With cooler air, fewer crowds and lower prices, the mountains make a great alternative to the coast
All Italians race to la spiaggia in summer, leaving the hinterland marvellously empty. Tuscany gets a lot of love, but travel one region over to Umbria and Monti Sibillini national park bewitches with views of the Apennines and eyrie-like, honey-coloured hill towns such as Castelluccio, soaring above a plateau of brightly coloured poppies, cornflowers and daisies. It’s a gorgeous spot for hiking, biking and tracking down a trattoria to dig into specialities such as wild boar with locally grown lentils. You’ll find some of Italy’s finest salami in butcher shops in Norcia, as well as black truffles on the menus of restaurants such as the Michelin-starred Vespasia, which is in a 16th-century palazzo. Alternatively, you could join a tartufaio and their dog to head into the woods on a truffle-hunting tour.
How to do it Organic farm Agriturismo Casale nel Parco dei Monti Sibillini (doubles from £84 B&B) has truffles and wild herbs in its grounds, and a terrific restaurant serving up local and homegrown produce.
If you take rugged Highland scenery and turn the volume up, you get the Cairngorms national park, a 1,748 square mile expanse of lochs, glens, forests and Munros. Providing the weather behaves, you’ll be itching to get outdoors, whether climbing 1,245-metre (4,085ft) Cairn Gorm or 1,309-metre Ben Macdui, spotting capercaillie, red squirrels and ospreys in the Caledonian pine forest of Rothiemurchus Estate, or meeting the region’s free-roaming reindeer on a hill trip. There are wild swimming spots such as remote Loch Coire an Lochain, and visitors can go biking on Cairngorm Mountain’s slopes. By night, there’s fantastic stargazing in the Cairngorms Dark Sky Park around Tomintoul and Glenlivet.
