France

France is the most-visited country on earth, which makes it easy to forget how many distinct countries it actually contains. Paris is the obvious gravitational centre — and the grandes dames of the Place de la Concorde and the rue de Rivoli still set the standard for what a city hotel can be — but the France a returning traveller plans around is the regional one.

The south does the postcard work: Provence's lavender and hill villages, the Riviera's headlands, the calanques between Marseille and Cassis. Inland are the vineyards that need no introduction — Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Champagne cellars — and the Loire's procession of châteaux. The Alps give the country its mountains, Brittany and Normandy their working Atlantic coast, and Corsica a Mediterranean island that has kept its own counsel.

The food argument is, of course, inescapable, and France's plant-forward kitchens have grown from afterthought to genuine destination — Paris in particular now reads very differently to a traveller who eats this way than it did a decade ago.

May, June, September and October are the country at its best: warm enough for the south, mild enough for the cities, and clear of the August stretch when much of France is, sensibly, on holiday itself.