10 beautiful places that are so safe people don’t lock their doors (and none are in the UK)

Escape to a destination where life unfolds slowly, hospitality is warm, cars are few, and hustle-and-bustle is non-existent

Sometimes, when everything gets a bit much, we’d all like to turn off the Wi-Fi, pack a steamer trunk and travel somewhere – or, rather, some time – else. While it’s not true that “everything was better back then” (whenever “then” was), there’s a strong appeal in immersing ourselves in a simpler world; places with a slightly old-fashioned feel, where life unfolds more slowly, people don’t lock their doors, hospitality is warm, cars are few, hustle and bustle is non-existent and local culture endures in the face of globalisation. So, we scoured the globe to find the best spots for a relaxing bygone break.
There are 19 Channel Islands, and as their size reduces, so does the pace of life. 
Jersey, the largest, is the only place in the British Isles to still use £1 notes. It’s strewn with remnants of Napoleonic wars and Nazi occupation, and ringed by knockout beaches – the rival of the Caribbean but with an Enid Blyton air, and excellent coast walking and kayaking too. 
Then you hop to Guernsey, and life slows again. The maximum speed limit here is 35mph, less on the ruettes tranquilles, twisty back roads perfect for e-biking. Use that bike to reach genteel attractions such as Victor Hugo’s Hauteville House and the blooms of Saumarez Park. 
Things slow further on car-free Sark, a precipitous hunk of rock that until recently was still overseen by a feudal seigneur – you can tour his glorious gardens at La Seigneurie.
On minuscule Herm, where not even bicycles are permitted, life almost stops completely.
Ramble Worldwide (01707 331133; rambleworldwide.co.uk) offers a six-night, small-group Gardens of the Channel Islands trip from £1,749pp including flights and half-board accommodation. The White House (01481 750000; herm.com), Herm’s only hotel, offers B&B doubles from £203pn.
Want a laid-back and authentic Greek isle? Lemnos fits the bill. The island of fire god Hephaestus in Greek mythology, it’s very traditionally Greek – siesta time is still sacrosanct. And it feels remote, stranded in the North Aegean, away from main ferry routes and other islands – you don’t get day-trippers disturbing the peace. 
There’s only one flight a week from Britain (London), and one or two from elsewhere in Europe, leaving it largely free of foreign visitors. Thus, tourism is limited, and still takes second place to fishing and farming. 
Expect a glut of homegrown ingredients, from fresh seafood, olive oil, cheese, honey and herbs, to flomaria, the local pasta. There’s a long history of wine-making too (it’s even mentioned in The Iliad), and you can visit wineries for tastings. 
Or simply sprawl on the island’s super sandy beaches and wander Myrina, the charming main harbour, crowned by a Venetian castle.
Sunvil (020 8758 4758) offers seven nights in Lemnos from £899pp including flights and room-only accommodation at the traditional Lemnos Hotel, in a room with a balcony overlooking Myrina harbour. 
If mainland Australia is like a big city, then Tasmania is more like a small town. There’s an old-fashioned warmth to the welcome here, a pleasing quietness to the streets (unless you count the roaming wombats and wallabies). 
The air, blown straight off the Southern Ocean, is the cleanest in the world. And wilderness is always on the doorstep: around 40 per cent of the island – from temperate rainforest to alpine plateaus, from rose-pink granite mountains to white-sand coast – is protected, providing ideal places to escape the rat race. 
Maria Island, off the east coast, is completely car-free, and teeming with critters – the Maria Island Walk is ambling at its most civilised, with nights spent at bush camps and a heritage house, with gourmet food and wine. More fascinating heritage properties lie back on the mainland, from the pioneer farmstead of Woolmers (where you can stay onsite) to elegant Clarendon, a Georgian mansion unlike anything else in Australia.
Audley Travel (01993 838810) offers a 13-day Classic Self-Drive from £4,935pp including flights, car hire and accommodation. Its 18-day Tasmania & Western Australia trip costs from £7,675pp and includes the Maria Island Walk.
Fancy a trip to the Britain of yesteryear, with significantly better weather? As the UK’s oldest remaining colony, Bermuda combines both a tropical insouciance and a certain sort of Britishness: red phone boxes (beneath palm trees), uniformed police officers directing traffic, and an obsession with cricket. 
Afternoon tea can be taken at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club – opened in 1885, following an island visit by Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Louise, it serves tiers of cakes and sandwiches fit for royalty. 
It’s hard to drag yourself away from Bermuda’s white-sand, pink-sand and fairy-tale beaches. But, if you do, the town of St George’s, founded in 1609, is a good place to soak up the island’s history – take a walking tour with Kristin White, and then peruse her bookstore, Long Story Short. Or flit from isle to isle along the Railway Trail, 18 miles of serene strolling along the disused trackbed of the old Bermuda Railway.
Purely Bermuda (01372 372123) offers a seven-night stay at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club – AKA the “pink palace” – from £2,295pp including flights and B&B accommodation.
Madeira has an unfair reputation: some dismiss the Atlantic isle as a place for “newlyweds and nearly-deads”. This implies a dullness quite at odds with its extraordinarily dramatic volcanic terrain. But it is undeniably a place of slower, gentler living, where some of the finest things to do are drink madeira in a 200-year-old wine lodge, ride down a hill in a wicker toboggan, and take afternoon tea at Reid’s Palace, which has served everyone from Winston Churchill to Roger Moore. The former was also fond of Câmara de Lobos, a pretty fishing village where he used to paint – and a perfect spot to eat seafood and watch the waves.
The island is exceptionally fertile, so you could do worse than simply inhaling the blooms at the various gardens or at the May Flower Festival. The 1,300-mile-long, centuries-old network of levadas (water channels) provides opportunities for easy, flat strolls amid the precipitous terrain. 
Kuoni (0800 088 5019) offers seven nights’ B&B at Castanheiro, five heritage buildings in Funchal that have been converted into a boutique hotel, from £886pp including flights.
Bhutan is a modern-day Shangri-La, only opened to tourists 50 years ago; with its absence of traffic lights, compulsory national dress and policy of Gross National Happiness, it’s one of the serenest, least-spoilt destinations in the world. 
But it’s also one of the most expensive. In addition to actual holidays costs, which must include a local guide, travellers have to pay a $100-a-day (£75) sustainable development fee (SDF). This is used to fund everything from free healthcare and education to conservation, sustainable tourism practices and organic farming. 
Arguably, though, you get what you pay for: in this case, pristine mountains (many of which are sacred, and have never been climbed), 70 per cent forest cover, well-preserved traditional culture, and even a reserve to safeguard the mythical yeti. The serenity is even more pronounced in the remote east, which sees few visitors. 
Regent Holidays (0117 453 7243) offers a private 19-day Bhutan from West to East trip from £7,335pp including flights, full-board accommodation, guide, transport and Bhutan SDF and visa.
Parts of Romania feel like the past few centuries haven’t happened at all. Southern Transylvania, where Saxon villages cower beneath the Carpathian Mountains, has even been called an “outpost of medieval Europe”, a time-warp land of traditional farmsteads, frescoed churches, wildflower meadows, marauding bears and horse-and-cart travel. 
Here, it’s possible to stay in private homes, eat feasts of fresh, organic food around kitchen tables, sink homemade wine and plum brandy with the families who made it, and glimpse a simpler way of life.
Even more offbeat is Romania’s northern Bucovina region, where painted monasteries hide amid steep-sided hills barely visited by outsiders – though the 870-mile Via Transilvanica trail, opened in 2022, is aiming to change that. Walking and cycling sections of this Romanian camino reveal rural villages, lynx-prowled forests and fascinating sites such as the Museum of Painted Eggs, home to thousands of these intricate artworks, a speciality of the region.
The Slow Cyclist (01865 410356) offers a five-night, small-group Enchanted Saxon Transylvania trip from £2,895pp including full-board accommodation, excluding flights; May-October 2025. Its five-night Via Transilvanica Bucovina trip costs from £1,750pp; June 16 2025.
There’s a reason why St Helena feels out of touch with the rest of the world. It is. Up until 2017, this remote volcanic drop in the South Atlantic Ocean was only accessible via a fortnightly boat; now it has an airport, but there’s only one flight a week. 
Technology is adopted slowly – high-speed internet arrived in 2023. And it feels societally rooted in the past, like a Britain of 70 years ago, where the 4,500-odd residents , greet each other in the street, gather round pianos for singalongs and don’t lock their doors. 
Colonial relics, nodding to the isle’s settlement by the East India Company in 1659, add to the bygone feel; other venerable attractions include Longwood House, Napoleon’s final place of exile, and Plantation House, the residence of both St Helena’s governor and Jonathan the 192-year-old giant tortoise. There’s plenty more wildlife too, with opportunities to spot rare birds and swim with whale sharks.
Rainbow Tours (0208 131 8693) offers an 11-night Discover St Helena trip from £4,450pp including flights, guide and B&B accommodation at the Mantis, a luxury hotel housed in the old East India Company barracks.
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Montgomery’s late-19th-century tale set in a close-knit farming village, has become emblematic of Prince Edward Island (PEI) itself. Canada’s smallest province, PEI has a heartwarmingly old-fashioned feel. Here, charming towns dot an agrarian landscape of cattle pasture, potato fields and fruit orchards. Indeed, the food scene is excellent, with an emphasis on farm-to-table dining and the freshest seafood. 
PEI’s coast is the biggest draw: measuring more than 680 miles, it’s fringed with powder-soft beaches, red sandstone cliffs, rippling dunes and “pepperpot” lighthouses, several of which are climbable for panoramic views. It would be rude not to visit Montgomery’s Cavendish home and immerse yourself in Green Gables country. But the best way to explore is by hiking or biking the largely traffic-free Confederation Trail. Built on the old railroad (with gradients never greater than 2 per cent), it spans the entire isle, passing idyllic small towns along the way. 
Macs Adventure (01415 304872) offers a leisurely, six-night, self-guided Biking Prince Edward Island trip from £3,075pp including characterful B&B accommodation, with one night at a family-run inn right next to Green Gables House, excluding flights.
The nonsense poet Edward Lear described Gozo as “pomskizillious and gromphibberous”, clarifying that “no words can describe its magnificence”. Actually, you might use peaceful, pastoral, unhurried, sleepy. Malta’s hilly little sister, a half-hour ferry ride away, is a place where age-old traditions are held onto, and home, family and church remain central to local life. 
Only nine miles by five, Gozo is easily explorable by bus and on foot – no need to stress yourself driving here. Trails lead to an array of golden beaches, along dramatic cliffs and to Dwejra Bay, the island’s emerald-hued “inland sea”. There are also terraced slopes of vines and citrus, Neolithic temples (Ggantija predates Stonehenge by 500 years) and a comely capital, Victoria, where you’ll find fine churches, a medieval citadel and back streets full of artisans making lace. For something mellower still, hop over to neighbouring Comino, home to only one family and the dazzling blue lagoon.
Inntravel (01653 617000) offers a seven-night self-guided Glorious Gozo trip from £755pp including B&B accommodation at the family-run Grand Hotel at Mgarr harbour, some meals, ferries and bus pass, excluding flights.