Beginner-friendly adventures

A week in the northern Serengeti timed to the migration, watching a million wildebeest decide to cross.

The single most photographed viewpoint in Norway.

The most reliable place in Europe to see free-ranging bison.

The visual shorthand for the entire Alps.

The only place on the planet where you can swim in the gap between two continental plates.

The birthplace of alpinism, and the highest cable car in Western Europe.

Croatia's oldest and most photographed national park, UNESCO-listed since 1979.

The largest natural marsh in Central Europe, walked at dawn in chest waders while elk stand in the mist.

Continuously erupting, permanently in the news, and visible from most of eastern Sicily.

A point break town with a wave and a school for every level.

The 'blue hole of Abisko' — a rain-shadow microclimate with unusually clear winter skies.

The place sport climbing goes on holiday — the most concentrated bolted crag network in Europe.

A thousand-year-old pilgrimage route and the most walked long-distance path in the world.

Five days on Australia's west coast timed to the coral spawn, when the largest fish on earth arrive to feed.

A UNESCO site that looks structurally impossible in every photograph ever taken of it.

Eight days on islands a thousand kilometres south of Tokyo, reachable only by a twenty-four-hour ferry.

The best-known tandem flying site in the Alps and the sport's unofficial European capital.

The most ridden long-distance cycle route in Europe and the template every other one copies.

Four days by 4x4 from the world's largest salt flat into a high desert of coloured lakes and geysers.

Europe's first World Surfing Reserve.

Four days on the Sea of Okhotsk in February, walking and floating on pack ice that arrived from Siberia.

Five days on the quietest stretch of Poland's 500-kilometre red trail, through wooden Orthodox churches and villages that no longer exist.

The most concentrated shore-diving destination in Europe, and the reason Malta trains so many divers.

The Soča's colour is genuinely unlike any other river in Europe — it's the reason people come.

Five days down the Krutynia — a hundred kilometres of clear shallow river linking lake after lake.

A UNESCO biosphere reserve holding the continent's biggest pelican colonies and over 300 bird species.

Five days on the Green Velo route through painted wooden villages, Tatar mosques and river marshes.

Poland's most visited mountain destination and the country's default postcard.

The archetypal Adriatic island seascape, minus the crowds on the main island.

The best realistic odds of seeing wild wolves in Central Europe.

The largest interconnected lake system in Central Europe and a rite of passage in Polish summer culture.

Waist-deep flat water behind the Hel peninsula — the best place in this part of Europe to learn to kite.

One of the only places left where you can realistically track wild pumas.

Hundreds of short bolted routes within a day trip of Kraków.

Kilometres of tunnel driven into granite by forced labour in 1943, abandoned unfinished, and never explained.

A sandstone plateau cracked into corridors narrow enough to turn sideways for.

A flat, shallow lagoon that makes learning to kite genuinely easy.

A desert of sand advancing several metres a year on the Baltic coast, which has already buried one village.

A working market hall, not a tourist food court.

Poland's best-decorated cave, opened by a quarry blast in 1966 and full of cave bear bones.

A tandem flight over the Tatras without any prior experience needed.

A wooden raft poled through a limestone gorge by men in embroidered waistcoats, then the climb up Trzy Korony above it.

Both an easy show cave and real wild systems, five minutes apart.

Flat, easy forest running for recovery days between harder trips.