Where to Travel in Autumn: 5 Beautiful European Escapes

The Cotswolds take their name from the rolling “wolds,” or hills, once dotted with sheep enclosures, and it was the medieval wool trade that paid for the honey-coloured stone villages the region is famous for today. The whole area is officially protected as a National Landscape.

We based our trip around Castle Combe, which is regularly voted the prettiest village in England (it first won the title back in 1962) and it’s easy to see why: no new houses have gone up in the centre since the 1600s, and the honey-stone cottages along the By Brook have barely changed since the wool trade paid for them. It’s also been a favourite film location for years, with Stardust, War Horse and the original Doctor Dolittle all shot here.

We loved it. It’s very small, but very quaint, the kind of place that makes you slow right down.

If you want to build a full day around it, Bibury (famous for the Arlington Row weavers’ cottages) and Lacock, a National Trust village just down the road, both pair naturally with Castle Combe as stops along the way.

We covered a good spread of Bavaria on this trip: Munich, Nurnberg and the fairytale double-act of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles. Neuschwanstein was built in the 19th century by King Ludwig II and is best known as the castle that inspired Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle: Walt Disney toured Bavaria in person in 1935 and reportedly carried the castle’s silhouette back to his studio with him. It was never actually used as a Disney filming location itself, just the inspiration for the design, though it did make a real film cameo as the villain’s castle exterior in the non-Disney classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Nurnberg (Nuremberg) is a fair bit older and quieter than Munich: its Imperial Castle dates back to 1050, the 5km of medieval city walls still encircle the old town, and it’s the birthplace of Lebkuchen gingerbread, which has been made there since the 1200s.

Neuschwanstein and the forest surrounding it ended up being the highlight of my whole trip, there’s something about the castle appearing between the trees that photos never quite capture. The lake beside it, Schwansee, was just as lovely: picturesque, calm, and exactly the kind of spot you want to sit and take in for a while. I’d recommend both wholeheartedly.

Munich itself I really liked, especially since we happened to be there during a festival, which meant German markets wherever we turned: music, food and beer on every corner. Beyond that we spent time in the parks, wandered the Munich Residence, and stopped by the BMW Museum. Nurnberg won me over just as much, though in a different way: it’s full of history (the wars, in particular, are impossible to ignore there) and has so much character, with genuinely pretty houses lining the streets. We caught a festival there too, rides, food, beer and music all over again, so it ended up feeling like a real highlight of the trip rather than just a stopover.

The main event here was driving the Transfagarasan, the 90km mountain road that Top Gear once called the best driving road in the world. It was built in the early 1970s under Ceausescu as a military route across the Fagaras mountains, climbing to over 2,000 metres at its highest point near Balea Lake, and it’s genuinely one of the most dramatic drives in Europe, hairpin bends, tunnels and all.

We drove from Curtea de Arges and spent the night in a small cabin in the woods in Avrig.

We saw the bears from the car, and they were quite cute, though it’s exactly that kind of encounter the caution above is about: keep your distance and never feed them.

We also visited Brambura Park and its Upside Down House in Avrig, right at the foot of the Fagaras mountains near the northern end of the Transfagarasan. It was a cute house, but we enjoyed the grounds more, there are some animals too and it’s very picturesque. It’s great for kids as well.

England’s largest national park takes its name from its sixteen major lakes, carved out by glaciers during the last Ice Age, and it’s been drawing visitors since the Romantic poets, Wordsworth chief among them, made it fashionable in the early 1800s.

We were there for a day, on a day trip from Manchester. The weather was really nice and sunny, and we spent our time exploring the woods and watching the sheep graze while we walked around Windermere.

Salzburg’s old town grew rich on salt mining (the city’s name literally means “salt fortress”) and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, best known as Mozart’s birthplace and as the filming location for The Sound of Music.

We kept things simple here: walked along the river and spent time in Volksgarten, the park that runs along the Salzach on the Old Town side. We also had coffee served in an ice cream cone at Nur Coffee, a tiny hole-in-the-wall spot in the Old Town that’s genuinely famous for exactly that.