7 h. ago I found crystal blue waters and fairy tale village just one hour from UK

The whole trip cost me just £200, an incredible bargain considering how much there is to do there

Politics

29 h. ago Week in wildlife: blue waterfowl, a rescued baby orangutan and a real

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Events

7 d. ago Tyrrell Hatton turns air blue again after finding water at Quail Hollow

The Englishman pulled his tee shot into the creek on the 18th hole at US PGA Championship.

Politics

8 d. ago UK beach is 'one of the most secluded in the world' with beautiful blue waters

Nanjizal Beach in Cornwall's far west was ranked the second most secluded beach in the world by Sunsail, with the team analysing factors including accessibility and online searches

Politics

2 w. ago Dream State by Eric Puchner review – an epic tale of paradise lost

A love triangle plays out across generations in this brilliantly panoramic tale of family tiesAmerican author Eric Puchner’s latest novel is a colossus: a vast, bright behemoth of a book, panoramic as the Montana skyline. Dream State opens in 2004 with the image of a young woman, a month before her wedding, diving into a perfect lake whose “blue expanse of water” reflects the “overlapping peaks of the Salish range”. From this Edenic outset, it traverses decades, barrelling through our present day into a projected future: dipping in and out of the lives of a tight cast of characters as they succeed and fail; love and fall out of love; change and stay the same.The young woman is Cece. She has stepped out of the lakeshore family home of Charlie Margolis, a cardiac anaesthesiologist to whom she’s engaged. Route 30 traffic noise aside, the place is a bucolic idyll, marked by abundance and continuity: orchards filled with “ancient apple trees”, “raspberry bushes, magically replenishing”, ...

Politics

4 w. ago Is this river alive? Robert Macfarlane on the lives, deaths and rights of our rivers

As pollution levels hit record highs and fresh water becomes ‘the new oil’, is it time to radically reimagine our relationship to the natural world?If you find it difficult to think of a river as alive, try picturing a dying or dead river. This is easier. We know what this looks like. We know how it feels. A dying river is one who does not reach the sea. A dying river’s fish float belly-up in stagnant pools. Swans on the upper Thames near Windsor now wear brown tidemarks on their snowy chest feathers, showing where they have sailed through sewage. I recently saw a Southern Water riverbank sign badged with a bright blue logo that read “Water for Life”. The sign instructed passersby to “avoid contact with the water. If you’ve had contact with the water, please wash your hands before eating.” In parts of this septic isle, fresh water has become first undrinkable, then unswimmable, then untouchable.How did it come to this – and where do we go from here? The crisis is one of imagination ...

Events

4 w. ago ‘People can’t imagine something on that scale dying’: Anohni on mourning the Great Barrier Reef

The Anohni and the Johnsons singer is collaborating with marine scientists for two special shows at Sydney’s Vivid festival that will show the reef’s plight Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. “I feel like I’m going to Auschwitz,” she says nervously. “On the one hand, I’m so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there’s going to be so much that’s gorgeous. And yet, I’m also scared.”In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni’s assignment: documenting the current state of the world’s biggest coral reef. Continue reading...

Events