Walk or hike — what you do

The Valbona to Theth pass

Six to eight hours over 1,800 metres between two valleys, with guesthouses at both ends and mules for bags.

Theth, Albania · low

Into the roadless valley

Six hours in from Escaldes; the only sounds are water and cowbells, and the huts are open and free.

Madriu-Perafita-Claror, Andorra · low

Petroglyphs and mud volcanoes

Rock carvings of boats and dancers from 10,000 years ago, then a field of cold mud volcanoes burping methane a few kilometres on.

Baku, Azerbaijan · moderate

Bruges before the coaches

Day-trippers arrive from ten. Between six and nine the canals belong to you and the swans.

Bruges, Belgium · low

The bridge before the buses

Between six and nine the bazaar is a town rather than a market, and the bridge is a bridge.

Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina · low

Plitvice at opening

Timed entry tickets sell out; the 7 am slot gives you an hour of empty boardwalk before the coaches from the coast arrive.

Plitvice Lakes, Croatia · moderate

The palace substructures

The cellars survive because they were filled with rubbish for centuries; they map the imperial floor plan above exactly.

Split, Croatia · low

The Green Line, walked

Sandbags, oil drums and 1974 shopfronts, visible from the streets that dead-end into them. Sobering and entirely ordinary to residents.

Nicosia, Cyprus · low

Vyšehrad and the river bend

The city's first castle, a cemetery of composers, and the whole of Prague from the ramparts without a crowd.

Prague, Czechia · low

Walk the wall, tower to tower

Two kilometres of it still stand; the sections you can climb give the roofline the postcards use.

Tallinn, Estonia · low

Bog shoes in Lahemaa

Snowshoe-like frames let you cross raised bog off the boardwalk — an hour from the capital and utterly silent.

Tallinn, Estonia · moderate

The Design District on foot

Twenty-five streets, two hundred shops and studios, and the through-line from Aalto to whoever graduated last year.

Helsinki, Finland · low

Down to the Mer de Glace

The steps to the ice are signed with the year the glacier reached each level; the descent is a chronology as much as a walk.

Chamonix, France · moderate

One stage of the GR20

180 km and 15 days for the whole thing; a single stage out of Vizzavona gives you the granite and the exposure without the fortnight.

Corte, France · moderate

The first day of the Via Podiensis

The oldest of the Santiago routes leaves from the cathedral steps after the 7 am pilgrim mass. The first day to Saint-Privat is twenty-three kilometres and sets the tone.

Le Puy-en-Velay, France · low

Walk into the Calanques

From Luminy to Sugiton in ninety minutes; in summer access is capped and booked, which is why the water is still clear.

Marseille, France · low

Cross the bay on foot

Guided, barefoot, over quicksand and channels; the mount is a different thing entirely when you arrive the medieval way.

Mont-Saint-Michel, France · moderate

The covered passages

Glass-roofed arcades built before the department store and mostly forgotten since — a two-hour walk in the dry.

Paris, France · low

Mestia to Ushguli on foot

Four days between villages with guesthouses each night, no need to carry a tent, and glaciers in view most of the way.

Mestia, Svaneti, Georgia · moderate

Above the vineyards on the Rheinsteig

The high path gives you the whole gorge; the trains and boats below give you the way back.

Bacharach & the Rhine Gorge, Germany · low

The Wall, where it stood

Bernauer Straße preserves the death strip, the tunnels and the names — an hour that does what no film manages.

Berlin, Germany · low

Down the Samaria gorge

Sixteen kilometres, one direction only, ending at a boat because there is no road out. Open May to October.

Chania, Crete, Greece · moderate

The old monks' paths

Stone-cut trails link the pillars through the woods; three hours on foot beats a whole day by road.

Meteora (Kalambaka), Greece · low

Into a glacier, in winter only

The blue caves form and collapse each year; go with a guide who checks them that morning, and only from November to March.

Höfn & Jökulsárlón, Iceland · high

The 666 arches to San Luca

Four kilometres of covered walkway climbing out of the city, built so a procession would never get wet.

Bologna, Italy · low

A night in a rifugio

Dinner at seven, lights out at ten, and the Enrosadira — the pink glow on the rock at dawn — from the door.

Ortisei & the Dolomites, Italy · moderate

The Appian Way on a Sunday

The road is closed to traffic on Sundays: basalt paving from 312 BC, catacombs, aqueducts and countryside, inside the city.

Rome, Italy · low

The terraces, from above

The high paths behind the villages are free, empty and better; the coastal one is the queue.

Vernazza & the Cinque Terre, Italy · moderate

The Peaks of the Balkans trail

192 km across three countries in ten days, with village guesthouses and border permits arranged in advance.

Peja & Rugova, Kosovo · moderate

Up to Kaljaja at sunset

Twenty minutes of steps for the whole town, its minarets and its bell towers in one frame.

Prizren, Kosovo · low

The facades of Alberta iela

Ninety minutes and a raised chin: everything worth seeing here is above the first floor.

Riga, Latvia · low

A day on the Liechtenstein Trail

75 km through all eleven municipalities; the Vaduz-to-Balzers section takes an afternoon and crosses a quarter of the country.

Vaduz, Liechtenstein · low

The grey dunes at first light

Sand that buried four villages in the 19th century; the boardwalk exists because walking on it directly would start it moving again.

Nida, Curonian Spit, Lithuania · low

The courtyards nobody signposts

The old town's real geography is behind the street doors; push the unlocked ones and keep going.

Vilnius, Lithuania · low

Read the Užupis constitution

Forty-one articles on mirrored plaques, including a dog's right to be a dog and everyone's right to be happy — and not to be.

Vilnius, Lithuania · low

Little Switzerland on foot

112 km of waymarked trail through gorges narrow enough to touch both walls; a day section is easy and free.

Echternach, Luxembourg · low

Into the Bock casemates

Kilometres of gun galleries in the cliff; they sheltered 35,000 people in 1944 and are cold in any weather.

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg · low

Walk the Grand Prix circuit

3.3 km of ordinary public road: the tunnel, the hairpin, the harbour chicane. It takes forty minutes and recalibrates what you think those cars are doing.

Monaco-Ville, Monaco · low

The city walls at dawn

Ninety minutes up, the whole bay below, and a small church halfway. Go before eight or don't go in July.

Kotor, Montenegro · low

Wadlopen — walking the sea floor

Guided walks across the exposed seabed at low tide, thigh-deep in mud, timed against a returning sea. Never attempted alone.

Texel, Netherlands · moderate

The Old Bazaar at working hours

Coppersmiths, filigree, tea houses and mosques — a working market rather than a preserved one, best before noon.

Skopje, North Macedonia · low

Fløyen to Ulriken ridge walk

Five hours along the tops between the two cable cars, with the city on one side and nothing but bog and rock on the other.

Bergen, Norway · low

The farms on the ledges

Skageflå was farmed until 1918 on a shelf 250 metres above the water, reached by ladder. The boat drops you at the bottom and you climb.

Geiranger, Norway · moderate

A night in a working rorbu

The old cod-fishing cabins on stilts; the good ones still smell faintly of tar and are still owned by fishing families.

Lofoten (Svolvær), Norway · moderate

Trolltunga, with the day it needs

Ten to twelve hours, a 1,200-metre climb, and mountain rescue callouts every season from people who read it as a viewpoint with a car park.

Odda & Trolltunga, Norway · moderate

Waterfront architecture walk

Opera roof to Munch to the library at Bjørvika — twenty years of a city deciding what it wanted to look like, in ninety minutes.

Oslo, Norway · low

Preikestolen, early

Eight kilometres round on rock and boardwalk. Start before seven; by eleven there is a queue for the photograph and no railing to queue behind.

Stavanger, Norway · low

The town that burned and matched

A short walk that only works once you know the date: every façade you pass was drawn in the same three years.

Ålesund, Norway · low

The walk to Morskie Oko

Nine kilometres of asphalt road that everyone does, then a steep hour above it that almost nobody does — take the second part.

Zakopane & the Tatras, Poland · low

Azulejos, street by street

Tiled facades were cheap weatherproofing before they were beautiful; the Tile Museum explains it and then the streets deliver it.

Lisbon, Portugal · low

The witches' path between the towers

A narrow ridge path with drops on both sides, linking Guaita and Cesta; twenty minutes, and the whole reason the republic survived.

City of San Marino, San Marino · low

Hut to hut in the High Tatras

Beds, soup and beer at 1,500 metres, carried up by porters on wooden frames — a practice still going and worth watching.

Poprad & the High Tatras, Slovakia · moderate

The Walk of Peace

Trenches, chapels and cemeteries left in place along the mountain front where 300,000 died; the signage is unusually honest.

Bovec & the Soča, Slovenia · low

The bridge over the Škocjan gorge

A river 100 metres below you, inside a mountain, crossed on a suspended footbridge. Quieter and more astonishing than its famous neighbour.

Postojna & Škocjan, Slovenia · moderate

The grid, read as a plan

Cerdà's 1859 blocks were designed with gardens inside; a few have been reopened, and finding them changes how the city reads.

Barcelona, Spain · low

The Camí de Ronda coastal path

A smugglers' and coastguards' path linking coves between Begur and Palamós; it reaches beaches no road does.

Girona & the Empordà, Spain · low

The last hundred kilometres

From Sarria, five days, and the minimum distance for a compostela. Busy, sociable, and still the real thing.

Santiago de Compostela, Spain · low

The first hut on the Kungsleden

One day out and one back gets you the landscape without the fortnight; the huts sell chocolate and take card.

Abisko, Sweden · moderate

Linnaeus's garden, in his order

The beds are laid out by his sexual system of classification, which is the point and also the scandal of 1735.

Uppsala, Sweden · low

The North Face trail from Mürren

Two hours on a balcony path with the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau directly across the valley the whole way.

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland · moderate

A section of the Lycian Way

Waymarked in red and white since 1999, through pine, ruins and goat country, with village pensions at the ends of most stages.

Fethiye & the Lycian coast, Türkiye · low

The valleys on foot, not from the air

Ihlara, Rose and Pigeon valleys are walked in a morning each, with abandoned rock churches nobody signposts.

Göreme, Cappadocia, Türkiye · low

The walls, told by both sides

The good operators take you to both communities and let the contradictions stand rather than resolving them for you.

Belfast, United Kingdom · moderate

The last day of the Pilgrims' Way

Twenty miles from Chilham along the North Downs, arriving on foot the way it was meant to be done.

Canterbury, United Kingdom · low

Up Arthur's Seat before breakfast

251 metres of extinct volcano, forty minutes up, and the whole city and the Forth laid out at the top.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom · low

The Quiraing circuit

Seven kilometres through a landscape still slowly moving downhill; start early, because the car park fills by nine.

Isle of Skye (Portree), United Kingdom · low

A Wainwright, start to finish

214 fells were catalogued by one man in seven hand-written volumes; walking one of the small ones is the best introduction to why.

Keswick & the Lakes, United Kingdom · low

A day on the South West Coast Path

1,014 kilometres in total; the St Ives-to-Zennor stretch gives you the best of it in six hours.

St Ives, United Kingdom · low