Going anywhere nice this summer? Anna Britten looks at this year’s biggest travel trends.

So how’s that whole ‘staycation’ thing been working out these past two summers? The Boden catalogue idyll promised by the colour supplements, or just another wash-out week of DIY, daytime TV and traffic jams? Even if the recession hasn’t molested your summer plans so far, chances are the volcanic ash did. In short: few of us have enjoyed the holiday of a lifetime in recent memory. Then, just to push our vitamin D deficiency and creaking joints to the limit, we had the coldest winter for 30 years. The urge to escape – cheaply – is biting, and mass departure from England’s chilly shores is predicted. So where’s the savvy vacationer going? And should you be joining them?

Non-Eurozone destinations

The pound being so puny, more than one round of cervezas or bières could trigger severe overdraft angst in the averagely-waged voyager. That souvenir friendship bracelet you might once have spent your remaining coinage on now looms as expensive as Vuitton (and Christine Lagarde thinks she’s got problems!). Quite simply, you’ll get more bang for your buck if you steer clear of the Eurozone. Short-haul destinations with their own currency have risen in popularity during the recession, and dominate the list of favourite hotspots for 2011. Says Bristol-based independent travel adviser Steve Jones: “For the last year Turkey and Eqypt have been the most popular non-Euro places and what goes alongside that is people going for all-inclusives. They really do work out cheaper.” Find Steve’s website at www.travelcounsellors.co.uk/steve.jones

Djerba

Hitherto the best-kept holiday secret of the Aussies, Kiwis, Czechs and hardcore ‘Star Wars’ geeks (the Mos Eisley scenes were filmed here), Djerba is an island off the north coast of Tunisia. Warm climate, cheap flights and just three hours from the UK, the island is back in a big way, and both Thomson and Thomas Cook are pushing it hard this summer. Says Steve: “Djerba was quite popular in the mid-90s, then because of the price it went off the map for a few years, but now there are cheap flights and the tourist boards are becoming more active again. North African countries are seeing how important it is to educate the travel industry and the general public.”

Cruises

Forget the idea of old people in elasticated leisure wear fighting to get an invite to the captain’s table. Cruises are for everyone now, and The Passenger Shipping Association (PSA) expects an 8% increase in the number of Britons taking a cruise in 2011 – building up to a total of 1.77m. “Cruises have been one of the fastest growing sectors for a few years now,” confirms Steve. “There are a lot of new ships from the main lines, and more and more of them are based in Southampton so there’s no flying involved. I would actually book a cruise myself. They are like floating resorts now – rock climbing, surfing, proper ice rinks, tennis courts, choice of restaurants. Couples can enjoy weddings on board, honeymoon offers…” But it’s families who are being targeted heaviest. The Disney Dream, for example, boasts the first rollercoaster at sea. Royal Caribbean, meanwhile, has teamed up with DreamWorks to bring Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda to several of its ships. “Companies are doing all they can to attract the families. It’s all down to value for money – most things are included in a cruise. You don’t need to see your kids for two weeks if you don’t want to – the kids’ clubs are amazing.”

Valencia and Krakow

Boom cities for mini breaks, each about two-and-a-half-hour flight from Bristol. Valencia is currently hotter than the inside of Sebastian Vettel’s helmet. The third largest city in Spain, it sits halfway down the east coast and offers white sandy beaches, extraordinary old and new architecture, fine food (it invented paella), nightlife and shopping, and Ryanair flies to it three times a week. UNESCO World Heritage Site and former European Capital of Culture, Krakow boasts more history than you can shake a kabanos sausage at. EasyJet flies there five times a week. Says Steve: “A lot of city breaks these days are dictated by where the low-cost carriers go. They’ve made the short break a lot more popular. Valencia has come to the forefront because of its Grand Prix. Krakow is an example of a city you would never go to if it didn’t have cheap flights. I’ve been myself!”

The unhotel

Basically, the house-swap/couch-surf model cannily rebranded for the Ocado generation. Largely the doing of London-based company One Fine Stay (www.onefinestay.com), who don’t let holiday houses so much as “curate” “decadent, elegant, quirky and surprising” pads replete with White Company toiletries and fluffy towels, and let you stay in them when their owners are out of town, all with the ease of booking a hotel room. Currently, your choices begin and end in the most salubrious corners of London, but plans are afoot to branch out into other cities. (Technically, of course, the term could also be applied to your nan’s caravan in Dorset. So go ahead.)

Slow travel

You’ve heard of slow food, yeah? Well, slow travel is about savouring the journey as much as the final destination. Something you can’t do in a like totally mojo-sapping airport, hence the movement’s focus on trains, boats and chucking away the guidebook and its exhortations to neurotic busyness. Think the late, great Patrick Leigh Fermor strolling across Europe, or Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Travels With My Donkey’. Resist the tourist board hype at all costs – there are no “must-sees” in slow travel. Instead sit in a café, learn a few phrases of the language, discover a country or city’s essence just by staying put and soaking it up. Dawdle. It’s a state of mind. Although our Steve puts it more bluntly: “People are fed up with airports. We’re seeing more tour operators offering guided train tours. There’s not an awful lot of difference in terms of timing – if you remember you’ve got to be in a airport two hours or more before the time of flight, then there’s collecting luggage and transfers. Sometimes there’s not much difference. London to Paris is a typical example.”

Learning holidays

Picking up new skills on holiday is nothing new – think skiing, diving, even those age-old watercolour holidays in Tuscany for wealthy, mauve-favouring widows. But these days, self-improvement is a travel industry boom area – we in the wealthy western world are all about self-improvement. Why learn to climb in St Werburghs when you can do it Mallorca, or horse-ride in Clevedon when you can do it on a South African nature reserve? To put it cynically – it’s a great way to justify self-indulgence in hard times. We pick a few close-to-home options below…

Green holidays

Last October saw Europe’s first eco-tourism conference held in Estonia – hot topics included zero-carbon hotels and ‘voluntourism’ (where you go and save turtles, or teach street kids between sunbathing and reading shifts). We asked Julie Middleton of eco-tourism charity The Travel Foundation (www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk), are green holidays really going mainstream? “I hope so. We’re beginning to see a lot of travel operators embedding green policies into their businesses. One of the ways is through [ABTA’s] Travelife website (www.travelife.eu) – tour operators can sign up to do a number of things to become more sustainable. It’s great for their bottom line and they’re saving money: going green is for good for the purse.

“There are some tour operators whose whole ethos is green holidays. Tribes (www.tribes.co.uk) have been around for quite a while and they make sure their holidays are benefitting people, wildlife and environments locally. Thomson and First Choice have their own brand called Holidays Forever and have made certain commitments and set certain goals for sustainability. Virgin Holidays have their own brand now as well, which is called Human Nature.

“At The Travel Foundation, our main message is to say a green holiday is not necessarily about staying in a yurt and eating yoghurt. We can be green on holiday in the same way we are at home: take packaging off before we travel because a lot of countries don’t have the recycling and refuse system we do; conserve the water; eat at local restaurants…” (See the full list of tips at www.makeholidaysgreener.org.uk)

Elbow Greece?

So do we strike this old fave off the list for a year, given all that buzz-killing economic chaos and rioting? Athens natives say you only need to avoid the area around Parliament. Elsewhere there’s more chance of being mauled by a donkey than finding yourself in a cloud of tear gas. Travel adviser Steve Jones agrees: “It’s still safe to go to Greece. I had someone come back from a Greek island recently and they said they wouldn’t have known anything was going on if they hadn’t seen it on TV. It’s a country that needs the tourists there.” So is it going to be the bargain holiday of the decade, with moussaka and retsina being practically given away? Like in the olden days? Steve: “No. Prices aren’t plummeting. I’d say it’s reasonable, I wouldn’t say cheap.” In short: business as usual.

Skilling time

Six self-improvement holidays not a million miles from home.

Creative writing

The Arvon Foundation is the daddy of all writing courses. Founded in the 60s by two mates of Ted Hughes, it offers fledgling scribes and established wordsmiths alike four-and-a-half-day residential writing courses in magical settings: you will find yourself living, working and eating in a historic writing house in an inspirational countryside setting, cut off from the distractions of your daily life under the leadership of published writers (who have included AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Jim Crace, Jez Butterworth, Maggie Gee, Mavis Cheek and Simon Armitage) who live and work with you for the residential period. Furthermore, you’ll cook and eat together for the duration, making firm friendships. Arvon’s centres at The Hurst in Shropshire and Totleigh Barton in Devon are handiest for Venue readers and this summer offer courses in theatre, writing for TV, food writing, fiction, travel, poetry and even writing for video games (insert own ‘take your prose to the next level’ gag here). Ffi: www.arvonfoundation.org

Photography

Snappers of all abilities and experience can learn basic photography (and PhotoShop) techniques on Fotocourses’ two- and three-day residential photography courses in beautiful Lulworth Cove in Dorset. Your tutor is leading landscape photographer Gary Fooks – as a native, his vast knowledge of the area combined with his photographic experience means that you will visit stunning locations at the best times to combine the local conditions with the light. There’s no more than six in each group and very little classroom-based learning – most of the time you’ll be in the great outdoors, capturing the spectacular coastline and countryside as well as the Saxon town of Wareham, the ruined Corfe Castle and Durdle Door beach. All you need is a digital camera or 35mm SLR, though a laptop is handy if you have one. “Although this is a photographic course the emphasis is very much on you enjoying yourself and treating it like a holiday, learning at your own pace,” they say. The next courses are in September. Ffi: www.fotocourses.co.uk

Diving

Rapture. Weightlessness. Freedom. The sight of spider crabs nibbling on moon jellyfish. Coming face to face with a six-foot barracuda. Divers have good reason to rave about life underwater. Of course, you can learn to dive – as in don a mask and submerge yourself in H20 – in a leisure centre in Bristol. But if you want to really dive may we suggest the little Maltese island of Gozo, which is not only one of the best diving spots in Europe, it’s also three cheap hours from Bristol on Ryanair. Qualified and experienced diving team Scuba Kings Gozo (who even have their own recompression chamber) will pick you up a the airport and take you to their seafront dive centre to explore world-famous caves, caverns and shipwrecks under the warm, azure Med. The (very reasonable) package rates include eight guided dives, seven nights accommodation with a sea view and airport transfers – for a few quid more, beginners can undertake a PADI Open Water Course on a Learning To Dive holiday. “Learning to dive is a lot of fun especially when it's not at a cold murky lake or quarry!” they enthuse from behind large glasses of chilled white, bowls of olives and sunglasses. Ffi: www.divemalta-gozo.com

Survival skills

How would you cope in a post-apocalyptic world (or even just somewhere your GPS didn’t work)? Would you surrender hopelessly to the elements, or make a fire, a den, a sling-shot and a tasty seaweed stew, all whilst appreciating the beauty of nature? Dartmoor-based company Wildwise offers courses that go beyond the usual bushcraft skills to explore how nature can be a source of artistic and spiritual inspiration. Residential courses this August include Family Camp (Mon 8-Sat 13 Aug), where you’ll watch wildlife, detect bats and hunt bugs, often under cover of darkness, make wild fires and gather wild food, learn to scavenge, make wooden things, listen to stories and music around the campfire and make dens, all in the company of other families. Next up: The Dangerous Weekend For Boys (for dads/sons or uncles/nephews, Sat 27-Mon 29 Aug), A More Dangerous Weekend For Boys (Fri 16-Sun 18 Sept) and Hunting Party (for teenage boys, Fri 23-Sun 25 Sept), both of which include the making of primitive weaponry. Participants will camp on Dartmoor and eat breakfast and an evening meal around the campfire. Ffi: http://wildwise.co.uk

Craft

If the media is to be believed, crafting, thrifting, upcycling etc is the new pilates. Handmade is, basically, hip as hell. In line with this, Bedruthan Steps Hotel in Cornwall is offering craft-crazy weekenders two-night breaks learning how to make adorable and individual things to take home and wait to be praised for. Local artist Poppy Treffry invites you to try your hand at pattern cutting and free hand machine embroidery – described by upcycling poster matron Kirsty Allsop as “the crack cocaine of craft” – from Fri 18-Sun 20 Nov. You can basket-weave from Fri 31 Sept-Sun 2 Oct (sweetly, you’ll be given the makings of a Cornish picnic to put in the basket and take exploring the Cornish coastline on the Sunday). Erica Knight, the inspiring author of ‘Simple Knitting’, will share her knowledge of woolcraft from Fri 11-Sun 13 Nov. All this and a gorgeous family-run hotel and spa in a stunning location overlooking the Atlantic. Some meals are included. We accept no responsibility for any spur-of-the-moment hairbraiding that may occur on the beach, nor the repercussions of you jacking in the day job on your return. Ffi: http://bedruthan.com/breaks

French

Any linguist will tell you total immersion is the quickest, and best, method of learning a language. Two weeks of slightly panicked, sweaty-palmed, in-at-the-deep-end “Oui, mais… Non, mais…” will do you as much good as a year of weekly classes back home. C’est un fact. Combine French learning with a Loire valley holiday at Coeur de France, a French language school for adults and families of all abilities. Your base is the 16th-century La Thaumassière château in Sancerre which has classrooms on the ground floor, deluxe (trans: deluxe!) apartments for student rental on the upper floors, and a stone head salvaged from the Bastille storming of 1789 set into the wall. Between classes you can wine taste or just meander through the winding medieval streets of the hilltop town practising your new skills. Classes can be given in groups or privately and for anything from one week to eight weeks. Ffi: www.coeurdefrance.com