Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1IonaIonaIona is car-free for visitors and small and fairly flat, reached by a short ferry from Fionnphort on Mull, and that combination does most of the resting for you. Paths are easy, the shell-sand beaches are often empty, and the abbey St. Columba founded after arriving from Ireland in 563 gives a walk…0
  2. 2Faroe IslandsFaroe IslandsEighteen mountainous islands, about 55,000 people and a name that means Sheep Islands: the Faroes suit walkers who would rather meet a ram on the path than a crowd. Villages are small, traffic is light, and the weather turns so often that a slow afternoon by a window with a book feels like part of…0
  3. 3ShikokuShikokuThe smallest and least populated of Japan's four main islands moves at a gentler pace than the Tokyo and Kyoto circuit. Shikoku's 88 temples associated with Kobo Daishi form a pilgrimage that takes around 45 days on foot, but you do not need to walk it all: a few days on one stretch, staying in…0
  4. 4Hay-on-WyeHay-on-WyeKnown as the first book town in the world, this small market town on the Welsh border is a reader's retreat: secondhand and antiquarian bookstores in every direction, the River Wye at the bottom of the hill and green border country to walk off a morning's browsing. A week here can be nothing but…0
  5. 5Lake BohinjLake BohinjBled gets the postcards and the crowds; Bohinj, its sister lake inside Slovenia's strictly protected Triglav National Park, gets the people who want to swim, paddle and walk. There is no resort town wrapped around the shore, and the summer boat across the water is an electric launch that glides…0
  6. 6SarkSarkSark has no cars. You get around on foot, by bicycle or in a horse-drawn carriage, and the occasional tractor is the only engine you are likely to hear. It is a 35 to 50 minute ferry ride from Guernsey, small enough to walk from end to end, and in 2011 it became Europe's first International Dark…0
  7. 7Big SurBig SurBig Sur's famous pullouts can be as busy as a parking lot, but the coast is long and most of its quiet sits away from the bridge photo stops. Highway 1 reopened through Regent's Slide on January 14, 2026, giving uninterrupted access between Carmel and Cambria for the first time in almost three…0
  8. 8Mendocino, CaliforniaMendocino, CaliforniaA small village on headlands above the Pacific, Mendocino is surrounded on three sides by a state park whose bluff-top trails look down on sea arches and hidden grottos. That means a week of walks that start at your door, with bakeries, galleries and a bookstore close by and no need for the car…0
  9. 9GozoGozoMalta's smaller sister island is about 25 minutes by ferry from the main island and runs at a noticeably slower pace: farmland, limestone villages and coastal paths instead of Malta's busier resorts. Base yourself in a converted farmhouse or village guesthouse and the days sort themselves into a…0
  10. 10Finnish LakelandFinnish LakelandFinland is called the land of a thousand lakes, and most of them sit in Lakeland, where the classic vacation is a rented cottage by the water with its own sauna. That is about as close to designed solitude as travel gets: swim, sauna, read on the jetty, row out at dusk, repeat, with the nearest…0