Mountain highs

Good evening
On hot sunny days, thoughts might turn to sandy beaches and turquoise seas - but more and more people are looking to the cooler climes and quiet landscapes of Europe’s mountains for their summer holidays. As Kevin Rushby writes, he’s always drawn by “that particular kind of tranquillity to be found on a peak under a blue sky”.
But mountains were not always seen as places to relax on a summer’s day - it was in the 19th century that the idea became popular. All over the continent, wealthy romantics started funding simple dormitory accommodation, often precariously balanced on vertiginous crags. “These mountain refuges were vital in allowing people to access the peaks, and became a huge part of my own enjoyment of the mountains,” says Rushby, who has sought them out across the globe, from Wales to Sweden.
Elsewhere Kerry Walker picks her favourite summer holidays in Europe’s lakes and mountains. The Monti Sibillini national park in the Apennines is among them for its cuisine and honey-coloured hilltop towns, while Jostedalsbreen national park in western Norway delivers “a visual feast of mountain-flanked fjords, ice-blue glacial lakes and mainland Europe’s biggest ice cap”.
Germany’s Bavarian Alps are a fairytale destination for hiking, cycling and lake swimming, writes Walker, and Spain is at its most ravishing in the Picos de Europa national park, an untamed terrain of “jagged, lake-splashed peaks, ancient oak and beech forests, and deep, wildflower-flecked valleys where it’s silent enough to hear your own heartbeat.”
Time to head for the hills! Happy travels