Canary Islands

The Canaries get unfairly dismissed as a package holiday cliché — they're more interesting than that. Each island has a different vibe: Tenerife and Gran Canaria for variety, Lanzarote for volcanic art-installation landscapes, La Palma and El Hierro for hiking and quiet, Fuerteventura for surf and dunes. Four hours from most of Europe and warm in January, they're the continent's easiest winter escape.

The trick is picking one island and renting a car the day you land. On Tenerife that means driving from the laurel forests of Anaga to the lunar caldera around Mt Teide in under two hours; on Lanzarote, touring César Manrique's volcanic architecture between black-sand coves. Days are simple — a hike or a surf, a long menú del día lunch, papas arrugadas and cheap local wine by evening. Ferries and short flights make a two-island trip easy in a week.

Be honest about what you're booking. The southern resort strips — Playa de las Américas, the worst of Maspalomas — are concrete package-holiday land, and if you stay there without a car, that's all you'll see. The trade winds blow hard, especially on Fuerteventura, and many beaches are black volcanic sand, not Caribbean white. The food is solid rather than exciting. But nowhere else in Europe is reliably warm in January, and the hiking is seriously underrated.