Four steps, narrow through to very wide
Four levels of uncertainty, so you can reserve a week and know how wide the gap is
One scale with four steps, applied to all nine places. It measures how different the poor week is from the good one and nothing else. It is not a forecast, not a probability, and not a quality rating.
Reserve one of these weeksSend the form whenever it suits: it never shuts. Someone here replies inside one working day, and no charge arises at this end.
What the four steps mean
Narrow means the thin week is the same trip, only emptier. The ground under your feet is unchanged, the list of sights is shorter, and what you bring home resembles the good version. Moderate means one particular thing is absent and its absence registers, though the days themselves still stand up. Wide means the reason you booked at all might never arrive; a sound week in an interesting place is what is left. Very wide means you are on a separate trip altogether. What drew you there fails to happen, and only you can decide whether the remainder justifies the price.
Where this scale stops, and what it never says
Quality is not being rated either. A place at the widest step is not thereby a poorer place, and three of the nine places carry the widest mark.
Picking a step before picking a place
It is easy to do this the other way round, and the regret arrives on the ground rather than at the desk.
The Camargue
France6 nightsfrom $1,340narrow spreadsalt lagoons and grazing marsh between the two arms of the Rhone
Alentejo cork country
Portugal7 nightsfrom $1,490moderate spreadcork oak on wide dry plains, and the fortified villages between them
Zagori and the Vikos gorge
Greece8 nightsfrom $1,580moderate spreadstone villages and arched bridges above one of the deepest gorges in Europe
Shetland in June
Scotland6 nightsfrom $1,940wide spreadtreeless islands, nineteen hours of light and cliffs full of nesting birds
The Danube delta
Romania7 nightsfrom $1,520wide spreada flat water maze of reed and willow where the river gives up
Lofoten in late winter
Norway6 nightsfrom $2,740very wide spreadgranite walls straight out of the sea, and the sky doing whatever it does
The Burren and the Aran shore
Ireland7 nightsfrom $1,680very wide spreadlimestone pavement running to the Atlantic, with gentians in the grikes
The Majella
Italy7 nightsfrom $1,610very wide spreada high limestone massif with hermitages cut into it and very few people on it
Finish the sentence and a week gets reserved
Whatever the hour, what you send lands here and is read by a person, who replies inside one working day. Sending it binds you to nothing, and no sum is ever taken at this end.