24 favourite travel finds of 2024 - from turtles in Turkey to a Highland pub crawl
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Guardian travel writers share their discoveries of the year, taking in food, art, history and wildlife. Travelling down Turkey’s Turquoise Coast, my wife and I stumbled on İztuzu beach by accident. Almost three miles of sand stretches in a slender spit between a river delta and the sea, ringed by high mountains.
![[Football on the beach in Marseille]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b2c58de321ca50677b69a3cf9455947ff76db7c4/0_0_5666_3777/master/5666.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
In 1987 construction had started on a giant hotel complex. But İztuzu – now known as Turtle Beach – is one of the Mediterranean’s most important breeding grounds for loggerhead turtles. An international campaign was launched, and the development plans were shelved. Now it is strictly protected. The beach was busy with sunbathers, but lying down is forbidden in the broad swathe of sand from which hatchlings emerge.
![[Fisherman’s soup.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/41d26cea61b7efb2fbc1170a142d204dc2b93784/0_1031_1638_982/master/1638.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
We visited the rescue centre that rehabilitates victims of boat collisions and fishing net entanglements, where loggerheads float in tanks of salt water. The principle of coexistence, which many see as at the heart of modern Turkishness, extends to marine life too. And the water felt lovely.
![[Furness Abbey in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ee6ac0ebaf3e1c96731580ba4860d8d1a80e4399/0_0_3713_4245/master/3713.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Nick Hunt. Travelling to north Lincolnshire this year, I liked Cleethorpes more than I expected, and I liked Humberston Fitties very much indeed. Snuggled behind sand dunes, the Fitties is one of Britain’s surviving plotlands – the informal, self-built chalet camps that emerged in the late 19th-century.
![[A chapel amid fields and vineyards in Markgräflerland, south-west Germany]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8ba4cd049a7702cd6880dbc13c7d2afaba6ced02/0_213_6318_3791/master/6318.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The Fitties is now a designated conservation area. It’s not as makeshift as it once was but, well, there’s something about it, a working man’s Cape Cod with an outsider-ish air. Local-born Julie Connell remembers holidaying here in the 1970s: “My parents owned a chalet. In those days the lighting was by oil lamps. I can still remember the smell.”.
![[Jane Dunford biking in Andalucia]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ab861222aa88cffce8b051ae91c77c74a04d829a/0_183_1600_960/master/1600.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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