Easy Trips

This Month … celebrate Halloween in New York State, track wolves in Spain and enjoy the last of the sun in Cyprus

Dubrovnik, Croatia – After the Crowds

Endlessly photogenic Dubrovnik (above) has spearheaded Croatia’s return to tourist favour in the past two decades. It has played its role so well that authorities are now considering a limit on the number of visitors entering its historic walled centre. One way to avoid the crush is by visiting in the low season. October sees fewer swimmers and cruise ships in the Adriatic Sea, late-autumn temperatures remaining in the mid-teens, and the white stones as resplendent in the sun as ever. Take the cable car to the top of Mount Srd for one of Europe’s most memorable views, encompassing the Old Town and island-dotted coast, before heading back to explore the city’s less-thronged streets at leisure.

New York State, USA – HalloweeNY

In Washington Irving’s 1820 tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a headless horseman terrifies the inhabitants of Tarrytown in upstate New York. In later retellings, he sometimes hurls a blazing pumpkin, in a defining piece of American Halloween lore. New York City stages its own ghoulish parades around 31 October, but follow the wide Hudson River north to the villages of Westchester County and you’ll get the last of the leaf-peeping season providing a colourful backdrop to all those jack o’lanterns. More than 7,000 of them can be seen lit up at the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze, held in the grounds of the 300-year-old Van Cortlandt Manor. And on the outskirts of Tarrytown is Sleepy Hollow itself, home to the Old Dutch Burying Ground, before which Irving’s headless horseman would disappear ‘in a flash of fire and brimstone’.

Troödos Mountains, Cyprus – Divine Footsteps

Ancient Greeks were never ones to waste a good myth, and the legendary home of the gods, Mount Olympus, has had its name stuck on to other peaks around the Classical world (and also in the USA and on Mars). The Mount Olympus of Cyprus is the island’s highest point, and the centerpiece of the Troödos Mountains. At this time of year, temperatures are ideal for hiking. Responsible Travel’s walking holiday starts in the beautifully restored village of Kakopetria, at the foot of Mount Olympus, for six days exploring the Troödos and the little-developed Akamas Peninsula to the west.

Options include a trail to the cascades at Kaledonia Falls, and a walk with Mediterranean views that ends at a cave known as the Baths of Aphrodite, after the Greek goddess of love. Hiking in the hills might bring sightings of griffon vultures and wild mouflon sheep, as well as stops at old watermills, a winery, and Byzantine churches painted inside with vivid murals.

Palencia Province, Spain – Call of the Wild

The howl of the wolf readily calls to mind some snow-shrouded Arctic forest – less often the land of sunlit plazas and pitchers of sangria. The far north of Spain has always been a land apart from the rest of the country, however; the Cantabrian Mountains mark off the coastal strip and ensure it stays a deep shade of rain-fed green. The range is one of Europe’s unheralded wild spaces, and home to perhaps the largest wolf population west of Russia. Autumn months are a good time to sight this elusive creature: Naturetrek’s tour takes walkers around the foothills in the north of Palencia province to known wolf haunts, with nights spent in a huddle of restored farm cottages. Previous tours have spotted wolves at least nine times out of ten.

Cornwall, England – Farm-table Dining

In a county where the coasts get most attention, Coombeshead Farm gives inland Cornwall its due. Set in the rolling country near the border with Devon, this 66-acre former dairy farm has been revived by two chefs looking for a change from big-city pace: Tom Adams, the man behind London’s Pitt Cue eatery, and April Bloomfield, who launched The Spotted Pig in New York. Communal feasts here see guests sitting down to snacks and three-course dinners where anything pork-related is a strong point. Various cooking workshops run at the farm, too, and the hills of nearby Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor make for excellent excursions in the autumn.