Ally

From the Times...

Trapped at your desk in a sweaty city while everyone else is on holiday? Time to get some fresh air...
Late August, and your sang-froid is melting like the tar on the road. The fag end of summer is fizzling out fast, but you are pinned to your desk in the city, with the boss on your back, the watercooler running on tepid and your stress gauge at regulo 9. Your va-va-voom has well and truly vamoosed.

What you need is a sharp blast of fresh air, some quick-fix countryside to save you from urban meltdown. We’ve found exactly the thing — a whole host of easy, breezy ideas for a fast getaway to the cleaner, greener beyond.

Whichever of Britain’s main metropolises you happen to live in, you’ll find three hand-picked escapes to choose from — and six if you’re in London (three north of the river, three south). None is much more than an hour from town, and they range from high-adrenaline (throwing yourself out of a plane) to low-impact (throwing yourself into a lunch).

By all means go next weekend. Better still, blag a day off during the week, when the hills are lonely and the feeling of freedom is even sweeter.

Ally

LONDON SOUTH

Land-yachting in Kent: the first thing they teach you on a land yacht is how to stop. No surprise, really, given that the maximum speed these lean, green racing machines can reach is an eye-popping 45mph. Tuition comes courtesy of the land-yacht manufacturer Kirrawee (01797 362132, www.kirrawee.com), on the Kent coast at Greatstone-on-Sea.

That’s a good hour and 20 minutes from the Smoke, but with wide-open sands and big Channel skies beckoning, it’s well worth the extra time in the car. A four-hour introduction to the sport costs £65pp.

Wine touring in the North Downs: it’s official — English wine is no longer a joke. The dry, chalky uplands of Surrey, Sussex and Kent are now considered some of the best places in the world to make sparkling wine, and several recent vintages have had the cognoscenti fizzing with interest.

Denbies Wine Estate (01306 876616, www.denbiesvineyard.co.uk), near Dorking, offers tastings and tours (from £4pp). You can follow on with walks along the North Downs Way or a wander through the gardens of Polesden Lacey, the famous Regency pile (01372 452048, www.nationaltrust.org.uk; £5).

Green fingers in Surrey: there are garden centres, then there’s the Royal Horticultural Society’s centre at Wisley: 240 acres of arboretums, water features and greenhouses, all designed to inform and inspire. Once you’ve stocked up on fresh ideas — whether for a new flowering border or a couple of pots on a windowsill — you can buy all your raw materials at the RHS plant shop, which sells more than 10,000 species.

The centre is open daily until 6pm (01483 224234, www.rhs.org.uk), and admission costs £7 (£2 for children aged 6-16, free for under-6s).

LONDON NORTH

Sailing at Sunbury: make the wind your master with a day’s sailing on the Queen Mary Reservoir. Nearly a mile wide and raised 45ft above ground level, it catches every gust going, and it’s home to one of Britain’s most competitive and highly organised sailing clubs.

Ever anxious to discover the next Ben Ainslie, the club offers a wide range of courses: a one-day taster, including all tuition and equipment, costs £110, and you can learn in a one- or two-man dinghy. Five-day courses for children aged 8-16 start at £200; call 01784 248881 or visit www.queenmary.org.uk.

Horseplay in Newmarket: even if you’ve never been near a bookie’s, you’ll find plenty of interest at the HQ of horse- racing. But get there early: no self-respecting day trip begins without a visit to the heathland gallops on the edge of town, where the magnificent beasts are exercised each morning.

Hoofbeats (01638 578628, www.hoofbeats.co.uk) offers tours from 9am to 12.45pm for £25 (children £12.50), taking in not only the gallops, but the British Racing School and the National Stud.

London’s largest park: you’ll be pinching yourself. There you are, surrounded by ancient woodland, in a park that’s more than 12 miles long, yet you’re still in London. Epping Forest is the largest of the capital’s open spaces, but also one of the least visited, so take a bike, or pack a picnic, and get ready to enjoy the peace and quiet. Take a train to Chingford from Liverpool Street, and the ancient oaks of Barn Hoppitt, and the views from Pole Hill, will both be in easy reach. The Epping Forest visitor centre (020 8508 0028) can tell you more.

Ally

BIRMINGHAM

Sphering in Stoke: buy your hamster one of those Perspex balls for rolling around the carpet in, pop him inside it, then tip it down the steepest hill you know. Actually, that might be cruel. Do it to yourself instead, at Spheremania (07932 996620, www.spheremania.co.uk), in Barthomley, near Stoke. They call it “sphering”, and it entails being strapped into a giant inflatable ball with a friend and hurtling helplessly down a 200yd slope at 30mph. No brakes, or steering, included; no skill, or sanity, required. There are sessions run every weekend until September; £20pp.

Geocaching in Shropshire: it’s all the rage in America — a high-tech treasure hunt in which you roam the countryside using GPS satellite navigation kit to find hidden “caches” of trinkets and treats. At Craven Arms, the Secret Hills visitor centre (01588 676000, www.shropshirehillsdiscoverycentre.co.uk) has brought the craze to Brits, setting up family-friendly geocaching trails across scenic Shropshire, with treasure boxes stashed away at Iron Age hill forts and other historic sites. Pay £7.50, pick up a GPS receiver (with full instructions and a list of secret co-ordinates), jump in the car and you’re off.

Hawking in Gloucestershire: at the National Birds of Prey Centre (0870 990 1992, www.nbpc.co.uk) you can get nose to beak with the world’s largest collection of owls, falcons and hawks, and learn to fly them through heart-lifting Gloucestershire countryside. The hawking session is our favourite: after a morning spent flying birds to the fist at the centre, in Newent, you’re off into the wild armed with two Harris hawks. You’ll help to flush out quarry and watch them plummet for prey — it’s spellbinding. Falcon and owl experience days are avail-able too; all three run Thu-Sat and cost £125pp.

Ally

CARDIFF

Canyoning in the Brecon Beacons: if you’ve thought of it at all, you’ve probably thought of Death Valley or the Sierra Nevada. But Black Mountain Activities (01497 847897, www.blackmountain.co.uk) has brought the nerve-shredding business of chucking oneself across deadly drops and into raging torrents to Britain. To try it, all you need is basic fitness, no fear of water or heights and an especially hard skull (they can loan you a helmet). It costs £65; the next dates are September 11, 17 and 25.

Cider-cycling at Ledbury: okay, so it takes a little more than an hour to get there, but think of the rewards — a day spent wobbling gently through the apple-dappled lanes of Herefordshire, stopping every so often to sample farm ciders. There are four suggested nectar stops on the 20-mile circular route from Ledbury (01531 636147, www.ciderroute.co.uk). For bike hire, call Saddle Bound (01531 633433; £10 per day).

Gastro-walking near Monmouth: the pub lunch doesn’t get much more decadent than at the Bell, at Skenfrith (01600 750235, www.skenfrith.co.uk). Since revamping this 17th- century coaching inn five years ago, William and Janet Hutchings have bagged just about every award for food and wine going, so a bite here might mean home-cured gravadlax and chive crème fraîche followed by Herefordshire sirloin with hollandaise sauce (two courses for £20). And the Hutchings have just added one clinching, conscience-salving ingredient: a menu of gentle walks through the secretive Monmouthshire countryside.

Ally

BELFAST

Mountainboarding in the Mournes: whether you think of it as off-road skateboarding or “snowboarding on wheels”, there’s no more exhilarating way to blast down a hill than at Surfin’ Dirt, near Kilcoo, in the Mourne Mountains. You’ll begin on the grassy nursery slopes, feet strapped to your all-terrain board and with a nifty handbrake for emergencies. Within an hour, you can master basic carving and “powersliding” moves — and you also get to see a scintillating mountain panorama flying past your goggles. An hour with instruction and all kit costs £10 (07739 210119, www.surfindirt.co.uk).

Off-roading near Bangor: after a week of bumper-to-bumper commuting, what you need is a morning behind the steering wheel. Yeah, right. But an off-road thrash through the woods at the Land Rover Experience Centre, in Clandeboye (0870 264 4457, www.landrover.com/experien), feels nothing like workaday driving, as you go skidding over jumps, slither across side-slopes and pelt through mudholes. A half-day course, for groups of up to four, costs £200 per vehicle.

The wild geese of Strangford: as any spa aficionado will tell you, there’s nothing quite so cleansing as mud. At Castle Espie, on Strangford Lough, it’s your soul that’s soothed, as you gaze out on a mile and a half of the stuff in the company of Ireland’s most spectacular community of wild birds. From August 31, Strangford’s flock of 25,000 brent geese wings in from the Canadian Arctic. But Castle Espie, with its woodland walks, is a reliable cobweb-buster at any time (028 9187 4146, www.wwt.org.uk; open daily; £4.60, children £2.75).

Ally

MANCHESTER

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Skydiving over ****erham: just 20 minutes of safety chat, then you’re strapped to an instructor and plummeting from 14,000ft faster than you can say: “I’ve changed my mind.” Thirty-odd seconds and 8,000 vertical feet later, your instructor opens the chute and your 120mph becomes a 10mph drift, with staggering views of the Isle of Man and Morecambe Bay. One tandem jump costs £210, with Black Knights Parachute Centre (01772 717624, www.bkpc.co.uk).

Quad-biking in Prescot: you’ll have mud in places you didn’t know you had places, with a choice of boy’s toys to bring out the rally driver in anyone. The venue is 100 acres of dedicated off-road heaven within the grounds of Knowsley Safari Park, 35 minutes north of Manchester, with 100cc Nemesis quad bikes, off- road buggies (in both single- and double-seat versions) and Extreme Discovery off-road driving — all available for anyone over 12, including tuition and guiding. Half-day family packages, including two motorised activities and one session of archery or shooting, cost £250 for two adults and two children. Contact Knowsley 4x4 (0871 226 2434, www.knowsley4x4.com).

Hot-air ballooning, Trough of Bowland: the perfect antidote to all that gale-force skydiving, drifting gently heavenwards across the moors, forests and villages of the Trough of Bowland, less than an hour up the M6 from Manchester. Takeoff is two hours before sunset, with Garstang one of the principal launch sites, allowing the prevailing southwesterly to float you at up to 4,000ft towards the Yorkshire Dales. Then you get champagne on landing and a Land Rover back to your car. Flights cost £145pp or £270 per couple, with Balloons over Lancashire (01772 601525, www.balloonsoverlancashire.co.uk).

Ally

LEEDS

Climbing in the Dales: the Yorkshire Dales feel as far from the office grind as you can get within an hour of Leeds — hang from a rope several hundred feet above the Chapel-le-Dale valley floor and you might as well be on another planet. Classic climbing on limestone crags, with views to the summit of Ingleborough, at the heart of the Three Peaks area. All-day guiding costs £140pp, including equipment. Contact the Dalesbridge Centre (015242 51021, www.dalesbridge.co.uk). Yorkshire Dales Guides (01729 824455, www.yorkshiredalesguides.co.uk) has two-hour taster sessions for £15pp, leaving Ingleton car park on the next two Thursdays at 6.30pm.

Skiing in Sheffield: Okay, we’re not talking Val d’Isère, but Sheffield Ski Village — “Europe’s largest all-season resort” — has nine runs (the longest 328yd), a boarders’ fun park with half-pipe and water ramp, and, soon to come, a snow dome with gullies, black runs and simulated hang- gliding flights. It’s open from 10am to 10pm; £10.30 per hour or £20.70 for the day (children aged 3-16 £7.90/£17.50), with a “four hours for one” holi- day offer available online. Contact Sheffield Ski Village (0114 276 9459, www.sheffieldskivillage.co.uk).

Narrowboating in Skipton: there are few late-summer treats more serendipitously delightful than narrowboating down the Aire Valley on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. No locks, no expertise required: just 10 minutes of instruction, then it’s off, past a procession of picture-postcard villages and wooded banks. Theoretically, you could squeeze a seven-hour cruise into your day (collection is from 9.15am, with returns from 4.15pm) — but, the riverside White Lion, at Kildwick, two hours from Skipton, diverts all but the most determined. Canal boats carrying 10 people start at £100; boats for up to five at £60. Contact Pennine Cruisers (01756 795478, www.penninecruisers.com).

Ally

NEWCASTLE

Rafting on the Tees: how do you maximise your white-water thrills? Go round in circles. The purpose-built Teesside White Water Course (01642 678000, www.4seasons.co.uk), at Stockton-on-Tees, has been cunningly designed so that at the end of each 380yd descent, you end up where you started. A one-hour session costs £125 for up to six people; if you develop a taste for the torrent, you can embark on a series of kayaking courses (from £25pp for three hours) that lead to full-blast white-water training.

Shepherding in the Cheviots: any day out in the Northumberland National Park (www.nnpa.org.uk) will put fresh air in your lungs. But why not add interest to your adventures by joining one of its guided walks? The pick has to be a day out with a local shepherd, John Monks, on August 28. His 15-mile walk starts in the College Valley and includes an ascent of the Schil, one of the most rewarding peaks in the Cheviots. The price is £6.50pp, and if you can’t make that date, there are plenty more shepherd’s walks available. Call 07862 250381 or visit www.shepherdswalks.co.uk.

Beachcombing at Whitley Bay: the rock pools at St Mary’s, just north of Whitley Bay, are some of the most richly stocked in the northeast, and, this month, the wardens at the St Mary’s Lighthouse visitor centre (0191 200 8650, www.visitnorthumbria.com) plan to help you explore them with a series of one-hour rockpool rambles, running daily until August 29 (£1pp).

Ally

GLASGOW

Kitesurfing in Troon: blast the city cobwebs away with the most exhilarating kid on the watersports block. It’s not easy, and, even after a whole day, you’ll do well to stay upright for more than a second or two, but there’s no better place to learn than the mile-long Barassie beach, in Troon. With shallow waters, buffeted by a constant southwesterly, it’s regarded as one of the best kite-surfing beaches in Britain. Full-day tuition for all levels costs £85 (half-days £45); kite-buggying and mountainboarding are also available. Contact Wind Things (01292 316611, www.windthings.co.uk).

Canoeing in the Trossachs: a spectacular city escape, just an hour from town. You could pick just about any river in the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park and be the blissfully happier for it, but the stretch of the River Balvaig between Balquhidder and Loch Lubnaig is mighty hard to better, with four or five hours’ paddling beneath the towering crags of Ben Vorlich and Ben Ledi. Standing Waves (01786 464777, www.standingwaves.co.uk) has canoe hire from £40pp, including all equipment.

Drive a convertible in the Highlands: you could drive in a Reliant Robin and still weep for the magic of the glens and bens. Drop the roof and hit the high road in a Porsche or Mercedes convertible, however, and Sunday drives will never be the same again. In half an hour, you’ll be skirting Loch Lomond; in one hour you’ll be sweeping across the wilds of Rannoch Moor towards Glen Coe. Stretch to two hours and Ben Nevis is within your reach, with the Road to the Isles (A830 to Mallaig) tugging at your pedal. Guy Salmon (0870 600 7006, www.guysalmon.com) has Saab, Audi, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes convert-ibles from £112 per day.