Take me there: Rota Vicentina, Portugal
With its vast, empty beaches washed by Atlantic breakers, sun-bleached villages and forests of cork and eucalyptus, the Alentejo offers a glimpse of what the Algarve looked like before mass tourism. A new 340km walking route, the Rota Vicentina (rotavicentina.com/en), is opening up this overlooked corner of south-west Portugal. Hotel packages from tour operator Sunvil (sunvil.co.uk) will allow walkers to take on bite-sized chunks of the route with taxi transfers to return them to their hotel. A week's B&B at the Herdade do Touril, a manor house with pool in the Costa Vicentina National Park, costs from £522pp including flights and car hire.
It's a good time to… get kids into the kitchen
With the horse-meat scandal still galloping along, there's surely never been a better time to teach our children about good food and its provenance. Take your little Nigels and Nigellas along to Brighton's Children's Food Festival this Easter for blindfolded tastings, free hands-on cookery classes and a noodle workshop with Wagamama (29-30 March, brightonfoodfestival.com.)
Farm visits and kitchen garden tours are included in Augill Castle's popular cookery courses for children, as well as the chance to learn to cook in a castle in the Lake District (£65 for a half-day, stayinacastle.com). This year the hotel is offering family cookery days giving parents and children the chance to plan, prepare and cook a three-course meal before sitting down to eat it together.
Food Safari, which specialises in behind-the-scenes tours of artisan producers in Suffolk, will be targeting young foodies with sausage-making workshops at Ipswich's Rose House Butchery. Children can create their own sausage filling, mixing meat, rusk and flavourings, before learning to link sausages to take home. The courses will run in the school holidays for children aged between six and 12. The next dates are 11 April and 30 May (£35, foodsafari.co.uk).
Give me a break: the week's best deals
Easter in the Lakes Children under 15 stay free at the Castle Inn Hotel near Keswick this Easter. Family rooms start at £220 per night, based on two adults and one child sharing. Additional children in the room stay for free and pay for breakfast. The hotel, which has a pool, gym and tennis court, will be laying on activities such as crafts and Easter egg hunts over the four-day period (castleinncumbria.co.uk)
Continental camping The camping and mobile-home operator Venue Holidays is offering savings of 25% on peak- season holidays to the Vendée and Côte d'Azur in France, and the Venetian Riviera in Italy. A seven-night holiday in a three-bedroom mobile home at St Hilaire with return ferry crossings from Dover to Calais costs from £703 for a family of up to six, departing on 26 July (venueholidays.co.uk)
