Offline holiday destinations
December 6, 2015 5:43 AM   Subscribe

Looking for suggestions for holiday destinations, preferably in or near Europe, where we can escape internet access and also, ideally, mobile phone signals. If you can suggest specific accomodation, all the better. We are thinking of going away for about a week, but don't yet have a specific time of year in mind.
posted by oclipa to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (4 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Deerpark in Cornwall, if you want somewhere not too far afield. I was there in Spring this year, and there was zero phone signal in the whole valley (phone signals are patchy around much of Cornwall). I think Internet access was available, but you had to pay extra for it, and it wasn't working anyway. Incredibly slow wi-fi that you have to go and sit next to the router in the shop/cafe to use. It's a lovely place - large, modern wooden cabins (optional hot tubs) and a big emphasis on conservation. They have a resident expert who does walks most evenings and can tell you all about the valley's wildlife and industrial archaeology (it was a major area for the manufacture of explosives until the early 20th century). And 5-10 mins from the sea. I'm definitely going back.
posted by pipeski at 5:59 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Highlands and Islands of Scotland - though the main population centres now have reasonable internet and mobile coverage, as soon as you get to the more remote areas, the geography means that mobile signal drops out. I don't have any specific recommendations - pretty much anywhere in the Highlands and Islands where I've lost signal has been beautiful, so I'd look at the OFCOM Mobile Coverage Map and see if there are places to stay in those areas.

Winter can be very beautiful up there, but travel can be more difficult, especially if you're going out to the islands.
posted by Vortisaur at 6:00 AM on December 6, 2015


We rented a town house in Sardinia that had no wifi and Sardinia feels very off the beaten path with great food and beaches.
posted by flink at 6:03 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


We stayed at this WiFi-free rustic cottage in Slovakia this past summer, and it was just off-the-chain in terms of its rustic charm, if that's what floats your boat. The owners speak about 20 words of English in person but it was very easy to set up the reservation through booking.com and it all worked out fine. The village itself is not really a tourist spot per se but is quite cute with lots of old vernacular cottages, and it's close to areas for hiking in the summer/skiing in winter, castles, ice caves, Carpathian wooden churches...

Also, I didn't book through them but this website has a TON of independent property listings in Slovakia and makes it easy to see which don't offer Wi-Fi. Feel free to memail me if you want more info. We only spent 3 days in Slovakia on our whirlwind tour of Central/Eastern Europe but I enjoyed the country very much and it had a very nice balance between having sufficient tourism infrastructure without feeling overwhelmed by tourists, even in the middle of August. Pro-tip for planning a vacation in a somewhat off-the-beaten-path location where guidebooks in English may focus only on a handful of the biggest tourist draws: zoom in on google maps and click on the street view/photo sphere icon to see where people are taking cool pictures from!
posted by drlith at 7:51 AM on December 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


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