Clare Longrigg 

Unplugged travel: where would you go on holiday to switch off?

Most of us spend our free time keeping track of the world via a small screen. Does the prospect of a holiday without digital devices fill you with fear or promise much-needed respite? What is your favourite unplugged UK holiday destination?
  
  

Cotswolds farming landscape
Rolling acres of Wi-Fi free countryside: holiday heaven for some. Photograph: Alamy Photograph: Alamy

You're going on holiday, but are you getting away from it all?

We're having less sex, according to recent research, because we're on our iPads or watching DVDs in bed. We're having fewer conversations, because our attention is distracted by iPhones and BlackBerries at the table. We're having trouble formulating a joined-up train of thought, because Twitter and Facebook have got us in the habit of thinking in bite-sized outbursts.

Roman Krznaric, faculty member of the School of Life, describes us 'stuffing ourselves with staccato chatter'. Our quickfire online talk is about exchanging information, not communicating, he adds. When we have an opportunity for uninterrupted communication with our favourite people, on holiday, we will probably catch each other glancing longingly at the screens which have come to represent both connection (to our network) and escape (from the dullness of our day).

If you're afraid to leave your smart phone in your hotel room, maybe you need a holiday where there's no wifi. A place without broadband will force you to connect with the people in front of you.

Does the prospect of a holiday with no access to the digital world fill you with horror, or do you think it's a blissful idea? Do you have a favourite bolt hole in the UK where there's no WiFi, where you can truly switch off?

Guardian Weekend sent four writers to parts of the globe where they wouldn't get a signal. Where would you go in the UK to get unplugged?

 

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