A £120 island and Easter devotions - What the Saturday papers say

The Ile de Ré has been bubbling under as a destination for some time. Despite it being a favourite spot of Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp, not to mention Princess Caroline of Monaco, it has stayed off most people's holiday radar. However recent travel articles have extolled the beauty of the small towns and villages that make up the tiny island ("only 3km wide") and as Flybe flies from Birmingham and Southampton (and Ryanair flies from Stansted) to La Rochelle, which connects the island to the mainland with "an impressive, curving bridge", its days of relative isolation may be over.

John Kampfner (The Guardian) writes that despite the fact that Ile de Ré has been called the St Tropez of the Atlantic "it's not brash and it's not bling". The "understated charm of Ile de Ré trumps the Riviera". Galloway in southwest Scotland is another little discovered place that Rhiannon Batten (The Independent) compares to the much more famous St Ives. The "wild county" is described as part of the Scottish Riviera. Batten tootles around in a 1963 VW camper van and discovers that the "surprisingly mild region is genuinely gorgeous".

Finally, to complete this collection of little known places, Rebecca Abrams (The Guardian) wonders why so few people have heard of Chandolin. It has the killer combination of guaranteed late snow, wonderful views and sunshine. The Swiss village is the highest inhabited village in Europe and "it is home each February to one of the world's most hair-raising toboggan contests". The winter wonderland is, Abrams writes, "barely two hours door-to-door from Geneva airport", but still off the beaten track.

Easter is about a week away, and a couple of journalists prepare by going on pilgrimage to Spain. Of sorts. Alex Leith (The Independent) visits the holy mountain of Montserrat (just 40km from Barcelona) for seven reasons, one of which is the 12th-century statue of the black Madonna and child at which visitors can make a wish. Another is the fact that pilgrims have been going there for more than 1,000 years and another is that Montserrat is "still the most common name given to Catalan girls". Montserrat. Fabulous.

Elizabeth Nash (The Independent) goes to Seville for Holy Week. She writes that nothing "prepares you for the magnificence [and] the three-dimensional grandeur of Holy Week". The ceremonies are "part devotion, part fiesta". Tim Hames (The Times) also goes to Seville and writes that three things make the city stand out: "the smell, the streets and the tiles". It's not quite the same. Finally, Simon Calder, travel editor of The Independent, completes the quartet of Ibero-centric articles with a trip to San Sebastian in the north of the country, and he, ahem, Basques in its glory. San Sebastian does not have a direct air link from the UK, but Calder very helpfully sets out the ways in which travellers can get to the beautiful city: a bus or train ride from the French frontier, a flight to Biarritz and taxi from there, an easyJet flight from Stansted to Bilbao, then bus and coach, or ferry ride to Bilbao from Portsmouth.

Also with Easter in mind, Helen Pickles (The Daily Telegraph) visits Padua. The medieval city boasts frescoes, mutl-domed basilicas and porticoed streets, Pickles writes, and is "a powerhouse of medieval art: every church, it seems, has works by Giotto, Mantegna or Menabuoi". An art pilgrimage may be the secular answer this Easter. Finally on the subject of Easter, The Daily Mail has rounded up some things to do with children over the holidays.

Other holiday ideas this week include Sardinia, "a truly chic retreat", says Harriet O'Brien (The Independent), with excellent air links from the UK; Kate Muir (The Times) recommends Montego Beach in Jamaica for golf, beaches, reggae nights and (somewhat worryingly) "high security"; Cape Verde, a group of ten Portuguese-speaking islands off the coast of Senegal, is just six hours away, according to Jeanette Hyde (The Times); Sri Lanka, a soothing balm of a holiday for Rosanna de Lisle and her widowed mother (The Telegraph); Fuerteventura, a quiet Canary island by Alexandra Ferguson (The Daily Telegraph); Tim Parks barges down the Canal Du Midi in the Languedoc in France - "the waterway that time forgot"; and Yunnan, which lies in the shadow of the Himalayas, south of Tibet. Katherine Tanko in The Daily Telegraph writes that the "area has even been claimed as the inspiration for the fictional paradise of Shangri-la". Tanko returns for the first time since 1997 to find that the Naxi trading town she remembers has become a "full-blooded tourist town", but has retained its charm, and its stunning architecture.

Finally, those with a spare £120 could have a piece of their own Pacific island for a week, writes Tom Chesshyre (The Times). Chesshyre writes that a group of young people has leased Voro Voro, a 200-acre island, from a Fijian tribal chief. The island does not have electricity or fresh water supplies, but places in a new "tribe" are being offered to the first 5,000 applicants. One year's "Nomad" membership (£120) entitles one to a week-long stay. There are also "Hunter" and "Warrior" memberships for longer stays. The idea behind this unusual and fascinating plan is to have 100 people on the island at a time, responsible for building and maintaining a village on a flat area of coconut groves between three old volcanic peaks. One of the founding members says that "the idea was partly inspired by William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Alex Garland’s The Beach". Gulp. Let's hope the reality does not mirror the plots of those books.

© Cheapflights Ltd Oonagh Shiel