About

The mission

We are assembling a catalogue of one thousand places where you can still hear yourself think — and documenting each one well enough that you could actually go.

Travel writing has drifted a long way from that. A great deal of what gets published now is a ranked list assembled from other ranked lists, illustrated with stock photography and pointing at a booking form. It will tell you somewhere is breathtaking without telling you how far the nearest road is. We would rather do the unglamorous part: name the place, fix its position, and say plainly what the journey asks of you in hours, in effort and occasionally in discomfort.

What earns an entry

A place qualifies for this catalogue if it passes three tests. It has to be reachable — remote is the point, impossible is not. It has to reward the effort once you arrive. And it has to be quiet enough that you stand a fair chance of having it to yourself.

That rules out a great deal, including most of what appears on other lists, which is rather the idea. Where an entry ranges across several destinations — a survey of lighthouses, a handful of restaurants worth the detour — we mark it as uncharted on the card rather than inventing a single pin for it. An honest gap is worth more than a confident guess.

How the catalogue is organised

Every entry carries a number, assigned in the order it was charted, and the coordinates of the place it describes. Entries are then filed into sections. Manmade Attractions gathers the castles, bridges and towers that people built and eventually walked away from. Natural Attractions covers the caves, falls and valleys. Holiday Destinations and Honeymoon Destinations hold the longer stays, for the trips measured in weeks rather than hours.

The index on the front page lists every entry in order of charting, with its coordinates beside it. It is the quickest way to see how much ground is still uncharted — which, at present, is most of it.

Who writes it

People who went. That is the whole credential, and it is why the catalogue grows slowly. If you have been somewhere that passes the three tests and think it belongs here, write to us at [email protected]. The best entries have always arrived that way.

1000 Lonely Places is independent. We are not affiliated with any tourism board, hotel group, tour operator or booking service, and nothing published here is sponsored.