Sun, sun, sun here we come

Known as the “Jerusalem of the Aegean”, the quiet island of Patmos is richly sprinkled with monasteries. The main town, Chora, has more than 40 chapels, while on Petra Bay there’s a rock for hermits, “rising up like a five-storey Swiss cheese, complete with cells and cisterns”, writes John Gimlette.
For John, of all the Greek islands, “Patmos is easily the most serene”. It has an unruly beauty, he says. “The blues are proper cobalt blues, and across this miniature, upended desert, there’s always a lingering scent of oleander and herbs.”
To the Romans, though, this was a place of exile - and according to the Christian tradition, this is where Saint John was sent in 95 AD, and where he lived in a cave and wrote about the Apocalypse. Wars, drought and Roman and Russian occupation followed.
But despite a chequered past, today it’s still “the Greece we know and love, with its wonky lanes, biddable cats and magnificent landscapes”, somewhere you can always find “a restaurant dangling off a mountain.”
As winter still stretches out ahead in the UK, perhaps now’s the time to think about booking a trip to sunnier climes. Patmos may appeal? Or elsewhere our writers’ share their favourite places for a sunshine break in Europe - from Stromboli in Italy to Cantabria in Spain there’s plenty of inspiration.