Wildlife, fossils and industrial heritage add extra interest to this wild cliff walk to an inn for all seasons

The coastal hamlet of Abereiddy (Abereddi in Welsh) is not as sun-drenched or glamorous as Acapulco, but the two places share one claim to fame: both are renowned cliff diving destinations. The Welsh version is the Blue Lagoon at the northern end of Abereiddy Bay, a 30-metre drop into deep green water (it is not as blue as the name suggests), which has hosted the Red Bull Cliff Diving championships a number of times.

The “lagoon” is actually a former slate quarry, formed when its seaward wall was blasted open after it shut down in 1910. While there isn’t anyone flinging themselves from the top on my visit, there are wetsuited tourists coasteering around the lower levels of the lagoon and the surrounding cliffs. Pembrokeshire is the home of coasteering, which was “invented” here almost 40 years ago.

This new restaurant in Birmingham is tiny, but its ambition and bursts of flavour are extra large

Cuubo, 47 High Street, Harborne, Birmingham B17 9NT ( cuubo.co.uk) . Three-course lunch £30; three-course dinner £50; tasting menus £75; wines from £25

Until 6pm that day, chef Dan Sweet, an intense sliver of a man, was moonlighting as a builder. His site: the restaurant we had just eaten in. There were walls that needed an extra lick of paint. There was some grouting that needed doing. The few narrow, slatted wooden panels, which are practically the room’s only design feature, needed a little attention. Then he put on his whites and set about training the restaurant’s new waiter, the tall elegantly dressed man with the tied-back dreads, who is actually a neighbour and was just doing him a favour. He had to be got up to speed because this was the first time he had worked in a restaurant in two decades. Back then the tills didn’t have touch screens.

If you want to know what makes the Spanish capital tick, head for its back-street bodegas, tiny tapas bars and neighbourhood food markets

Freshly fried churros, golden and crisp; a cup of velvety hot chocolate alongside; circles of aubergine striped from the griddle; mushrooms silky with chorizo; a jumble of potatoes smothered in spicy sauce; handmade crisps, crunchy and salty; slivers of jamón serrano; plump Nocera olives; and crumbly, herby morcilla … By the end of our first day in Madrid, my sister Penny and I have eaten all these things. A touch indulgent, maybe, but when you’re staying in a city that runs on its stomach, it seems rude not to go with the flow.

Madrileños are famous for eating late, mostly because that mid-evening supper is the last of five meals, starting with a light breakfast – often coffee and a pastry on the fly, before an early lunchtime snack ( almuerzo ), a full sit-down lunch, usually between 2 and 4pm ( comida ), then coffee and cake ( merienda ) and finally supper. Once you understand this, Madrid really starts to make sense: a city of centuries-old pasticceria, hole-in-the-wall tapas bars, neighbourhood markets and dimly-lit bodegas, all crammed with diners. Someone is always eating somewhere. During our visit, it was usually us.

Recently opened by the Royal Free Hospital, Freddie’s serves up a special sort of comfort

Freddie’s, Belle Vue, Rowland Hill Street, London NW3 2AQ ( freddiesdeli.co.uk ). Breakfast plates £6-£15; starters £8-£13; sandwiches and platters £7-£17.50; desserts £4.50-£8; unlicensed

Today, I am rehearsing for my dotage. I am doing this by gripping a properly stacked salt beef sandwich; the sort of multilayered, bulging affair that challenges the structural integrity of the sliced rye bread which is trying and failing to enclose it. The cure on the thick-cut tangle of salt beef is deep and there’s just enough amber fat to lubricate everything. On the side are sweet-sour “bread and butter” pickles, so called because the Illinois cucumber farmers who devised the recipe in the 1920s were able to barter their pickles for household goods, like bread and butter. This is the kind of vital intelligence I will share with younger companions over a salt beef sandwich when I am a certified alte kaker , Yiddish for old fart. Having just told this story, perhaps I am already eligible for certification.

A book club in a disused petrol station, an electronic music hub in an old bus garage … Yorkshire’s largest city is a hotbed of grassroots creativity

‘Leeds has an independent, thriving arts scene,” says Emma Beverley, the director of programmes at last year’s cultural showcase, Leeds 2023. “A lot of that is grounded in an artist-led movement that is pretty pioneering.”

In 2017, Leeds had put in a bid to become European capital of culture, with £1m already invested, which hit the buffers when Brexit automatically ruled any British cities out of contention. In typically stubborn Yorkshire fashion, the city pressed ahead with its own year-long celebration of culture.

From roadside picnics to Michelin-star restaurants, the former editor of France magazine picks her most memorable foodie moments

Standout moments from nearly 20 years of writing about travelling and eating around France include meals in legendary restaurants and the joy of a shared dinner at a chambre d’hôtes . That said, there’s a venue that can’t be underestimated as an opportunity to enjoy France’s culinary delights: the car boot picnic.

Standing under the shade of an open car boot, I have discovered some products so delicious they didn’t make it as far as a gîte kitchen or dining table. It might have been a chunk of comté so fruity it didn’t get beyond the car park on market day. There was the punnet of gariguette strawberries bought from a farm in Brittany’s Plougastel-Daoulas, famous for its microclimate. My family and I each took a bite and stared unbelievingly at each other – the sweetness was off the scale.

From fluffy focaccia to creamy pànera , local Michelin-starred chef Ivano Ricchebono introduces our writer to a taste of the Italian port city

Genoa-born chef Ivano Ricchebono looks like a Hollywood actor playing a chef in a movie. His restaurant The Cook is in a 14th-century palazzo in the old town, and as I step into the dining room I stop and stare – the entire place is covered with frescoes. It’s wildly romantic. “People get engaged here all the time,” Ivano says with a smile. Awarded his first Michelin star in 2010, he has cooked for Stanley Tucci, and has an international reputation for excellence. But today he’s my tour guide – not to the blossoming fine dining scene but to the affordable (and equally delicious) fare enjoyed by locals every day.

Once a mandatory stop on the 19th-century Grand Tour, and known as “La Superba”, Genoa centre is full of impressive architecture that tells of this under-rated port city’s past as a rich and powerful republic. Squeezed between the sea and the Ligurian Alps, it’s just an hour and a half by fast train from Milan, and about the same down to the Cinque Terre. Among Italians the city is renowned for its culinary riches – almost everyone agrees that the pesto and focaccia here are the best in the country (there’s even a foccacia festival in May). Our plan is to walk through several neighbourhoods and taste as many of Genoa’s gastronomic delights as possible.

In the northern Spanish town of Ourense, locals and visitors luxuriate in hot spring waters at a series of free public baths – or enjoy a private spa for a fiver

A bronzed, willowy veteran in black Speedos glides into the shallow, round-ish thermal pool snuggled into a grassy riverbank. It’s one of a huddle of rock pools, with trees and a modest wooden changing hut. We’re the only people here bathing beneath a cement-coloured sky that seems to inhale the steam billowing from the baths. It could be an onsen in rural Japan, except I’m about 10,000 miles from there, in north-west Spain.

The Outariz and Burga de Canedo thermal baths in Galicia are the largest of the council-run thermal areas in Ourense, with six thermal pools and two cold plunge pools, linked by a white, curved metal footbridge. Today, it’s almost empty and, most importantly, free to use, like most thermal baths here.

With its extraordinary architecture, maze-like streets and ever-present sunshine, it’s no accident that so many film-makers have used the town as a location

I was eating homemade crostata (jam tart) on a roof terrace in the Sicilian town of Cefalù and reading about Helius, the ancient Greek god of the sun. Sicily is supposedly the inspiration for the deity’s island in The Odyssey and this makes perfect sense – with more than 300 days of sunshine a year, Helius would like it here. The island is especially lovely in spring, when it’s quieter, cooler and more peaceful than in the scorching summer.

Cefalù is an ancient fishing village almost exactly halfway along Sicily’s north coast. It’s prized by Italians as one of the island’s loveliest beach-side places. Barbara De Gaetani, a licensed tour guide who grew up here, told me the allure of the place is difficult to explain: “Many other places are gorgeous but not as seductive. You can feel life flowing here, and it’s no accident that many film-makers have used the town as a location.”

Compared with Sicily’s ritzier spots, to me it feels more authentic and has a sort of relaxed old-school glamour. It’s also easy to reach by train from Palermo (about 50 minutes); from Catania, on the other side of the island, it takes around four hours, including a change in Messina.