Few things are as peaceful as falling asleep listening to the wind rustling through the trees or the pattering of raindrops on canvas. A camping trip is a great way to reconnect with nature – without breaking the bank. Here are some of the most gorgeous campsites in Europe.

Šenkova Domačija Farm, Slovenia

This “scenic” campsite is nestled within the Kamnik-Savinja Alps near the border of Austria, said The Guardian. Dating back to 1517, the medieval farmstead is enveloped by “pastures and peaks”, and has just 25 pitches (including 10 for tents) in a tranquil meadow shaded by ash trees. Campers can toast marshmallows around the communal campfires and grab a bite to eat at the on-site restaurant or shop. Days are easy to fill, exploring the network of surrounding trails by foot or taking one of the farm’s resident horses for a longer trek into the mountains.
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Dyrdal Gard, Nærøyfjord, Norway

“You won’t find a more spectacular place to camp than this”, said National Geographic. Listed as a Unesco world heritage site, Nærøyfjord (pictured above), is Norway’s narrowest fjord, flanked by “towering cliffs” and cascading waterfalls. Wild camping on the shores is permitted but the “sheer-sided topography” means it can be tricky finding a pitch, so it’s worth booking a “proper campsite” like Dyrdal Gard for when you arrive, before venturing further afield.
naeroyfjordencamping.no

Camping Arolla, Switzerland

At 1,950 metres above sea level in the heart of the Swiss Alps, Camping Arolla is Europe’s highest campsite. As you would expect, the views are “sensational”, said The Guardian. Guests can choose between camping or glamping, and there’s a shop selling organic produce along with a “help-yourself herb garden”. Hiking is the “name of the game” here, with an array of routes to choose from, including shorter journeys to alpine huts for lunch and demanding trails exploring the Matterhorn.
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Le Marais Sauvage, France

Sunny days at Le Marais Sauvage can be filled with “boating, bird watching and butterfly spotting”, said The Independent. Situated in southern Vendée, by a stream in the tranquil Marais Poitevin nature reserve, the family-friendly campsite welcomes tents, caravans and motorhomes. Nearby you’ll find the charming village of Le Mazeau where you can “pick up fresh croissants and baguettes”.
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Quinta Viana, Portugal

Located in a river valley “shaded by eucalyptus forest”, this family-owned campsite, not far from Porto, is perfect for those seeking a peaceful break, said The Independent. With only nine bookings at any one time, you won’t have to worry about crowds. Unwind in the “flower-filled gardens”, go for a dip in the saltwater pool or take a trip to the coast to swim in the sea and “hike through the sand dunes”. Bliss.
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Forest Days Glamping, Spain

It’s easy to forget “buzzy” Barcelona is just an hour away from this remote retreat in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees, said The Telegraph. Forest Days is home to just four “rustic but comfy” bell tents with super-king comfy mattresses and eclectic handmade furnishings. There is plenty to keep you entertained nearby, from wild swimming in the Aigua d’Ora river to hiking through the shady forest trails.
forestdaysglamping.com

“We have been given the greatest gift we could ever have asked for.”

So said Grace Davidson, the first woman in the UK to give birth after undergoing a womb transplant. The 36-year-old was born without a uterus, but received her sister’s in 2023: the UK’s first successful womb transplant from a living donor.

On 27 February, Amy Isabel was born by caesarean section at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London, it was revealed today. The baby was named after Grace’s sister Amy, the organ donor, and Isabel Quiroga, the surgeon who “helped perfect” the technique, said The Guardian. Surgeons called the breakthrough “astonishing”.

Why are womb transplants necessary?

About 1 in 5,000 women in the UK are born without a viable womb. Many more have to have them removed, due to cancer or treatment for endometriosis. Overall, according to the BBC’s Science Focus, about 1 in 500 women globally – and 15,000 in the UK – are affected with what’s known as absolute uterine factor infertility.

But most of those women will have functioning ovaries and the ability to keep producing healthy eggs. Baby Amy “highlights the remarkable potential of womb transplantation” to combat this type of infertility, said The Independent.

Where else have they been performed?

The procedure was first performed in 2000, in Saudi Arabia. But the organ, implanted into a 26-year-old, survived for only 99 days: the operation was deemed “inappropriate and unwise with a predictable outcome”, said the charity Womb Transplant UK – a “failure”. However, “much was learned”.

In 2011, Turkish surgeons managed to transplant a womb from a deceased donor into a 21-year-old, who finally gave birth in 2020. And in 2012, the first successful womb transplants from living donors were carried out in Sweden, at the University of Gothenburg, said the BBC. Two years later, the result was the first successful birth: baby Vincent. That success “paved the way for teams worldwide”, said Womb Transplant UK.

In 2015, doctors were given the go-ahead to carry out the first womb transplants in the UK, as part of a trial funded by Womb Transplant UK. Overall, about 100 transplants have been carried out in more than 12 countries, including the US, China, France, Germany, India and Turkey. About 50 healthy babies have been born as a result.

What is Grace’s story?

Grace, a dietician from Scotland, was born with the rare condition Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. Her womb was missing, but she still had healthy ovaries. One of her sisters, Amy Purdie, already had two children and didn’t want any more. The 42-year-old proved a suitable donor. The operation was scheduled to take place in 2019, but it “fell through” and “looked in doubt” due to the pandemic, said the BBC.

But in February 2023, a team of about 30 medics were able to perform the UK’s first womb transplant: two operations together taking almost 18 hours at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. “It was incredibly difficult to let her do that for me,” said Grace. “It’s a huge act of sisterly love.”

Several months later, Grace’s embryo was transferred into the womb via IVF, and this year she and her husband Angus were handed their first child.

Lead surgeon Richard Smith, who founded Womb Transplant UK and developed the procedure, “shed tears at the birth”, said The Independent. “I feel great joy actually, unbelievable – 25 years down the line from starting this research, we finally have a baby.”

Are there potential ethical implications?

This is a “highly invasive procedure”, said medical law and ethics expert Mary Neal on The Conversation. Both the donation and the transplant are “serious operations” and involve “significant recovery time”.

The donors, who undergo a hysterectomy, can suffer from depression as a result, while the recipient must take immunosuppressant drugs every day to stop the body rejecting the organ. Once the recipient has finished “using” the womb, she has surgery again to remove it so she can stop taking the drugs, which can increase the risks of developing some cancers. Both patients must undergo “extensive counselling”, but that “cannot remove risk”.

If womb transplants become more common, women might also feel “under subtle pressure” to donate to family members, or even “put this pressure on themselves”. One day, there may be calls to provide the operation on the NHS – including, eventually, for trans women. This will “undoubtedly be controversial”.

“Globalisation is a force of nature, not a policy,” said Tony Blair in 2019, The Telegraph reported. “It is a fact.”

Now, with Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs upending the near century-long process of integrating the global economy, the current prime minister has declared that era effectively over.

“First it was defence and national security. Now it is the global economy and trade,” said Keir Starmer in The Telegraph. “Old assumptions can no longer be taken for granted. The world as we knew it has gone.”

What did the commentators say?

Starmer’s message was “received by some with bewilderment, treated as a knee-jerk reaction to Donald Trump abroad and Nigel Farage at home”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. But the “most striking thing – in a government not renowned for its consistency – was that we’d heard this before”.

His chancellor, Rachel Reeves, declared on a visit to Washington almost two years ago that “globalisation, as we once knew it, is dead”.

“It’s a reminder that the death of globalisation (or at least a form of it) has been a process rather than an event,” said Eaton.

The truth is that in his “assault on globalisation, Trump has been pushing on a door that was already ajar”, said the Financial Times. The loss of jobs to less developed countries and the global financial crisis had “damaged public confidence in postwar economic orthodoxy” both in the US and in other Western nations.

With the rise of China, Trump has successfully “fused these resentments about trade with his own psychology. The globalisation era was defined by the idea of win-win – that both sides can benefit from compromise.” For Trump, there can only be one winner.

“When regimes end, they end in phases,” said Wolfgang Munchau on UnHerd. Communism collapsed over a decade, starting with the Solidarity strike at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 and ending with the 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Trump’s first term was Gdansk, the canary in the coal mine.” Last week’s “Liberation Day” was “globalisation’s Gorbachev moment”.

What next?

The US-led post-war world order may be “finally starting to crumble”, said Dr Amitav Acharya in The New York Times, but “chaos will not inevitably follow”.

“That fear is partly based on two errors”: that the period since the end of the Second World War has “not been as good for everyone on the planet” as it has been generally for citizens of the West, and that “the very precepts of order are not Western inventions”.

And that is a “reason for optimism. To understand that the American order is not the only possible system – that, for many countries, it is not even a particularly good or fair one – is to allow oneself to hope that its end could augur a more inclusive world.”

This is essence is what Starmer is aiming for as well. “The world has changed, globalisation is over and we are now in a new era”, a Downing Street official told The Sunday Times. “We’ve got to demonstrate that our approach, a more active Labour government, a more reformist government, can provide the answers for people in every part of this country.”

That might not mean “the end of globalisation entirely”, but Starmer is hoping “a more balanced version can emerge”, said Eaton.

Environmentalists have criticised Slovakia’s plans to cull around a quarter of the country’s brown bears following the latest in a string of fatal attacks. The remains of a 59-year-old man were found in the town of Detva in central Slovakia, where he had gone missing while walking in the woods. Slovak authorities said he had suffered “devastating” head injuries and his wounds were “consistent” with a bear attack, reported the BBC. Local groups also said there was evidence of a bear’s den nearby.

There are an estimated 20,000 brown bears now living in Europe following successful rewilding measures, around 1,300 of them in Slovakia’s forests, where experts say the population remains “more or less stable”. Approving the cull, Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba said bear attacks had been on the rise, reaching 1,900 last year, and that 800 was a “sufficient number” for the country. Prime Minister Robert Fico also defended the decision, saying Slovakia couldn’t become a country “where humans will become food for bears”.

‘Hysterical reaction’

Recent victims of bear attacks include a 31-year-old woman who died after falling into a ravine while being chased by a bear, as well as five people who were hurt when a bear ran through the town of Liptovsky Mikolas, “bounding past cars,” said the BBC. Officials later claimed to have hunted down and killed the animal, although conservationists claimed they had shot a different bear.

Following the announcement, conservationists from WWF told Central Europe news network TVP World that a cull was a “hysterical reaction” and measures to reduce the number of attacks would be more appropriate. The group also said it had been “scientifically proven” that shooting the animals did not reduce the number of “bear-human encounters”.

A cull could violate Slovakia’s international obligations, too, added Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW). Under EU directives, only “problem bears” that damage property or attack people can be culled and even then, there has to be “no other solution”. Slovakian journalists have claimed there was “cause to believe” that hunters in 2024 may have killed bears that had not attacked people.

Opposition party, the Christian Democrats, criticised the plans as “excessive”, added TVP World, and called for local solutions focussed on preventing attacks in the first place.

‘Political points’

Slovakia’s bear population has become a “political issue”, said the BBC. Indeed, said Politico, the attacks were a “vote-winner” for Taraba and his Slovak National Party in the 2023 elections, who blamed them on EU regulations. After the death of the woman in the ravine, Taraba claimed to know “immediately” who was to blame, said the site: “the bloodless bureaucrats in Brussels”. EU officials had shown they were “absolutely not interested in the lives of our people and the lives of our children” by refusing to end the bears’ protected status, Taraba wrote on Facebook.

Since coming to power, Taraba has carried out an “extraordinary purge” of Slovakia’s environmental officials, “replacing experts with hunters, scientists with forestry executives, and bureaucrats with party hacks”. Speaking to the site, the politician said the “political elite” did not understand the fears of people living next to bears.

Taraba is not alone in attacking EU environmental regulations. Across the continent, “far-right parties” have added green issues to their “traditional tub-thumping grievances”, such as immigration.