Four wheels good, two legs best? - Sunday travel section digest

It's St George's Day and The Mail on Sunday marks the day with a 500-mile drive (in a Morgan) around Britain's top attractions. Frank Barrett takes in Hastings for 1066, Malvern for Elgar's birthplace and the Morgan car factory, Liverpool for John Lennon's home and Grasmere for William Wordsworth's home.

Four wheels good, two wheels better? Tom Robbins in The Observer notes that 60 years ago today, the first Vespa rolled off the production line. He hits the highways and byways of Tuscany with Scooter Bella, which offers six-day guided Vespa trips. If you like the sound of that consider driving through other countries in their iconic vehicles: Paris by 2CV, Germany in a Trabant, Route 66 by Harley. The Observer has the roundup.

Ah, and given that the London Marathon takes place today, Peter Conchie (The Independent on Sunday) ups the ante and prepares to participate in a triathlon - just 1500m in open water, a 40km bike ride and 10km run. He joins a training day at Dulwich College in London, and feels, at the end of the day, that participating in a triathlon might not be such a daunting prospect. Unfortunately Conchie notes that entries for the Blenheim Triathlon on May 20-21 and London Triathlon on August 5-6 are closed, but there are still places available for The Ironman UK Triathlon at Sherborne in Dorset on August 20.

The Sundays have several really useful articles for travellers today. For example, Gemma Bowes (The Observer) reports that Airmiles is to relaunch its service tomorrow with a new website and lots more flights.

Susan d'Arcy (The Sunday Times) finds the spas around the UK and Ireland "that are as kind to your bank balance as they are to your chakras". She writes that "Ireland is the undisputed spa capital of Europe right now, with ever more indulgent centres opening on a weekly basis". The Brehon in Kerry, with its Thai therapists, is rated very highly. Irish spas too offer travellers the chance to save money while they rejuvenate as its treatments are priced in euros.

Meanwhile Mark Hodson continues his crusade against rip-off car rental companies and reveals some of the tricks of the trade, that include "excess as standard" and inflated petrol prices. One reader's wife mistakenly put unleaded petrol into a diesel vehicle, was accused of “gross negligence”, and, although she had a £500 excess, was charged £200 for repairs, £90 for fuel and - as the car broke down for the next renters and they missed their flights - £100 for taxi fares and £612 for two return tickets to Riga. A cool £1,000 or so... And Mark Rowe (The Independent on Sunday) looks ahead to Heathrow's T5, which will open in 2008. The expansion is a huge project and will give Heathrow a signature skyline, says Tony Douglas, T5's managing director. To give some idea of the scale of the project, the terminal will be about the same size as Hyde Park or 50 football pitches.

The Independent on Sunday also has a valuable cut-out-and-keep guide to this year's must-visit cities. Robert Nurden's list includes Bratislava, Beirut and Belfast as well as Shanghai and the little-known Greek port of Patras.

Francophiles are catered for too. Anne Gregg, author of a new guide to the best French markets, picks her favourites for The Observer.

Hungry travellers can grab a bite with The Sunday Telegraph's guide to Boston eateries and The Independent on Sunday's food of the week piece looks at what the best chefs were cooking before they were whipping up snail porridge or chips cooked in hay.

Sankha Guha (The Independent on Sunday) wrote a guide to Tallinn in 2002 and feared that the Estonian capital might become a Prague or Dublin - a "cheap stop on the stag-party circuit" - but four years later he finds that the city has prospered. It has "steered a path through the honey-traps of mal-development. Tiny Tallinn has by luck or design absorbed the worst of the tourist invasion and simply diverted the stag traffic into ghettos".

The Sunday Telegraph has a five-page special on Canada, a guide that will take you clear across the country to the islands off the coast of British Columbia. Staying on that side of the world Helen Truszkowski (The Independent on Sunday) and her two boys discover the other side of Maui. In the second largest of the 18 Hawaiian islands "mass tourism remains alive and well [but] something else is happening: a shift to eco-preservation". Truszkowski and her boys descend into the crater of the world's largest dormant volcano, go snorkelling with green turtles, and sit in on a Hawaiian Luau. The holiday is a combination of relaxation and recreation with respect for the environment.

Finally, wilder than the grizzly bears of Canada, Sunday Times' travellers recount their tales of when their holidays bit back. In the extracts, elephants, great white sharks, polar bears, scorpions, snakes and pelicans all bared their teeth or tusks or fangs. The line: "They flew me to Cape Town, where doctors spent four hours saving my arms" is a good reminder for travellers to not get quite so close to nature.

© Cheapflights Ltd Oonagh Shiel