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Travel + Leisure
4 days ago
- General
- Travel + Leisure
I'm a Former Lifeguard—Here Are 6 Water Safety Items You Should Pack for the Beach and Pool 'Just in Case'
Before diving into the world of travel writing, I made a living patrolling pool decks. I was 15 when I first got my lifeguarding certification, and I ended up loving the line of work so much that I soon became a lifeguard instructor, and later, a waterpark manager. For seven years, I spent my summers teaching CPR and responding to first aid emergencies. On any given afternoon, I was tasked with ensuring the safety of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people. This experience made me into the safety-conscious traveller I am today, and I still find myself using the knowledge I gained as a lifeguard. Curious to know what safety tips this former lifeguard has up her sleeve? Keep scrolling for the six products I recommend for staying safe by the pool, at the beach, and on the lake. Here, you'll find water safety items I routinely stock up on every summer, including polarized sunglasses, SPF 50+ products, and water shoes. You'll also find life-saving safety gear—including life jackets, wound-clotting powder, and neon swimsuits—that I think deserve a permanent spot in your beach bag, based on my experiences in the field. One of the biggest mistakes I see families make—whether at the pool, beach, or lake—is the improper use of inflatables. Arm floaties and baby pool floats may look cute for family photos, but they aren't reliable in terms of keeping non-swimmers above water. They pop easily, and inflating them to the proper limit can be difficult. Plus, it can be tough to know if they have a small leak or whether you've pushed the inflation valve deeply enough to stop the release of air. In fact, my waterpark banned the use of outside inflatables entirely because of how hazardous they can be. I strongly recommend that non-swimmers and weak swimmers—regardless of age—only use U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)-approved devices. Unlike floaties, USCG-approved life jackets are made with durable, buoyant foam and typically have adjustable straps that allow you to fit the vest more closely around the midsection, preventing the wearer from slipping out of them. Amazon has several different options, ranging from infant life jackets to toddler puddle jumpers to plus-sized adult life vests, all suited for a wide range of activities. Practicing good water safety starts on land. That includes reading pool rules, putting on appropriate life jackets, checking weather reports for possible lightning storms, and shockingly enough, choosing the right swimsuit color. In the event that you or your loved one needs rescuing at a public pool, on the lake, or at the beach, the color of your swimsuit can determine how quickly first responders can find you. White, pale blue, gray, and green swimsuits can be some of the hardest swimsuits to spot in a pool, while darker colors, like navy and black, can be difficult to detect in open water. This summer, opt for bright colors and bold prints that are distinguishable in the water. Think: Neon orange, red, yellow, green, pink, and purple. Amazon is a treasure trove of vibrant bikinis, one-piece swimsuits, and swim trunks that are both on-trend and water-safe. Some of the most serious injuries I encountered while working as a waterpark manager involved patrons slipping and falling by running too quickly across floor tiles or trying to climb up a slippery pool feature. Now, as a former lifeguard who loves soaking up the sun lakeside and at beach destinations, I often see foot-related injuries of the outdoor variety: Slipping on smooth river rocks, foot scrapes caused by coral, and burnt soles due to walking across burning-hot sand. This summer, I recommend dipping your toes (pun intended) in the world of water shoes, if you haven't already. I personally own these Affinest water shoes from Amazon; they have an adjustable bungee cord lace and thick, treaded outsoles that have kept my feet protected while river rafting, kayaking, and snorkeling. If you prefer to keep your toes free, I recommend investing in a pair of active, anti-slip sandals, like these Teva Hurricane Xlt2 sandals, that you can wear in and out of the water. There's nothing worse than the first sunburn of the summer, but the good news is, you can avoid it by slathering on plenty of SPF throughout the day. A good rule of thumb is to reach for sunscreen that's water-resistant and has an SPF rating of at least 30, and to reapply it at least every two hours. As a waterpark lifeguard manager, I encouraged my lifeguards to double-check the most commonly-forgotten areas before taking place on the stand, including the tops of their feet, their ears, their shoulders, and even their lips (yes, your lips need SPF, too). Besides sunscreen, I also recommend stocking up on burn remedy products, too—just in case. This Alocane Max Emergency Burn Gel is suited to treat first-degree burns; it contains lidocaine hydrochloride to provide quick-acting pain and itch relief, benzalkonium chloride to prevent infections, and aloe to soothe irritated skin. For minor sunburns, though, sometimes a good aloe gel is all you need for relief—for this, I recommend reaching for products that are free of added fragrances and irritating ingredients, like this Badger Organic Aloe Vera Gel, which is safe to use on both the face and body. Note: Always consult with your doctor before using over-the-counter products. Sand, sunscreen, chlorine, saltwater, and UV rays: This summer fivesome can leave your eyes itchy, sore, and sensitive. It may seem like a redundant tip, but I recommend stocking up for summer with several pairs of swim goggles and polarized sunglasses. Should you lose your goggles in the Pacific Ocean or accidentally step on your tried-and-true shades while walking, you'll have a backup pair ready to go. I personally own several pairs of Bircen sunglasses—they're stylish, budget-friendly, and come in a wide variety of colors and styles. Plus, they provide UV400 protection against the sun's harmful rays. There are plenty of decent swim goggles on the market, but as a former lifeguard and childhood competitive swimmer, I only buy my goggles from Speedo. As for removing chlorine, saltwater, sand granules, or even rogue eyelashes from your eyes, any gentle eyewash solution will do the trick. However, thoroughly rinsing your eyes can be difficult if you (or your child) hate using eye drops. For this, I recommend throwing a pressurized eye wash cup into your beach bag. All you have to do is fill it up with your eye wash, lean your open eye over the opening, and squeeze the silicone handle. This will swish the eye wash in and around your eye, thoroughly cleaning it of any debris. I'm the first to admit that crochet crossbody bags and raffia beach totes are adorable for summer, but these options tend to do diddly squat when it comes to protecting your gear from sand, surf, and exploded bottles of sunscreen. If you won't step foot on the beach without one, I recommend at least throwing a waterproof pouch or toiletry bag inside to protect your phone, medications, SPF products, and other essentials from the elements. Personally, I hate the idea of getting anything I own wet, whether it's my towel, snacks, or beach reads. Waterproof dry bags are the way to go if you're a lover of water activities—they're durable, roomy, and actually waterproof, making them great companions near any water source. As for what goes inside that bag, I recommend investing in a quality, compact first aid kit. I love this option from M2 Basics. It fits into the palm of your hand and comes with multiple types of bandages and wound dressings—but unlike some other small first aid kits, it also comes with an emergency blanket to fight off water-induced hypothermia, a CPR face mask, and a tourniquet to stop heavy blood flow. Speaking of blood flow, I also recommend throwing a pack of BleedStop into your first aid kit, just in case. Water exposure can make it incredibly difficult for wounds to naturally form a blood clot, and this powder can help in an emergency. Love a great deal? Sign up for our T+L Recommends newsletter and we'll send you our favorite travel products each week.
Wall Street Journal
18-07-2025
- Wall Street Journal
‘A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland': A Londoner Out of His Element
Travel writing can be a tedious exercise in epiphanies, overstuffed with golden sunsets, balmy beaches and quaint locals graced by effortless charm. The perfections of paradise, it turns out, grow boring pretty quickly. 'Literature is made out of the misfortunes of others,' literary critic V.S. Pritchett once noted. 'A large number of travel books fail simply because of the intolerable, monotonous good luck of their authors.'
News.com.au
13-07-2025
- News.com.au
Dark truth of ‘enviable' occupation that has seen Aussie travel to 60 countries
Travel writing may seem like a luxurious, enviable occupation, but regularly visiting far-flung locations can result in unsettling experiences that range from weird to terrifying. During my 13-year career in this field, I've been to 60-plus countries and repeatedly witnessed the dark side of travel writing. Here's four of my wildest stories. Guangzhou taxi terror Somehow, I've just become involved in human trafficking. That is my panicked thought as I sit trembling in the back of a taxi in Guangzhou, while a woman screams in terror, kicks the dashboard, and assaults our driver. Rarely have I ever felt so terrified and confused. It is the middle of the night, I've only just arrived in China, and we're parked on the side of a freeway as puzzling chaos ensues in the front seat. My fear isn't due to the wild behaviour of that local woman. Her violent outburst is entirely reasonable because she clearly believes she's being kidnapped, and that I'm party to this crime. How did it come to this? Let me explain. After landing at Guangzhou airport 90 minutes' previous, my friend and I could find no legitimate taxis. Eventually, we had to accept an offer from a Chinese man in plain clothes who had been following us, saying: 'Taxi, taxi, taxi?'. He requested we pay upfront, before we sat in the back of his unmarked car, and sped towards the city. Just minutes later, we unexpectedly pulled into the freeway emergency lane. We asked what was happening, but received no response. Soon after, another vehicle screeched up behind us. Followed by the disturbing sounds of a man yelling, a woman screaming in terror, and the boot of our car slamming. Then we saw that lady being dragged along the side of our car, before she was aggressively shoved into its front seat. After repeatedly hitting the driver, she looked in the rear view mirror, saw us two Caucasian strangers, and exploded into an even deeper panic. Thankfully, things soon quietened down. What appeared like a kidnapping turned out to be a simple taxi scam. After the woman was dropped off at her Guangzhou hotel, it became apparent that we and the scared woman had all been charged full taxi fares upfront back at the airport. So by stopping on the freeway, to squeeze us all into one car, the driver and his accomplice had practically doubled their income. Never have I been so relieved to be ripped off. Japan porn sleepover I'm laying on the floor, trying to go to sleep, in a room filled with men pleasuring themselves. This was not my plan. That morning, I'd been leaving my Osaka hotel to go sightseeing when a staff member told me I needed to check out immediately. I mistakenly thought I had one more night booked. The staff showed me I did not, apologised that they had no rooms available for tonight, and warned me most Osaka hotels were booked out due to a major event in the city. When I searched hotel websites and found no rooms in my budget, the staff said the only other option was to spend the night in a nearby 24-hour internet cafe. So I went to this business, alongside Tennoji train station, and booked one of its private booths for a 12-hour block, starting from 7:00pm. When I returned to the cafe that evening, things quickly got weird. Firstly, I saw hundreds of porn magazines stacked near my booth. Secondly, every booth was advertised as 'fully private', because they had a curtain, and their walls were about 175cm high, which supposedly meant no one could peer down into them. Except, that is, for this 197cm tall Australian. As I walked towards my booth, I made unexpected eye contact with a startled, sweaty Japanese man, who was clearly in the midst of a passionate activity inside his cubicle. He yelled in shock, and I rushed inside my booth, wondering what lay ahead of me. For the rest of the night, I curled up beneath my cubicle's desk and tried to sleep. The discomfort of lying on the floor paled in comparison to being immersed in a chorus of perturbing male sounds. Life and death encounter in Melbourne My head is bruised, although not as badly as my ego. I've just let loose a loud, effeminate squeal and then rushed backwards in a panic, banging my noggin into the wall of a Melbourne home. Yet in that moment, all I cared about was staying alive. Because, seconds earlier, I'd endured one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I was spending the day following a Melbourne snake catcher for a first-person story for a Middle East newspaper about this dangerous profession. A distressed real estate agent had called the catcher after finding a venomous red-bellied black snake in a bedroom of the home he was showing that day. After the catcher scooped up the snake, using a hook on the end of a long stick, I requested to take a photo. As he held it in the air, the snake fell off the hook and rushed under the bed, straight towards my feet. I surged backwards, slammed into the wall, shrieked in terror and ran out onto the street. As you can guess, I'm no Steve Irwin. Stuck in a Belgian hell hole Urine, drugs and dirty mattresses: Three things I'll never forget about a bizarre and revolting night spent in a Belgian hell hole. I was on a whirlwind work trip across Europe when I landed in Brussels, checked my phone, and realised I hadn't booked any accommodation. The only hotel rooms available were too expensive, so I secured a single room in a cheap hostel, alongside Grand Place. I waited outside this locked hostel for an hour before its young manager finally arrived, off his head on some kind of intoxicant. He rudely told me my single room was taken, and led me to my new accommodation – a dormitory that looked like a drug den. Stained carpets, chipped walls, and dirty mattresses strewn on the floor. He told me I was 'lucky' to have a proper bed. So I kicked off my shoes underneath that bed, which seconds later collapsed under my 110kg weight. The manager chastised me, shifted me to a bed reinforced by a cinder block, and left me with a motley crew of male guests filling the room with cigarette and marijuana smoke. Then, I had a disturbing realisation. The bathroom shared by me and nine other men didn't even have a door. Its entrance was covered only by a curtain, so that every horrible, toilet-related sound and smell invaded our room. I avoided that bathroom. Until, in the middle of the night, I simply had to use it. I reached for my shoes, only to realise they were still under my original bed, which now was occupied by a snoring stranger. So I had to make a harrowing choice: walk into this grotty bathroom in socks, or bare feet. I chose the former, entered the bathroom for the first time, and immediately, my socks became saturated. The entire bathroom floor was covered in an inch of fluids. Then I turned on the light and saw the reason why: the toilet's base was leaking. So I was standing in a giant puddle of sewerage
BBC News
06-07-2025
- BBC News
Six new and upcoming summer travel books that inspire wonder
From a nine-month trek to a 20,000-mile motorcycle odyssey, these books will transport you across continents encourage you to see the world differently. Like travel itself, great travel writing can expand our understanding of the world – and of ourselves. It introduces us to places we've never visited and people we've never met. It expands our idea of the planet, and when done well, it can leave us permanently first book that did this for me was Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard. Published in 1978, it transported me to a gruelling expedition in the Himalayas, immersed me in Buddhist thought and offered a poignant portrait of a family's emotional unravelling. Matthiessen's ruminations profoundly touched and transformed my life, inspiring a leap of faith to pursue a career in travel. Happily, that leap was rewarded, and led to a lifelong career editing and writing travel stories for the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, Salon, Lonely Planet, National Geographic and the BBC. After reading through this season's new and upcoming travel books, I've found seven that tap into a similar power. Each rekindles a sense of wonder and expands our idea of what travel can be. Best for wide-horizon nomads Free Ride, by Noraly Schoenmaker Free Ride recounts a 20,000-mile motorcycle odyssey that began with a jaunt from India to Malaysia, then morphed into a solo expedition through the Middle East and Central Asia and finally back to Schoenmaker's homeland in the Netherlands. Launched by a broken heart when she discovered that her live-in partner had been having a long-term affair, the journey became a route of reinvention. This passage set in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan captures the rigours and the rewards of Schoenmaker's odyssey: "I was freezing, I was scared, I was alone. But at the same time I realized: there was nowhere in the world I would rather be than right here. Despite the hardships of the cold Pamir, I had fallen instantly, completely, and head over heels in love with this part of the world. It felt like everything that had happened – my destroyed relationship, the forced sale of my house, my attempt to become a filmmaker – were all part of a bigger plan to get me here. Here, alone, on the Pamir. I wanted to stay here forever, in this wilderness." In no-frills, from-the-heart prose, Schoenmaker crafts exhilarating evocations of rarely visited landscapes and unforgettable portraits of remote villagers and their far-off-the-beaten-path homes. As she motors on, she also brings to vivid life the bone-jarringly rutted tracks, scarily flooded roads, breath-sucking winds, freezing high-altitude passes, broken and burned-out motorcycle parts and multiple motorcycle mishaps she must overcome along the way. But what ultimately shines throughout this moving and inspiring account are the attributes that enable her to persevere: her optimism and openness, her determination and resilience, her ability to engage strangers and at the same time to be comfortable with herself. The truth at the heart of this pilgrimage carries a soul-widening lesson for us all: because Schoenmaker brings a warm, wonder-filled embrace to the world, the world embraces her just as fervently and fully in return. Best for long-haul seekers: Northbound, by Naomi Arnold Naomi Arnold's Northbound charts her nine-month solo trek along New Zealand's 3,000km Te Araroa trail, from Bluff at the southern tip of the country to Cape Reinga in the far north. Setting off on Boxing Day 2023, Arnold's extraordinarily gruelling odyssey takes her through some of New Zealand's most remote and rugged landscapes. Her account brims with detailed observations, bringing the reader directly into the heart and hardship of the trail – in all its mud, pain, cold and beauty. Arnold combines these descriptions with keenly honest evocations of the challenges she overcomes – from blisters and fungal infections to loneliness and logistical missteps. As her journey unfolds, her perceptions and transformations take on a luminous intensity, as in this passage from the middle of her account: "I spent the day climbing from the valley floor up a long, steep ridge to 1462m Mt Crawford. I walked through rainforest, admiring pīwakawaka and miromiro leaping among the dripping rimu, mataī, mamaku, the trees laden with huge balls of moss, the ground covered in ecstatic bursts of crown ferns. Spiderwebs caught between trees were glistening with diamonds of moisture, shivering in shafts of white-misted sunlight…. This low light changed everything. It hit one thickly moss-covered tree and I could suddenly see the tree's real shape, its skeleton, strong beneath its fuzzy green exterior, illuminated like a pair of legs through a sunlit skirt." Northbound is a beautiful, brave book: harrowing at times, yet filled with hope. Ultimately, it's about much more than walking the length of New Zealand – it's about what Arnold found, and what she shed, along the way. And in this sense, it's about the possibilities that await all of us in life, and that we can choose to ignore, or embrace. Best for road travel romantics: On the Hippie Trail, by Rick Steves Long before Rick Steves became a household name, he was a young piano teacher filled with wanderlust. In 1978, he set out from Istanbul to Kathmandu along the legendary "hippie trail", filling his notebook with observations of a world in flux. On the Hippie Trail is a lightly edited version of that journal, and it presents Steves as a passionate young man falling in love with the world, bursting with delight at its dangers and disappointments as well as its treasures and pleasures. Steves' wide-eyed innocence and enthusiasm are present on every page, as are his clear-eyed depictions of local rites and idiosyncrasies – all intimations of the travel icon to come. Consider this description in central Kathmandu: "I lost myself in Durbar Square. This was a tangled, medieval-ish world of tall, terraced temples; fruit and vegetable stands; thin, wild and hungry people praying, begging and going through rituals; children, oblivious to it all, playing tag among the frozen Buddhas; rickshaws; and bread carts. Ten years ago, the only blemishes of our modern world – cars and tourists – weren't there and the sight would have been pure. But even with long, straggly-haired, lacy, baggy-clothed freaks lounging on stony pagoda steps, and the occasional honking taxi, this was a place where I could linger." Full of such observations and excitements, On the Hippie Trail rekindled my memories of early wanderings that widened the world for me. In so doing, it also robustly recharged my sense of wonder, the promise that had once suffused every day: that tantalising, life-changing possibilities awaited around the next corner. Best for spiritual pilgrims: Fiesta, by Daniel Stables Alternately rollicking and reflective, Fiesta profiles the most fascinating and eye-catching festivals around the world – and what they reveal about the human need for ritual and connection. Fuelled by a fundamental fascination with the topic, Stables spent a decade studying and attending festivals. In the book, he identifies 11 festival types – from identity to altered states, tribalism to utopia – and brings them to life through fieldwork and personal immersion. He dances with whirling dervishes in Turkey, joins Carnival in Venice and reflects on the spiritual ecology of the Green Gathering in Wales. Part of the pleasure of the book is Stables' deep digging into anthropology, history, psychology and folklore, and his resulting analyses of the motivations and meanings of the rituals and beliefs he encounters. An equally great pleasure is the way he wholeheartedly throws himself into these events, resulting in some seriously alcohol-imbibing and ego-surrendering adventures, all recounted in suitably soaring prose. Here he describes the culmination of a Romani community festival, when a statue of their patron saint, Black Sara, is carried into the Mediterranean by a parade of pilgrims on white Camargue horses:"The sound of hooves gathered on the promenade; those of us standing on the sand turned to face the approaching cavalcade, then bent down as one, rolling up our trousers, taking off our shoes and holding them in our hands as we joined the march into the water. Sara was carried until her pallbearers were chest high in the drink, and those handsome horses gathered around her in an imperious array, pale bellies touching the ocean, their riders hoisting iron Camargue crosses, guardian tridents, and velvet standards of deep burgundy…. I am not Romani nor Catholic, but I have rarely felt more alive than I did that day. Riding a white horse across the sand, necking plum brandy, and running barefoot into the sea in the caravan of gypsies – these are things which make life voluptuous." Best for close-to-home travellers: Go West, by Steve Silk Steve Silk's highly entertaining account of his bicycle trip through England and Wales, Go West, proves that you don't need to travel to the far corners of the planet to have a world-expanding travel experience. Silk – who works for the BBC's Look East – set out to pedal from London to the Welsh coast in eight days. He describes the goal of this quest early in the book: "What exactly is my kind of journey? I guess it's the kind of slow travel that revels in the places in between. Exploring the kind of towns and villages that you bypass by car, but that you won't, don't, or can't ignore on two wheels. And my emerging Law of Cycling Serendipity suggests that it's these locations that provide the unexpected highlights; the supporting actors who somehow steal the show." Silk calls this mode of travel "undertourism", and we all can learn much from it. As he moves slowly, he's able to notice and savour all manner of things he would normally just whoosh by: a transporting evensong at Oxford's Merton College; Witney Blanket Hall, a blanket-making museum-cum-workshop-cum-cafe whose signpost tantalisingly advertises "Woollen Blankets and Throws, Coffee, Pies and Assemblies since 1721"; a 2,500-year-old yew tree in Defynnog; a mossy, mushroomy, wooded valley on the outskirts of Talog that seems to embody the quintessence of Wales; and the particular pleasures of gongoozling – that is, "idly watching the passage of boats from the side of a canal, particularly from a lock or bridge". For me, the salubrious subtext of Silk's transcendent two-wheeled odyssey is the joy of travelling slowly close to home, and the truth that the closer we look, the more we see. If we journey with the proper mindset, there is a wide world of wonders waiting to be discovered even in our figurative backyard. Best for history buffs: Small Earthquakes, by Shafik Meghji In Small Earthquakes journalist and travel writer Shafik Meghji traverses landscapes from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego and Easter Island to South Georgia to reveal the overlooked yet profound – and profoundly enduring – connections between Britain and Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Drawing on more than 15 years of travel and research in the region, Meghji brings to life a vivid collection of places (forgotten ghost towns, rusting whaling stations, isolated railways built by convicts and tea rooms in Welsh-speaking Patagonia) and characters (daring pirates, Victorian missionaries, rogue MPs, polar explorers and Patagonian cowboys). The passion and poignancy of his prose is captured in his description of Orongo, a ceremonial village on the southernmost tip of the island of Rapa Nui. First, Meghji paints a portrait of the site: "Inside are rows of low, oval-shaped houses built from basalt blocks, each with a low entrance barely high enough to crawl through. With a volcanic crater behind, sheer cliffs in front and the seemingly endless Pacific beyond, Orongo feels like it sits on the edge of the world. As I soaked up the view, I realised that beyond the island's shoreline, there was no one within 1,200 miles." Then he describes the village's role as the endpoint for the annual Birdman competition that determined the island's spiritual leader. Finally, threading history to heart, he writes: "Despite Orongo's history, scenery and sheer sense of remoteness, I was most struck by an absence, an empty space in one of the larger buildings that once held Hoa Hakananai'a. One of Rapa Nui's iconic monolithic moai, standing more than eight feet tall and decorated with Tangata Manu symbols – including stylised figures, birds and vulvas – the statue is held at the British Museum. He was the first moaiI saw in the flesh, a sight that tattooed itself on my brain as a child, helping to fire a life-long love of South America before I was old enough to question why the statue was there in the first place. In the Rapanui language, I later learned, Hoa Hakananai'a means 'lost, hidden or stolen friend'." Combining the immediacy of a travel memoir with the depth of a scholarly history lesson, Small Earthquakes illuminates how Britain helped shape these nations through economic ventures, cultural exchange and political intervention, and how those regions in turn have reshaped Britain, from the Falklands conflict to canned Fray Bentos pies. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Times
04-07-2025
- Times
This is officially Europe's best cycle path
Many, many years ago, when I was just starting out along the travel writing path, I secured a berth on MS Juno, which murmurs along Sweden's Gota Canal between Gothenburg and Stockholm. This luxurious period piece has the reputation of being the Orient Express of sweetwater cruising, with a big emphasis on gastronomy, and I remember spending a lot of time at the dining table tucking into the likes of reindeer and Arctic char. I remember, too, being bewitched by the world beyond the portholes. Sweden's pastoral backyard was a storybook landscape of gossamer morning mists, of wildflowered meadows, of little Pippi Longstocking summerhouses, where apple-cheeked blondes sang to their babies while their dungareed menfolk tried to keep a handbrake on spring. At the locks, dusky red-painted wooden cafés served coffee and homemade cinnamon buns, children draped each other in daisy chains and families readied their kayaks for adventure. It was all rather charming and wholesome. At the time, I remember gazing at this unravelling landscape rather wistfully, wishing that I could freeze-frame the boat trip for a day or so and get off, to get to grips with the waterside in a less passive, more hands-on kind of way. Well, fast forward a couple of decades or three and I am back again on the Gota Canal, this time doing exactly that, and with my own apple-cheeked other half. Moreover, it's not just personal wish-fulfilment, because the canal's towpath has recently been declared the European Cycle Route of the Year at Fiets en Wandelbeurs, an annual Dutch cycling and hiking fair. The whole Gota route stitches together several big lakes. We had a plan to cycle over three days from its start at Sjotorp on the eastern edge of Lake Vanern to Karlsborg on the western side of Lake Vattern, roughly midway. We would be covering an average of 20 miles a day on sturdy hybrid bikes provided by our guesthouse for the first two nights, an elegant former vicarage called Prastgarden in the canalside town of Toreboda. • Discover our full guide to Sweden The canal is one of a tradition of nation-crossing waterways, like the Kiel Canal in Germany and the Canal du Midi in France, and when it was completed in 1832 it immediately had strategic significance in getting valuable freight and military hardware from one side of the country to the other without having to pass under anyone else's guns. These days, however, it is entirely given over to recreation, and is a considerable source of national pride, not least because digging out its 120 miles was a huge endeavour, involving 58,000 soldiers and an awful lot of wheelbarrows. The crew included a tough band of Scots brought over by our very own Thomas Telford, creator of the Scotland-crossing Caledonian Canal, whose expertise was engaged by the canal's driving force, the Swedish naval officer Count Baltzar von Platen. All of this can be gleaned from multilingual signposts along the canal's bank, and in historic buildings dotted along its length. • Europe's best active escapes We had our first fika — coffee and a cinnamon bun — in an antique wooden warehouse by the harbourside in Sjotorp, where the canal proper begins on the eastern shore of Lake Vanern, and where the good folk from Prastgarden had deposited us with our bikes. There's a canal museum upstairs, but the downstairs Café Baltzar feels like a museum piece too, sitting under chandeliers at a lace-covered table overlooked by a portrait of the count himself ( Fortified by the count's buns, we set off on the towpath, enveloped by birdsong, and ticking off the ells. When the canal was built, the ell was a common unit of measurement, and not just for cloth. Numbered stones are placed along the canal every 1,000 ells, which equates to about 600 metres — an ideal distance to convince cyclists that they are going 'ell for leather. • The best of adventure travel The canal winds through a mix of woodlands and wheat fields, celebrated at regular intervals by salvos of lupins in blues, purples and pinks. There are freshly painted roll-across bridges and lock systems, usually with a cluster of onlookers gathering to exchange greetings with boats passing through. Here too are the little wooden houses with summerhouses I remembered, although no more men in dungarees: instead robomowers graze slowly across the lawns, looking like fat rabbits, but that's about the only concession to the passing of time. After about 16 miles of canalside cycling we got back to Toreboda, welcomed into the town by a long gallery of paintings along the water's edge, backed by a succession of designer bungalows whose gardens were open to the towpath. When I mentioned to the Prastgarden's co-owner Yvonne Branfelt how unfenced-off everything seemed, she said people didn't need to lock their doors in Toreboda. Apart from when word went round that one particular well-known bad apple was out of prison. Next day we were back on the towpath for a couple of hours before the canal debouched into a smaller intermediary lake, Viken. Here the cycle route veers away into farmland, forest and fields of wheat, tracking the lake's outline from a distance along a network of gravel roads. • The UK's best cycling trails Secreted among the woodlands were holiday cabins, some elaborate, some primitive, but every one a private paradise. One had a little self-serve kiosk selling mostly knitted goods, which answered my unspoken question: what do people do here in the winter? That day was a tougher 40 miles, and my apple-cheeked companion was getting a bit Granny Smith by the time we reached Forsvik, where the canal does a short sprint between lakes Viken and Vattern. Here the drop between the two — and the resulting waterpower — has been instrumental to the success of a long line of industries, starting back in the 1400s with a sawmill and flour mill, and moving on more recently to smithy and iron foundry, all on the same patch of lakeside. They needed a lot of manpower, those industries, and today the Vandrarhem worker's apartments, where we stayed that night, have been transformed into tourist accommodation, in a timewarp of old coal ranges and period furniture. Walking out from here among the ghosts of old factories felt like a walk through Sweden's social history. From Forsvik it was a relatively short ten-mile ride on our final day to Karlsborg, a settlement originally created as Sweden's reserve capital, inland and up the canal, in case coastal Stockholm came under attack. There we were planning a visit to its castle, before setting off back to Gothenburg for our flight home. That short morning's cycle was different again from the previous day, being mainly through a pine forest completely carpeted in bilberries. The low sun shone stroboscopically through the trees, silhouetting deer that stood motionless as we passed, but bolted when we stopped to take a picture. At Karlsborg, it seemed a bit premature to bring the trip to an end with plenty of canal remaining, but it was a natural break, with more ungainly shaped lakes to be circumvented ahead before the waterway proper began again. All in all it was a very wholesome three days, along a carefully curated route, in a fresh climate that was neither too hot nor too cold. My only disappointment was that we didn't meet my old friend Juno somewhere along the way; she was plying her trade two days ahead of us. So I look forward to draping her with daisy chains when we eventually return to the Gota, having saved the eastern half of the cycle route for another Eames was a guest of West Sweden ( and Visit Sweden ( The Prastgarden guesthouse has two nights' half-board from £484pp, including bike hire ( Fly to Gothenburg then take the train to Toreboda and Karlsborg (
