Sam Burden

There's a misconception that wine is an expensive hobby. That vineyard visits are for hen parties and corporate away days. That English wine is a novelty rather than something worth seeking out. I'd like to challenge all of that. Some of the best solo day trips I've taken have been to English vineyards, and most have cost less than a train ticket to London. A guided vineyard tour, a glass of English sparkling wine, and an afternoon among the vines is one of those experiences that feels far...

Albania wasn't on my radar until it was, and then it was all I could think about for two years. There's something about a country that spent decades completely sealed off from the rest of the world that I find hard to ignore. Under Enver Hoxha's regime it was one of the most isolated states on earth, closed to outsiders, suspicious of everyone, dotted with 170,000 concrete bunkers built for an invasion that never came. That history doesn't just disappear. You feel it in the architecture, in...

A solo city break travel guide to Dinant: clifftop citadels, honky biscuits, a trail of painted saxophones, and 408 steps that will test your lungs; all an hour from Brussels. There are towns that look good in photos, and then there are towns that genuinely stop you in your tracks when you round the final bend of the Meuse. Dinant is the latter. Squeezed between a slow-moving river and sheer limestone cliffs, with a Gothic church that seems to have grown straight out of the rock face and a...