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The woods and gentle contours of the road towards Wast Water give little hint of the splendour to come - a view unequalled in the whole of England's Lake District. Ahead lies a sheet of slate-grey water, hemmed in by craggy ...

A deep ravine, sheer-sided in places, cuts a spectacular slice into towering sea cliffs and high mountains in western Crete. For 11 miles (18km) the Samaria Gorge twists and turns, widening and narrowing as it traces a serpentine course through the ...

Like a scratch made by some gigantic claymore (Scottish great sword), the Great Glen cuts diagonally across the Scottish Highland from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. Ribbon-shaped lochs - Ness, Oich and Lochy - fill most of the glen's ...

Maps of Finnish Lapland are a surprise. For an area lying well within the Arctic Circle, they reveal a land, not of ice and tundra but innumerable lakes, rivers and streams linked by forests, bogs and swamps. And the largest, bluest ...

A narrow blade of rock stabs the clear air of the Warrumbungles - a range of mountains in New South Wales. Aptly called the Breadknife, it reaches skywards to a height of 300ft (90m), yet its summit is only about 3ft ...

Deadman pass, Dry Bone Canyon, Funeral Mountains - the very place names of California's Death Valley are sinister. This is North America's hottest, driest area - a place of baking summer heat where a whole year can pass without a drop ...

There are, in any case, many compensations. Since the Maori colonised what is now New Zealand in the 14th century, the Rotorua area has been the country of the great Arawa group of tribes. They, like the Europeans later, loved the ...

Towering in magnificent isolation above its Alpine surroundings, the Matterhorn is celebrated for its horn - a slightly bent pyramidal peak. It straddles the Swiss-Italian frontier, and in English and German is known as the Matterhorn, in Italian as Monte Cervine ...

Pearl of the Pacific, but the nearest thing to paradise on earth, the island of dreams - all these names have been given to Bora-Bora. For American author James Michener it was the most beautiful island in the world and the ...

Hong Kong cuts the required hotel quarantine for overseas travellers from a week to three days, the city's leader John Lee declared on Monday, 8 August 2022. The Chinese mega-city is still one of the few cities in the world, jointly ...

On the east coast of Sicily lie three massive rocks, lapped by waves. Known as the Scogli Dei Ciclopi, they are of volcanic origin and quite unlike other rocks along the shore. These identical boulders, it is said, were hurled by ...

The ridged and pitted pillars taper upwards from a broad base. Some are short and stumpy, and others soar upwards and slim out into long thin necks. The tallest reach 130ft (40m) in height, and pillars of any height can support ...