45 cool escapes

Excellent escape

Where Finland goes vertical and empties out completely.

Excellent escape

The trailhead for Sweden's great Arctic walk.

Solid escape

The Arctic capital: 24-hour daylight and a stubborn café culture.

Solid escape

The far north-east corner where Norway meets Russia.

Solid escape

Treeless, windswept, and gloriously empty.

Solid escape

Granite spires dropped straight into an emerald Arctic sea.

Solid escape

Ireland's wild, underpopulated north-west shoulder.

Solid escape

A town parked next to the fastest-moving glacier in the north.

Solid escape

Iceland's least-visited limb, reachable only in summer.

Solid escape

Britain's own sub-arctic plateau, snow patches and all.

Solid escape

Six thousand islands and almost nobody on them.

Solid escape

Germany's misty northern uplands, cheap and quietly strange.

Solid escape

Seven mountains, one very wet, very handsome harbour city.

Solid escape

A tiny capital on the edge of a volcanic desert.

Solid escape

Basalt, bog and weather that changes its mind hourly.

Solid escape

Hebridean island with more eagles than traffic lights.

Solid escape

Europe's deepest fjord, with waterfalls falling a kilometre.

Solid escape

Eighteen green islands in permanent conversation with the fog.

Solid escape

A soft, rainy, endlessly sociable Atlantic town.

Solid escape

A limestone island with a walled Hanseatic town on it.

Solid escape

The Arctic Circle with a functioning bus network.

Solid escape

A Baltic rock that turned into a food destination.

Workable

A high, dry, blindingly bright alpine valley at 1,800m.

Workable

Sweden's shellfish capital with a working-harbour edge.

Workable

Wet, green, vertical England.

Workable

Britain's warmest corner, which is still not warm.

Workable

Sea-cooled modernism with the best canteen culture in the Nordics.

Workable

Car-free village under the most photographed mountain alive.

Workable

A forest with a capital city attached to the bottom of it.

Workable

Sharp granite peaks and the cheapest mountain huts in Europe.

Workable

The furthest north you can fly on a scheduled ticket.

Workable

Atlantic France: cold water, salted butter, granite.

Workable

Cream, cider and a permanently overcast Channel.

Workable

A capital assembled on fourteen islands of cold water.

Workable

Rounded green mountains with a serious cheese habit.

Workable

Sub-tropical island whose interior sits above the clouds.

Not your escape

Ladders bolted into cold, mossy limestone gorges.

Not your escape

Dense conifer shade and a Michelin star per valley.

Not your escape

Deep glacial lakes ringed by limestone cliffs.

Not your escape

Alpine scenery at Balkan prices.

Not your escape

Pale limestone towers with the best mountain food in the Alps.

Not your escape

An imperial old town with 2,000m of vertical directly above it.

Not your escape

Medieval villages under Europe's wildest remaining forest.

Not your escape

Mont Blanc's front porch, wired with lifts to the ice.

Not your escape

Mid-Atlantic volcanoes with a permanently mild ocean climate.