Other green worlds

I'm a desk-bound freelance travel writer. Here's a compilation of all the places I'd rather be. Most are green. If you like what you read drop me a line. Images are not mine, but I try to give credit or link to owners' websites.

[alrobertsphotography]

Oak Woods Dartmoor UK

[kindawishiwasthere]

Before I saw Le Marche I didn’t realise rolling hills could get so high! The crests of many of the tallest hills are ringed by medieval towns, the churches of which are adorned by renaissance paintings. Some of these towns have been configured to catch the last rays of sunshine at twilight when the rest of the countryside slips into shadow. And man, the countryside is amazing: There’s just something gorgeous about dark green spires of cypresses against pale wheat fields and vineyards. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

At the Laurisilva in Madeira you can be in this one place on earth and say with certainty that this is like nowhere else. A whole load of the plants, trees animals and mosses are unique to this primeval rainforest alone. Some of the trees could be 800 years old and 90% of the forest is believed never to have been felled or cultivated. As it is, Laurel Forest needs very specific conditions like high humidity and little annual temperature fluctuation, but Madeira’s forest is special for its isolation and lack of interference. Now, the only sign of civilisation are the water channels like the one up top and occasional huts, built for the people who maintain the walking trails.

[kindawishiwasthere]

Something called “crown shyness” creates rivulets of light at the Forest Research Institute Malaysia in Kepong. You’ll normally only see this phenomenon in canopies of the same species, as if the trees have a collective impulse to protect each other by maintaining a small gap between crowns: It could be a way to safeguard against damage in high-winds, or to prevent the spread of leaf-eating insects. Nobody knows for sure. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Where the Danube enters Romania from Serbia it is guarded by the formidable grey walls of the Iron Gates gorge. Seriously, there can’t be tougher name for a river canyon around. Inevitably you’ll think of Game of Thrones, and the fortress that guards the Serbian side of the Iron Gates won’t counter that notion either. Its ten towers and crenellated walls rear up high from the riverside on the south bank. You didn’t achieve hegemony until you possessed Golubac; to wrest control of the river and the traffic that passed through, so over the course of a few hundred years the town was held by the Hungarians, Serbs, Ottomans, Hapsburg Empire and the Serbs once more.

[kindawishiwasthere]

by Vincent van Zeijst

I’ve always had a thing for the Faroe Island’s landscapes: The regular, pyramid-like planes of its hills, the fjords and the bare grassland. Above are the igneous basalt hills around the town of Klaksvik and each ridge you can see on the hillsides equals one volcanic eruption. Trade has taken place at this very spot since northern Europeans first started using boats. And that was the only way to get here, right up to 2006. Then the Norðoyatunnilin opened, a six-kilometre underwater tunnel finally connecting Klaksvik with the neighbouring island of Eysturoy, linking the town the capital and only airport. Trips to the capital were cut from hours to just 70 minutes. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Maybe I’m not as open-minded as I thought; I’m inordinately interested in western and European hallmarks when they’re translated to unfamiliar places. Also, like a colonist I’d happily climb as high as possible to find a climate that doesn’t feel like wading through warm syrup. The church above is part of Bokor Hill Station - that colonial instinct to beat the heat with elevation - founded in 1921 by the French and also including a casino. It was all abandoned in 1972 when the Khmer Rouge took over, but is now being redeveloped at a cost of billions. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Like Petra and Arizona’s Antelope Canyon, Poland’s Table Mountains are made of malleable sandstone and across the range erosion has created strange rock formations. Most peculiar are these “rock mushrooms” in the range’s southeastern foothills. It takes a hike to get to the cluster of stone fungi and the easiest is to follow the yellow trail from Batorów for 30 minutes.

[kindawishiwasthere]

Cold, insular and nondescript - those were my uninformed impressions of Hamburg in autumn and winter. Away from the Reeperbahn, Sternschanze and St. Pauli the city seemed shut. Then spring came and I finally cared about stuff they tell you about Hamburg’s bridges (more than any city in the world) and canals (more than Amsterdam and Venice combined). The grey was overcome by green and whole new travel dimensions opened up; you could buy a beat-up old bike and lord it over pedestrians the way the city’s cyclists do. Or get a canoe for the day, pack a lunch and glide through those canals onto the Alster Lake, in the middle of the city but so large you can barely hear the traffic on its banks. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

You know, some remote places are a “comfortable drive”, or “a short hop” from an airport or city. But Vall de Boí is not a short anything from anywhere. It’s pretty horrible to get to in fact; the single-lane roads through the Pyrenean foothills double back endlessly. From Barcelona you can expect to be on the road for at least four hours. And this is the only way to do it. But up here against a backdrop of verdant slopes and snowy peaks is a collection of intact Romanesque churches that has perhaps only survived because they’re such a pain to get to. You won’t find so many Romanesque buildings in one place anywhere else in Europe. See them in summer when you can tuck into hearty cuisine like a shepherd, scale mountains, paddle through canyons and venture across the border to French spa towns. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Lifted by an ancient lava dyke, Chateau d’Anjony is from the 1400s and next to the medieval village of Tournemire. This is one of France’s “plus beaux villages” with homes made of volcanic stone and foundations that go back to the early-medieval Romanesque. Tournemire and its castle are the eroded slopes of Europe’s largest stratovolcano, extinct for three million years and forming a ring 80 kilometres in diameter. During the 100 Years War the Anjony Family (King of France) and the Tournemires (Plantagenets) were loyal to different sides. Things must have got awkward. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

900 yen at Hankyu Arashiyama Station will rent you a bike for the day, leaving you free to pedal around this old district on the western outskirts of Kyoto. The Heian aristocrats were the first to fall in love with Arashima’s serenity and started coming for retreats more than a millennium ago. The image above is one of several bamboo groves in Arashiyama that you’ll enter via paved paths that link rural communities with seven secluded temples. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Mendoza is on the eastern side of the Andes, where the high green plains are interrupted by vast, snowy mountainscapes. You get this fun dichotomy between the gentle elegance of Latin America’s largest wine-making region and the savageness of the broad strip of almost impassable wilderness that reaches from one end of the continent to the other. Oenotourism is on the up in Mendoza, so bike tours through vineyards and visits to estates for lots of wine sniffing and swishing are on the agenda. If the mountains call to you and you have the experience, physical capacity and support try scaling Aconcagua, the highest mountain not in Asia.

[kindawishiwasthere]

Cantabria is a Spanish community linked with the “Indianos” of the Early Modern Age. These were the merchants who made a killing (often literally) in the Americas before coming back wildly rich and spending lavishly on churches and mansions in the 1600s and 1700s, bringing colonial styles back with them. Northern Spain’s Picos de Europa mountain range were first landform they saw when they returned from the New World. I’m sure you know but Spain’s Atlantic provinces get a lot more rain than the rest of the county, coating the hills with verdant pasture. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Springtime is when the sea of poppies in the hills next to Palmdale erupt in bloom, and the colours are unreal. The event is movable and depends entirely on how much rain has fallen on this neck of the Mojave Desert in the previous winter. But if you’re in L.A. and you catch wind that Antelope Valley is blooming you’ve got to get up here. Up against the bare desert hills the scenes are like something out of Wizard of Oz. 

[kindawishiwasthere]

Curiñanco is my kind of beach. I like waves, man, and I don’t want my beaches crowded by punters or apartment towers. This one in Chile’s Los Ríos Region is at the end of a gravel track. There isn’t much here, except for a restaurant at the top of the cliff and the rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean. In the distance, covered in ancient hardwood forest is Punta Curiñanco.

[kindawishiwasthere]

Half of Orval Abbey, built in 1136, has lain in ruins since the French Revolution. The monks offered refuge to Austrian troops during the Revolutionary Wars and the abbey paid the price, although the monks did get away. In the end only half of the abbey was rebuilt, so you get to clamber over medieval ruins and then tour the stately grounds of the restored part. The Trappist brewery here was founded in 1936, and it’ the only place where Orval beer is brewed, and the snobs at Beer Advocate give it 93/100. Orval ferments in the bottle, so it’s one of the few beers in the world that actually improves with age,