The great outdoors

• 1 Discover Petra two hundred years on
  Emulate Swiss explorer Johann Burchard, who discovered the city of Petra 200 years ago, by travelling to Jordan in 2012 to discover firsthand one of the new seven wonders of the world. Completely...

• 2 French Polynesia: a paradise that caused a mutiny
  They'd travelled half way across the world to Polynesia to find breadfruit plants for the British empire which were to be planted in the Caribbean to help feed the slaves there, but the long and dangerous...

• 3 Hotel Son Net: The life of luxury in Majorca
  Tucked away in the quiet village of Puigpunyent, hidden behind tall palm trees and surrounded by the majestic Tramuntana mountains lies the beautiful rural hotel Son Net. Once a private mansion, it opened...

• 4 Natural Croatian gems
  There's no doubting the attractions of Croatia's Adriatic coastline, but inland lies a more private landscape waiting to be explored. Here nature reaches epic proportions in a wild secret interior that...

• 5 The jungle where Mowgli grew up
  It's the langurs, their black monkey faces surrounded by a shock of white hair, who are the first to sound the alarm when a tiger approaches; they emit a brief, high-pitched squeal, a warning that penetrates...

• 6 (Almost) at the end of the world
  For many centuries Patagonia was the limit of the known world. A mythical land, distant and strange, inhabited by giant beings of unknown and unfamiliar customs and habits. The name Patagonia comes from...

• 7 On the scent of fine coffee in Colombia
  The coffee landscape of Colombia lies in the foothills of the Cordillera de los Andes where, for centuries, coffee has been cultivated in small plots in the high forest and harvested by hand. Last year...

• 8 Winter holidays in the Austrian Tyrol
  Magnificent 'big-screen' landscapes that will take your breath away: majestic mountains that will have you reaching for your skis; Alpine meadows, forests, waterfalls, crystal cold lakes and picture-postcard...

• 9 On location in breathtaking South Africa with the 'Wild at Heart' team
  As filming locations go, Glen Afric Country Lodge, covering 750 sunkissed hectares in South Africa's Gauteng province, is not a bad spot. It's here that the cast and crew of ITV’s Wild at Heart...

• 10 Ten top ski resorts around the world
  Baqueira Beret, Spain
 The finest ski station in Spain boasts state-of-the-art ski lifts, more kilometres of piste than any other, and its strategic orientation pretty much guarantees good snow. This...

• 11 'The Quiet Man' movie trail
  For the film, the American director of Irish descent created the now mythical town of Innisfree as a setting for the love story between the former boxer Sean Thornton, portrayed with a gentle warmth...

• 12 A paradise for winter
  They say that the beaches of Punta Cana, stretching for over 50 kilometres along the east coast of the island of La Hispaniola, are the best beaches in the world. With their white sands, warm turquoise...

• 13 2012 - a bumper year for the Northern Lights
  The aurora borealis: named for Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn, and Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, the bringer of winter, even the name of this atmospheric phenomenon conjures magical...

• 14 At home with the mountain gorillas
  The dense forests that carpet the volcanic Virunga mountains are one of the last refuges of the mountain gorilla. We invite you to an African adventure deep in this jungle, where American primatologist...

• 15 Royal Madikwe: award-winning luxury with an eco-conscience
  Madikwe, the fourth largest game reserve in South Africa, is a joint venture between the state, the local community and the private sector and is a landmark in modern conservation and community development....

• 16 Celebrating an icy centenary
  2011 has been a big year for Norway: not only does it mark a hundred years since Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole, but it is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of another famous polar explorer,...

• 17 Floating over a sea of sand in Namibia
  Some of the dunes of Sossusvlei in the south of Namibia rise to a staggering height of 300 metres – as tall as a 60-storey skyscraper. The desert – which experts reckon is the the oldest on...

• 18 Flying south for winter
  Usually a Monarch butterfly lives for just four or five short weeks. But by some miracle of nature, the last generation of the summer may survive for as long as seven months, allowing them to fly south...

• 19 Australia: the epic world Down Under
  In November 2008 People magazine chose Hugh Jackman as the sexiest man on the planet. We can't be sure whether they'd taken a peek at the trailer for Australia, which was to debut a month later, but if...

• 20 And the word is 'wonderful'!
  On-line, by phone and by text messages, thousands of people around the world have been involved in voting in this initiative launched by the New7Wonders Foundation. Chosen from a short list of twenty-eight,...