From the Turkish Riviera to the Île de Ré, we select quiet and unspoilt places to stay for sun, sand, snorkelling – or just snoozing

There’s something quite particular about small but perfectly formed Assos – butterscotch and rose-pink houses line a horseshoe bay, with Venetian ruins scattered between the narrow alleys. There are two small beaches, but the real joy is to rent a motor boat and discover the small bays and coves that fringe this part of the Cephalonian coast. Walkers can follow the path out on to the headland to the ruins of Assos’s 16th-century castle; there’s not a huge amount to see, but the views make the walk worth it. Roi Suites is a bougainvillaea-clad cluster of well-equipped studio flats in a waterfront neoclassical building, with gorgeous sea views from the pool terrace.
Doubles from £117 (minimum seven nights), roisuites.com

A fishing village stay on one of the country’s less-visited large islands reveals a quiet Adriatic gem boasting green lakes, holm oak forests, and unspoilt beaches

The first thing that struck me about Luka was the silence.

My wife, Caroline, and I had driven our rental car from Split north along the Croatian coast to Zadar and taken an hour-and-a-half ferry ride to the island of Dugi Otok. Then we had driven the island’s length southwards, through pine forest and scrub, to arrive at this tiny fishing village, where we would spend the next week. Both of us were slightly wired from driving on foreign roads. But the strange spell of Luka put an end to that.

Nothing moved, not even cats. Before us was a sheltered bay that seemed almost surreally smooth, undisturbed by the faintest breeze. Plaster flaked from the walls of crumbling fishing cottages, their gardens bright with flowering cactuses and bougainvillaea. A row of empty beer bottles outside the shuttered general store gave the deserted quay a Mary Celeste quality. Travelling in space can sometimes seem like travelling in time, and it felt as if we had stepped back to the 1950s.

Dugi Otok (“Long Island”) is the most westerly of the Zadarian Islands off the Dalmatian coast, and one of the least-visited large islands in Croatia. Twenty-seven miles (44.5km) long and only three miles (4.8km) wide, the island’s slenderness makes it easy to explore, with a single road running from north to south. Its inhabitants – fewer than 1,500, many of whom leave in the winter months to escape the notorious Bora winds – are huddled on the eastern side, mostly in the “capital” Sali; the west falls away to steep cliffs and sand beaches. Cypress, pine, fig, olive and holm oak cover much of it, while the rest is blanketed in maquis, the scrubby evergreen underbrush of the Mediterranean. The plants comprising this dense weave are invariably spiked, hooked or barbed, as I learned the painful way when going off piste from a walking trail; the next few days were spent nursing lacerated legs. The maquis makes the island wild in a way I hadn’t encountered before, as swathes of uncultivated land are impenetrable to humans.

Fancy seatrekking, swimrunning or bodypainting? These and more familiar outdoor pursuits are on offer at destinations from northern Norway to the Greek islands

The Scotland-based company Slow Adventure advocates a more mindful approach to activity holidays. Options include climbing and yoga in the Italian Alps, mountain biking in Sweden and horse riding and rambling in Iceland. On the Finnish Happiness trip, guests stay in log cabins by a lake in Lapland and activities include canoeing under the midnight sun, hiking, swimming, swamp foraging and daily saunas. On all trips, 5% of the fee goes to local conservation projects, which in Finland could mean helping protect the rare Saimaa ringed seal, preserving forests or supporting a children’s environmental charity.
From £876 for five nights, slow-adventure.com