Just one simple change to extend your summer and have a positive economic impact on the places you explore.

Our Autumnal slow travel holidays are peppered with seasonal harvest-related stop offs. The beaches are quieter, the leaves are on the turn and cosy pubs are lighting fires. In the north, midnight light shows are beckoning.

Take the train to join the grape harvest in the Alsace in France. For late summer sun, we recommend the olive groves in Tuscany or sea swimming in Sicily. Here are some of our favourite slow trips for Autumn, well worth leaving the house for.

As the nights turn darker and longer in Scotland the ghosts and ghouls come out to play. The shadows stretch out and the tales turn taller in the season of Samhain and Halloween. Scotland, after all, is the country of Jekyll and Hyde, of real-life Bodysnatchers; a shadowy land where past and present constantly intertwine – no wonder Diana Gabaldon chose Scotland as the setting for her time-travelling historical fantasy romance, Outlander. Autumn is a spooky time of year all right; otherworldly too as the dark skies bewitch you into looking beyond our world in search of others in the heavens. In this land of wandering souls and lingering shadows, you’ll still also find peace and solitude away from the summer crowds.

Scotland is a land of epic landscapes, soul-stirring views and camera teasing wildscapes. And in autumn it really excels as the leaves turn and the heather blooms. The deer descend from the mountains too, the mountain hares consider a change of coat to a white winter hue, the salmon are leaping and the red squirrels get serious about stocking up for winter.