Norway could easily claim the title of the world’s most deceptively big country, so why not take it all in at a leisurely pace with one of the world’s best train journeys?

Norway is famed as one of the world’s most naturally beautiful countries. So incredible is this tome-worn land that many of its wondrous landscapes are able to fly almost completely off the radar. In search of hidden gems, what Finding Earth writer Matthew Walsh encounters tucked away among quiet fjords is truly one of Europe’s greatest natural treasures.

It’s safe to say that being limited to my local patch by the UK lockdown has opened my eyes to the nature around me. It has also only strengthened my love of photographing the natural world as a means of escaping the drab, travel-free days. And so, with camera in hand and the biggest lens I own, I set out to see what could be found.

Poland has marked itself, in recent years, as a relative ‘rising star’ on the European city-break scene, and who can argue when you can boast the likes of Krakow, Gdansk and Warsaw in your repertoire? Beautiful as they may be, cities aren’t everything here, and beyond medieval walls, across rivers and heading into the wilds of Poland, the country’s hidden jewels shine.

The Lake District National Park sits almost exactly in the centre of the British Isles. It's an unpredictable place so I set out there to see exactly what I could find and what makes the Lake District so wild!

At times it can be easy to forget just how wild Britain, England especially, can be. You never seem to be too far from a village, town, city (and pub), there are no wolves, bears, bison, musk oxen like the rest of the northern European continent. Britain, however, makes up for this in sheer spectacle.

With a global pandemic still eating up ninety percent of column inches and overseas travel limited, doorstep adventures have likely never been so prevalent since before the invention of the package holiday. I admit, I have always fallen for the attraction of foreign shores and regularly neglected my little corner of northern England. As a result, I decided to take a trip a little closer to home.