommodation and food as highly as the scenery or experience because — and I don’t want to come over too hippy here — an enjoyable adventure is one that allows you to park modern life for a while and elevate the spirit. Anything else is an ordeal. And who wants one of those on their precious weeks away?
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1. Sailing the Norwegian fjords
Meet Bessie Ellen. The eight-sail 115-footer has shipped West Country china clay, army barbed wire and whisky enthusiasts to the Highlands. This year, the Cornish tall ship sailor Nikki Alford is taking her pride and joy to Norway, crossing the North Sea in July to cruise southwestern fjords throughout August. The wind has the final say on the itinerary, but expect slow days among pretty weatherboard harbours and the stonking scenery of Pulpit Rock, plus good food — Alford is a cracking cook — and the easy camaraderie of traditional sailing. At this price it’s a bargain.
Details Seven nights’ full board from £1,375pp (venturesailholidays.com). Fly to Stavanger
2. Ebiking through hidden Portugal
Away from the coast and the Douro Valley there’s another Portugal in the northeast. It’s a place where lives are lived slowly in border hill towns and traffic means the occasional tractor — ripe territory for the curious cyclist. This small-group trip with a cycling specialist and local expert follows the Coa Valley, one of Europe’s largest rewilding projects, as it winds towards the Douro. You’ll whizz along lanes through oak woods, spot Sorraia wild horses in Faia Brava Nature Reserve, farm-to-table cooking in family guesthouses and sip Sagres beers after rides in fortified towns like Castelo Rodrigo. Ebikes take the strain out of 30 miles daily.
Details Five nights’ full board from £2,995pp (theslowcyclist.com). Fly to Porto
3. Quiet trails of the Cevennes in France
After much thought Robert Louis Stevenson decided that if Eden existed anywhere it was in the Tarn gorge. He was walking in 1878 with a donkey, Modestine. I’d ditch that; Modestine was fairly stubborn and, unlike Stevenson, you’ve taxis to transfer luggage for your modestly challenging walk. Otherwise you’re in the Cevennes that Stevenson knew. A local specialist created the route through gorges from Mont Lozère to Le Rozier, which explains why it passes through quiet villages like St Chély alongside regional classics such as Ste Enimie and Castelbouc. It’s also why accommodation is in small family hotels.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,130pp, including some extra meals (onfootholidays.co.uk). Fly to Montpellier
4. Greece for strollers
I met a Greek photographer who argued that Greece was Europe’s best walking destination. The weather was guaranteed, he said, there were countless donkey trails, usually a beach, and routes were quiet because Greeks weren’t really walkers. Hard to argue with that if you avoid summer and pick somewhere like Lefkada, just south of Corfu. Based in Lefkas, this guided trip covers 60 miles of the island over six daytime walks of up to five hours. Why walk? Because it goes beyond the tourist brochure. To visit a mountain village like Englouvi by three hours on foot is to sense the Greece of old.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,285pp, including flights and transfers (sunvil.co.uk)
5. Surf and psychology in Norway
There’s more to surfers’ positive attitudes than lives spent on the beach (the lucky swines). New research shows surfing taps into mental flow states which reduce stress, clear minds and thus promote a sense of wellbeing. This Norwegian retreat south of Alesund reveals techniques to go with the flow alongside yoga and surf lessons at Hoddevik, a white-sand beach where the scenery appears modelled on Viking epics. Easygoing experts lead group and individual sessions. This being Scandinavia, there’s a sauna in a shared house. There’s just one more thing you need to know — modern wetsuits are excellent.
Details Six nights’ full board from £1,950pp (resurfaceuk.com). Fly to Alesund
6. Albanian family adventures
Yes, Albania is cheap. Sure, its beaches are nice. But what’s often overlooked is that the country is also one giant TikTok adventure for families. This week-long trip showcases Albania’s wild side. In the Vjosa Wild River National Park there are days of rafting and cycling among the gorges, braided rivers and meadows of one of Europe’s last wild rivers. A woodland walk ends at natural hot pools. There are also instant friends for the children — this is a small-group tour — plus a final day on one of those beaches I mentioned, Duressi. You’ve earned it.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,895pp, including flights, transfers and some extra meals (familiesworldwide.co.uk)
• Incredible family adventures
7. The Portuguese camino by bike
This is a jubilee year for believers, a quarter-century event which grants plenary indulgences that leave souls as clean as a newborn’s. All yours for the price of a camino trip to Santiago de Compostela. It’s going to be a busy year, so either find an obscure route or go on two wheels. The Portuguese camino from Porto is flatter than those in the north, takes in Galician beauties like Pontevedra, and covers over 124 miles to qualify for your all-important Compostela (pilgrim’s certificate). This self-guided trip averages 25 miles a day and — whisper it — can provide ebikes.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £960pp (macsadventure.com). Fly to Porto
8. Strolls in Romania’s Transylvania
Did you know that Bram Stoker never visited Transylvania? That’s why the Dracula author didn’t mention the natural beauty the Carpathian Mountain region ought to be famous for. This group holiday ticks off “Dracula’s castle” (it was built by 14th-century Saxons, actually, but let’s not argue) early so it can move on to quiet minding-their-own-business hills, plunging limestone ridges in the Piatra Craiului National Park and traditional craft villages like Viscri, King Charles’s favourite. All are visited on guided strolls of up to nine miles from a base in the pipsqueak city of Brasov.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £1,629pp, including flights and transfers (hfholidays.co.uk)
9. Booze and bikes in the Loire
While we salute Sussex’s success as a wine region, does it have châteaux? And does it have a long-distance cycling path like the Loire à Vélo, which ambles beside the river, vineyards and medieval small towns? Non et non again. While visits to celebrated Loire châteaux such as Chambord and Chenonceau, and noble grapes like vouvray are the selling points of this guided trip, I expect you’ll get as much enjoyment from its 30-mile routes — the sun shining on the river, the satisfying thrum of rubber on tarmac, a lazy lunch in a town like Blois. L’art de vivre indeed.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,699pp, including some extra meals. Take the train to Tours
10. Aquatic adventures in Finland
Finns say they’ve topped the World Happiness Index for the past eight years because they spend so much time in nature. Well, obviously — they have places like Lake Saimaa. The country’s largest lake is a glassy, pine-shored, islet-speckled playground for small-group adventures like this. There’s kayaking to Sarviniemi beach for a campfire and swim, and ebiking to Lappeenranta on the smooth Saimaa Archipelago Trail. Who cares if you fall in during sunset paddleboarding sessions? The water is clean enough to drink and lakeside cottages at Kalliola Farm Cabin share a sauna — the other reason Finns are so happy.
Details Four nights’ full board £1,181pp, including transfers (muchbetteradventures.com). Fly to Helsinki
• Discover our guide to adventure holidays
11. Walks in Austria’s Wachau Valley
It’s the highlight of the River Danube, but not as you know it. Instead of watching the Wachau Valley slip past on a river cruise — effectively a glorified TV — you’re here to dawdle through the stuff that wowed Unesco’s heritage people: apricot orchards and vineyards, baroque pilgrimage abbeys including Maria Laach, splendid castles on bluffs and dreamlike river towns such as medieval Melk or Dürnstein. This beautiful land west of Vienna is best savoured at leisure, which is why you’re going with a slow-travel specialist that limits self-guided strolls — this is too relaxing to be called hiking — to nine miles and transfers luggage daily.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,220pp (inntravel.co.uk). Fly to Vienna
12. Swim Greece’s Dodecanese
Patmos is where St John the Apostle is said to have written the Book of Revelation, but don’t let that put you off. For sea swimmers the island is a minor paradise. It’s the hub of a Dodecanese mini-archipelago in the southeastern Aegean where the water feels like silk in September. Coastlines curve seductively, their fine-shingle beaches dotted with tavernas and cafés. Lipsi and Arki, plus uninhabited islets such as Agreloussa, wink just across the water. Although a safety boat escorts groups, you’ll need to be comfortable swimming three miles. Hiking trails head inland to windmills and churches for a change of pace.
Details Six nights’ B&B from £2,330pp (swimtrek.com). Fly to Kos
13. A Georgia explorer
New flights to Tbilisi in April put Europe’s borderlands on the agenda for 2025. Georgia and Armenia are cracking destinations, intriguing in sights, charming in people, but unless your time is limited go on a small-group trip that daisy-chains destinations that are otherwise tricky to access. Over nine days from Tbilisi this tour visits the Soviet-era ghost town Tskaltubo and the cave city Vardzia. Into Armenia there’s Khor Virap monastery beneath Mount Ararat where Noah’s ark allegedly ran aground, and a hike with rangers in the Arpa Protected Landscape. Qvevri wines and chacha (pomace brandy) hooch make an appearance in both countries.
Details Ten nights’ B&B from £1,875pp, including some extra meals. Fly to Tbilisi
14. Corsica’s GR20 hike
Every adventure list needs one bucket-list challenge. Ours is the 112-mile GR20 hike. It’s 13 days of 2,600m mountains and sweat, a journey up Corsica’s spine that alternates between scrambles to twang phobias and quiet nights boiling with stars. Even though luggage is transferred for some days, go in a group with a qualified international mountain leader and walk south to north, putting the sun on your back and leaving the big stuff till the end. Accommodation is in hotels, mountain refuges and tents. The beer at the end in Calenzana will last seconds. The memories? A lifetime.
Details 14 nights’ full-board from £3,299pp (exodus.co.uk). Fly to Bastia
• More great hiking holidays in Europe
15. Baltic on two wheels
The Baltic suggests freezing temperatures — a coolcation too far. Actually, the seas off Germany are about 20C in August, and that’s before we mention the white-sand beaches and splendid Hanseatic towns such as Wismar and Stralsund. A new Ryanair flight to beautiful Lübeck brings it all closer — ideal for this self-guided cycle on the Baltic Sea Cycle Trail. It’s a keenly priced trip for easy riders where daily distances average 35 miles and 50m is considered a mountain. Regional beauties are en route between Lübeck and Stralsund, but so are serene corners like Poel island; bring your swimming cossie. Wunderbar.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £870pp (utracks.com). Fly to Lübeck
16. Slow bike routes through Slovenia’s Julian Alps
When God had finished creating the world he took leftovers from the best bits of Creation and built Slovenia. So runs a folk tale to explain the improbable beauty of the Julian Alps. While road-bikers piston through the lot, this short self-guided trip lets you dawdle along cycle paths through scenery of bell-pealing beauty: corkscrew alps around Kranjska Gora, Disney-esque Lake Bled, then Goriska Brda, a Slovenian Tuscany where you’ll pootle around tasting the natural plonk of family vineyards. Hotels are all four-star jobs. Oh, and bring your swimming gear — there are terrific lakes along the way.
Details Six nights’ half-board from £3,120pp (cyclingforsofties.com). Fly to Ljubljana
17. Quiet bays in Croatia
Yachties are returning to Croatia after price-gouging led to boats sitting idle last year. To help locate the destination of your dreams, Sunsail has launched an Off the Beaten Track itinerary in central Dalmatia. From Agana marina near Split it visits Tatinja Bay on Solta, where turquoise sea could make a peacock blush, and Komiza, a harbour the colour of old ivory on Vis. There’s also a night at Smrca, a Lilliputian bay on Brac with space for just three boats — you have a pre-booked mooring. Wannabe yachties can book a professional skipper (£218 a day).
Details Seven nights’ self-catering for four on a 34ft yacht from £888 (sunsail.com). Fly to Split
18. Three nations in the Balkans
In 1908 the author Edith Durham wrote that Albania’s Thethi “was of absorbing interest. I forgot all about the rest of the world and there seemed no reason why I should ever return.” It lies a full day’s hike over the Peja Pass from Montenegro, the first of three countries visited on a moderately tough, cross-border group walk through the Accursed Mountains. Led by a local guide, you’re here for mountain communities as much as alpine scenery; beyond the Valbona Valley are meals in family guesthouses plus a night in a shepherd’s hut in the Doberdol Valley. Congratulations — you’ve just entered Kosovo.
Details Seven nights’ full board, including flights and transfers, from £1,945pp (mountainkingdoms.com)
• The best of Europe
19. Southern Italy for cyclists
All set for a cycling epic in a cradle of road-biking? Then to Puglia we go, saddling up for a guided coast-to-coast challenge. It’s an east-west ride that builds as it goes, from coastal plains and the rolling Murgia plateau to the mountains of Basilicata — the Dolomites of the south — before a rollercoaster ride along the Cilento coast. Being in the country, road surfaces are not universally smooth (I’d go for 25mm tyres minimum) yet, mamma mia, what a journey. Not just punchy climbs and cruisey plains but world heritage sites like the cave town Matera and a screaming descent into Castelmezzano.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,995pp (skedaddle.com). Fly to Bari
20. Picos de Europa weekender
Ramble Worldwide’s new series of weekend walks provides a quick hit of Spanish escapism, including guided trips to Andalusia. I’m choosing the Picos de Europa in the north instead, partly because its cooler climate affords a longer season, but mostly because nowhere else in the country provides so much bang for your boots. Though technically cheating, the Fuente Dé cable car gets you straight into the big stuff of the national park, where the scenery bares its limestone teeth and birdlife is prolific in cork oak forests. Your base for two challenging day hikes is the Cantabrian beauty Potes.
Details Three nights’ B&B from £499pp (rambleworldwide.co.uk). Fly to Santander
21. Rent a floating RV in France
Liberty cruisers are to standard riverboats what monster trucks are to Minis — clearly related but of a different scale altogether. Introduced this year by Le Boat, they are aquatic RVs with sundecks (plural), panoramic windows, memory foam mattresses, dishwashers in a posh kitchen and bikes on the deck. You’ll get shown around at St Jean de Losne, then waved off on to the Saone River for a week’s adventure-light in the Franche–Comté. You’ll take in Dijon, seat of the Burgundy dukes; handsome Auxonne; Burgundy wine; the occasional lock to quicken the pulse. Daily distances? It’s your holiday, so your choice.
Details Seven nights’ self-catering for four from £3,249 (leboat.com). Fly or take the train to Dijon
22. Netherlands for easy riders
The tough climb comes towards the end of this trip. After pedalling dreamily off-road for 25 miles a day, past windmills and clog workshops and tidy little towns like Alkmaar, pausing at blustery beaches and looping around car-free Texel island reserve, the route springs the big one on day five: a 20m ascent. Such are the joys of a cycling holiday in northern Holland. Beginning at Amsterdam, it’s a clever package. Each morning you’ll disembark from a 47-cabin barge to pedal self-guided into a widescreen wonderland. Each afternoon you’ll find said barge waiting at the route’s end with showers and sundowners.
Details Seven nights’ full-board from £990pp (utracks.com). Fly or take the train to Amsterdam
23. Highlights of the Dolomites
Italians caught on to the joys of a Dolomites summer during the pandemic. As southern coasts hit gas mark 9 it’s our turn. This self-guided loop from Cortina loosely follows the trekkers’ favourite the Alta Via 1, but rather than slog around the lot it cheats, linking prime sections by bus and eschewing mountain refuges for the sort of small Alpine hotel you usually see on cuckoo clocks. The scenery on moderate walks is the same — a pinch-me combination of sheer mountains, ultra-green meadows and cool air easily accessed by cable car. Luggage is transferred daily.
Details Eight nights’ B&B from £1,635pp (macsadventure.com). Fly to Venice
24. Mission Possible in Norway
If you’ve the inclination and bottomless financing to live out fantasies of Mission Impossible 8, released this May, this is the trip for you. Your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to hook up with an “ex-special forces officer-turned agent”. You’ll race by high-speed RIB to a helicopter for parachute training in a safe house. Pay attention — next up is a base-jump off Hellesylt cliffs before an abseil to the manor house where Tom Cruise stayed during filming. Extraction is a high-speed race along the Atlantic Ocean Road to board an expedition yacht to Svalbard. Good luck.
Details Nine nights’ full board from £125,000pp (pelorus.com). Fly to Stavanger
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