A Wild Weekend on the 42 Acres estate near Frome offers fresh air, cosy rooms, sumptuous food and a chance to get hands dirty with some land regeneration work

The honk of the geese as they take off from the lake is comically loud, reeds quiver and the reflection of the clouds on the water is momentarily fractured. A butterfly flits by, landing on my boot. We’re on a guided walk at 42 Acres, a regenerative farm, nature reserve and retreat centre near Frome in Somerset – and the whole place feels vibrantly alive.

Our guide Tasha Stevens-Vallecillo, a font of knowledge on plants and wild food and one of the visionaries shaping the retreat, stops to point out yarrow, ribwort plantain and a giant white reishi mushroom as we walk. “There’s medicine everywhere on the land. You just need to know where to look,” she says.

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Sarah Jessica Parker is the latest A-lister to lavish our fair isles with praise, from the transport networks to the eggs. I guess it’s easy to overlook problems when you’re a wealthy tourist

‘I want to know Jubilee, Piccadilly, Northern, I want to know Edgware … Your system here is exquisite.” That is Sarah Jessica Parker raving about the tube . “Goodge” she added, in wonderment, rolling the word around in her mouth like a mint humbug. She is in London, appearing in Plaza Suite at the Savoy theatre, having the time of her life and appreciating breakfast foods. “There’s these eggs here … that I go mad for, they’re called Burford, they have those orange yolks … oh my God … I love your rashers here,” she told the chef Ruth Rogers on Rogers’ podcast. Her Instagram features black cabs, graffiti and her learning which bus “gets me where I need to go. On time.”

Meanwhile, Zendaya has been “spotted patiently queueing for a Gail’s coffee and pastry ” and doing a big shop in New Malden Waitrose; Vogue has declared her “ one sausage roll away ” from honorary Briton status.

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The 186-mile A470 might be a bit of a patchwork route but it perfectly showcases the spine of Wales’s beauty

The neglect I had shown to my native Wales over the years, while writing about the streets of Delhi, or small town life in Kansas, shamefully hit home recently while listening to music in my apartment in Hong Kong, where I have been living for much of the past 20 years. The voice of the great British singer-songwriter Ian McNabb rang out loudly : “I never saw my hometown ’til I went around the world. ”

These thoughts on a day of unbearable humidity and oppressive Hong Kong heat gave the germination of the idea behind my book The Long Unwinding Road. I grew up in the south, the commercial and industrial heartland of Wales that was completely divorced, I considered, from the big green north, where people were more tied to the land, and nature had done some of her best work.

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Railway nostalgia, the world’s oldest football, fenland skies and a little-known bard are among the highlights of Crewe, Stirling, Boston and Barnstaple

These oft-bypassed towns have all been, at some period in history, influential if not necessarily powerful; wealth-creating though hardly opulent; and vital to the nation’s wealth and security while never fully rewarded for it. Communications and trade once gave some urban centres the edge over others. Churches and marketplaces were social magnets. Today a brand-name art gallery, celebrity residents, or media chatter are most likely to generate appeal, however specious. What if estate agents sold houses using poetry, memories, polyglotism, ruins and rust?

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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.

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A drive to Dundee, a Cornish sleeper train and a £2 bus trip across Yorkshire offer spectacular scenery, rare wildlife and culinary delights

The sequence M77, M74, M73, M80, A9, M90, A90 may not sound freighted with emotional weight, but those roads are, for me, associated with the sadness of separation and the pleasure of reunion. It’s the route I drive between our home in Glasgow and Dundee, where our eldest boy now lives, having left for university.

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Walking a 26-mile stretch from Hertfordshire, our writer witnesses how a neglected artery of the city has been transformed into a recreational and cultural hub

For centuries the Lea has been a vital artery for London, carrying drinking water and grain into the city and servicing the factories and gunpowder mills that grew up along its banks. Rising in Bedfordshire, it flows for 46 miles through Hertfordshire and north-east London, eventually reaching the Thames. It’s often described as London’s second river, but this unsung tributary gets little of the glory or recognition of the Thames.

Since moving to Leyton (“settlement on the Lea”) several years ago, I’ve become familiar with the stretches alongside Hackney Marshes, but I found myself increasingly curious about what lay upriver. The Lee Valley park runs along a 26-mile stretch of the Lea. This scenic 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) reinvention of former rubbish dumps, sewage works, gravel pits and factories was constituted nearly 60 years ago as a “green lung” for the city, and extended in 2012 to include the new Olympic Park. I decide to hike its length in an attempt to gain a fresh perspective on my part of outer London.

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A popular circuit round Scotland’s wild north coast draws thousands of drivers – but there’s so much more to experience by public transport and on foot

There’s a party atmosphere round the lighthouse on Chanonry Point near Inverness, the UK’s best place to see dolphins from land. It’s an hour after low tide and there are pipers, picnics and kids running barefoot over long, evening sands. Already in late spring, the sun barely seems to set in the Highlands. The kelp-strewn pebbles are glowing as I walk from the bus stop near Fortrose cathedral ( bus 26/26A from Inverness) along one side of the promontory. The dolphins don’t show up. But, somehow, it’s fine – the first of many reasons to return. It’s still light as I walk back along the beach for a 9pm bus, past wild lupins and views of Fort George and pink clouds over the Moray Firth. I’m in Inverness at the start of a week exploring Scotland’s wild north coast by train and bus.

The North Coast 500 is a victim of its own success. Devised in 2015, in the style of America’s Route 66, this 516-mile circular road trip round northern Scotland draws thousands of drivers and motor homers every year to narrow roads with bottleneck passing places. Locals complain that the route’s popularity has driven up house prices and talk in terms of pre- and post-NC500. A few cyclists cover all or part of the route by bike. I’m exploring some of it by public transport and on foot. It takes a bit of planning. I’m used to the mild frustration of missing an hourly bus; missing a weekly one is another matter. But first, there’s an epic railway journey to enjoy.

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From a hike under huge Suffolk skies to aspen glades in the Cairngorms, our tipsters lead the way on these spring strolls

Two of the great prologues of literature begin on the same seeping bank in the village of Slad. Start the circular Laurie Lee walk from where the infant was dropped from a cart in Cider with Rosie and from where the adolescent loped off to Spain in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. A well-managed schedule can see you enjoying the singular hospitality of the Woolpack Inn before and after your five-mile jaunt. Head clockwise or reverse to find primrose-bounded paths, skylark-serenaded pasture and slope-clinging beech trees. The ramble is punctuated by posts inscribed with poetry by the valley’s most celebrated son.
Mathew Page

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