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Chalfont and Latimer, where you catch the Chesham shuttle, is a country station, but with Tube trains that take you between rolling fields and wooded hills. It is slightly unreal. Our train has two people on it, and one of them is the driver. It is on this line that I first have the sense of getting out of the game; still functioning, but working on a different schedule. Basically, getting freshwater pearl jewelry on a bit.

My arrival at Chesham Broadway brings the average age down with a bump. This is where the buses stop, turn, and head off all over the region – Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Watford, Amersham. If I’d planned a timetable for my journey, it would already be in tatters, because the pearl necklace Tiger Line service seems to have switched to 90-minute intervals without any of the passengers knowing it. None of them minds.

A man called John walks by, recognises his friend Martin at the stop and says it’s a lovely day for it. “Comfortable bus, the sun is out, you don’t have to think about parking.” Martin and his wife have lived in the town for 30 years. Today they are going into Aylesbury to search the local records for her family history. Her people were in Slough, West Ham and Walthamstow, but she has a feeling that, way back, they were in Chesham. “People don’t go anywhere here except by bus,” says Martin. “You only have to walk a few hundred yards and there’s a big hill.”

Two buses swing into the Broadway, but they’re false dawns: 52 to High Wycombe bus station, 62 via Holmer Green to Amersham. Pam at the bus stop says all the rules have changed and no one’s letting you know what buses you can and can’t take. This keeps coming up – a freshwater pearl fear that somehow or other this business of a Freedom Pass taking you anywhere is too good to be true and is going to be snatched away any minute. What was it Janis Joplin sang when we were all young, or youngish: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

There’s never more than nine of us on the Aylesbury bus at any one time. For most of the way everyone is a senior. The youngest person is the driver, a woman in her forties. A few miles from the town she stops the bus on a country road to chat to a friend. I ask her if I’m likely to get anything going through to Oxford, but she says curtly, “I don’t know. I’ve nothing to do with Arriva.”

The old today, honestly. Thinking only of themselves. Take me for example. Turned 60 last year, but still in work and just about able to afford the (ruinous) train fare from London to the Lake District; particularly with the one-third reduction you can get with a Senior Railcard (£26 a year).

But what do I do? I decide to go by bus instead, because it’s free. When I say bus, I really mean buses, an awful lot of them. You still have to pay for the long-distance routes, but the <a href="http://www.iepearl.com">wholesale pearl earrings</a> local ones you can go on for nothing. It doesn’t matter where you live in England, your Freedom Pass will be honoured in the cities, market towns and one-bus-a-week hamlets across the land. In theory, at least.

The aim was an itinerary made up of lots of little steps: 15 miles here, 20 there, that being the span of most of the local routes. Before setting off I went to the Britain and London Visitor Centre in Regent Street. The man behind the counter scratched his head and gave me a patient but flummoxed look.

It was the first of many like that to come my way in the days ahead. Some would turn into open laughter, others would curdle into contempt.
The 12 best pubs in England and <a href="http://wwww.lpearls.com">freshwater pearl</a> Wales

He told me that until about ten years ago the bus company in the Isle of Wight, Southern Vectis, used to publish a timetable of every single bus route in the country, but then it stopped. Nodal points, he said, that was the key.

This is transport speak for the larger towns, the logic being that if you head for these you have more chance of catching something useful for the next leg. On my map of England, the nodal-point strategy began translating into Aylesbury, Oxford, Banbury, Stratford… The main thing was to pull clear of London in a ten o’clock direction, until the day or the buses gave out.

My card relished the challenge. As <a href="http://wwww.lpearls.com">freshwater pearl jewelry</a> from January 2 this year, London’s over-60s don’t have to wait until 9.30am to use their Freedom Pass. As this is valid on the Tubes as well as the buses, it meant I could get myself from my home in Richmond, southwest London, right up to Chesham, Bucks, early in the day. It’s the farthest extremity of the Metropolitan Line, one of only two stations in Zone Nine.

Autumn has set in, and the weather is growing wilder.

To enjoy the season at its raw and rousing best, you need a landscape to suit: a pristine wilderness where you can walk for hours without a trace of civilisation.

Our islands are well stocked with stirring clifftops, rolling uplands and virgin woodland, some of it cheek by jowl with big cities and sprawling commuter towns.

To prove it, here are some of the finest wild landscapes that Britain and Ireland have to offer. Okay, some may not meet the pedant’s definition of wilderness, but it’s the spirit, rather than the letter, that counts. These are places that feel untouched, allowing you to stretch your legs and flirt, if only for an afternoon, with the rougher edges of the world.
The UK's 30 best places for autumn colour

As leaves begin to fall, here’s a list of the <a href="http://www.iepearl.com">pearl jewelry</a> best places to see the vibrancy of the changing season


Times Walks: the 100 best walks in the UK

Find your favourite ramble, print it out, pack your rucksack, and head out into the countryside or city

There has been a forest south of Epping since at least neolithic times; but the irony is that at the start of the 21st century, London’s largest green space is less heavily managed than at any time since the Anglo-Saxon era. The evidence is everywhere: footpaths that are becoming impassable with fallen logs and saplings; impenetrable <a href="http://www.iepearl.com">pearl jewelry wholesale</a> infestations of holly; a decline in the numbers of glade-loving birds such as the redstart and nightjar.

That’s not to say that the City of London (which owns the forest) has abandoned it — foresters are working there all the time. But there are only 12 full-timers in the department.

The effect is extraordinary. The forest covers 6,000 acres and, despite the neglect, offers an unexpected diversity of landscapes. The most attractive are to be found in its northern half, between <a href="http://www.iepearl.com">wholesale pearl earrings</a> Buckhurst Hill and Epping, which includes stretches of gracious beech woodland, broad knotty oaks and rough-edged fields strewn (at this time of year) with leaves. Hardly anyone goes there — once the sound of the nearest road has receded, you won’t believe you’re still within reach of the Tube.

Walk into the forest from Chingford railway station, 25 minutes from Liverpool Street, or Loughton Tube, on the Central line.

A new direct route is set to make it easier to visit far flung parts of Iceland.

Budget airline Iceland Express will fly to Akureyri from London Gatwick weekly from June 2010.

The town is the second biggest in the country after <a href="http://www.cnwpearl.com">pearl jewelry</a> Reykjavik, yet its population is only 15,000 people, showing just how sparsely populated the rest of the island is.

Previously, getting around the country involved domestic flights from Reykjavik or long journeys on Route 1, the 830-mile ring road that circles the island.
Ice, rock and electro at Iceland Airwaves

Gareth Scurlock climbs a glacier, checks out Reykjavik's nightlife during the Airwaves festival and recovers at a Blue Lagoon rave

Only 60 miles from the Arctic Circle, the <a href="http://www.cnwpearl.com">pearl jewelry wholesale</a> town experiences 24-hour daylight from May to August.

The Lake Myvatn area is the most famous attraction in the north of the country, with its boiling mud pools and surreal rock and lava formations.

Other sights in the region include Dettifoss, Europe's most powerful waterfall, the Askja caldera and the explosion crater Víti, made famous by NASA’s astronauts as their practice ground before the <a href="http://www.cnwpearl.com">pearl necklace</a> moon landings.

What's more, Iceland's best whale watching opportunities can be found at nearby Husavik.

Iceland Express is launching two more new routes during the summer of 2010. It will fly from Birmingham International Airport to Reykjavik as well as from New York to Iceland's capital.

Also, the airline will recommence flying from Stansted to Reykjavik next month in addition to the current Gatwick route.

A decade ago, Iceland attained an uber-cool reputation. There was Bjork, the arthouse film 101 Reykjavik - featuring the capital's mad midsummer nightlife - and Blur's Damon Albarn buying a inflatable stake in one of the coolest bars.

It has been cemented by an upfront club scene, the emergence of more cool bands such as Sigur Ros and several festivals including Iceland Airwaves. Half of the acts are Icelandic: the population is only 300,000, with 60 per cent in Reykjavik, one of the world's least populated capitals. But there are dozens of excellent music venues, clubs and bars.

The festival itself is similar to the Camden Crawl in London and Brighton's Great Escape festival, as one of a growing number of city-based indoor multi-venue festivals (see also SXSW, Eurosonic). Two inflatable tent hundred bands play in nine main venues and a few smaller, quirky ones. A wristband gives access to any venue, but if it's full you have to wait.

Our first stop is Reykjavik Art Museum, which has a large white hall transformed into one of the festival's main venues. The acts are Casio Kids from Norway, the UK's up-and-coming Micachu and the inflatable slides Shapes and headliners Metronomy from Brighton, who play a cracking set of melodic electro-heavy indie.