Some places look so unreal that your first instinct is to check whether the photo has been edited. Forests that bend at impossible angles, a lake that seems to hover above the ocean, a cave so vast it grows its own jungle. Every one of them is real, and you can visit almost all of them. Some are a short flight from the UK; others take a little more effort to reach. Here are twelve places that look like they were lifted straight from the pages of a fairytale.
1. Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, Kyoto, Japan
Step onto the path through Arashiyama’s bamboo grove and the outside world simply disappears. Towering green stalks rise on both sides, filtering the sunlight into a soft, glowing green. When the wind picks up, the stalks sway, creak and knock gently against each other. That sound is so distinctive that it is officially listed among Japan’s “100 Soundscapes”, a list created by the Ministry of the Environment in 1996.
The grove sits right beside Tenryu-ji temple on the western edge of Kyoto, and nobody is entirely sure whether it grew naturally or was planted centuries ago to protect the temple. Go early in the morning, before the tour groups arrive, and you may have the path almost to yourself.
2. The Crooked Forest, Poland
In a small pine wood near the village of Nowe Czarnowo in north-west Poland, around 400 trees do something trees are not supposed to do. Just above the ground, each trunk swings out sideways by one to three metres, then curves back and grows straight up again. Almost all of them bend in the same direction, north.
The pines were planted around 1930, when this corner of Pomerania was still part of Germany. Nobody knows for certain what happened to them. The most popular theory is that someone deliberately shaped the young trees to grow curved timber for furniture or boat-building, but no record of the method has ever been found. Others blame a heavy snowfall, though there is little evidence for that either. Today the Crooked Forest is a protected natural monument, and the unsolved mystery is half the reason people make the trip.
3. Hallerbos, Belgium
For two or three weeks each spring, the floor of a beech forest just south of Brussels turns a startling shade of violet-blue. Hallerbos, nicknamed “the blue forest”, is carpeted with wild bluebells. In the low morning light it looks as if someone has spilled paint between the trees.
The forest’s history is darker than its colours suggest. During the First World War, occupying German forces cut down most of the old trees. The tall, straight beeches you see today were replanted between the 1930s and 1950s, but the bluebells have been flowering here for centuries. They are also fragile. Trampled bluebell carpets can take decades to recover, so signs ask visitors to stay on the paths and a ranger patrols by bike at peak times. Aim for mid to late April, and check local bloom updates before you travel.
4. The Fairy Pools, Isle of Skye, Scotland
On the Isle of Skye, a mountain stream tumbles down from the jagged Black Cuillin ridge through a chain of waterfalls and pools so clear and blue they look tropical. They are anything but. The water is freezing all year round, and the brave few who swim here usually wear wetsuits.
The pools sit in Glen Brittle, in the south of the island. A gravel path from the car park reaches the first waterfall in about 20 minutes, crossing the stream on stepping stones along the way. Look out for the sign at the start: “Glumagan Na Sithichean”, Gaelic for the Fairy Pools. With dark peaks behind them and mist rolling down the glen, it’s easy to see where the name came from. Skye is steeped in Celtic folklore, and this is exactly the kind of place you’d expect the fair folk to gather.
5. Gásadalur and the “Floating” Lake, Faroe Islands
Until 2004, the only way into the tiny village of Gásadalur was a steep path over the mountains. The postman walked it three times a week to deliver the mail. Then a tunnel was built through the rock, and the rest of the world discovered what the villagers had been looking at all along: Múlafossur, a waterfall that pours straight off the cliff edge into the Atlantic.
A short drive away on the same island, Vágar, is an even stranger sight. From the cliffs of TrælanÃpa, Sørvágsvatn, the largest lake in the Faroe Islands, appears to hover high above the ocean. It’s an optical illusion created by the viewing angle, but it’s hard to believe your own eyes when you’re standing there. The walk to the viewpoint takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour, and you pay a hiking fee to the landowners at the trailhead.
6. Hoia-Baciu Forest, Romania
Just west of the city of Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania lies a forest with a reputation. Hoia-Baciu has been called the “Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania”, and the stories attached to it are pure campfire legend. A shepherd is said to have vanished here along with his entire flock. A young girl supposedly walked out five years after she disappeared, wearing the same clothes and remembering nothing.
At the heart of the forest is Poiana Rotundă, an almost perfectly round clearing where, according to legend, nothing will grow. In 1968 a military technician named Emil Barnea photographed what he said was a saucer-shaped object above the trees, and the forest’s fame was sealed.
The reality is more ordinary. The clearing is often a green meadow full of wildflowers, and none of the tales has ever been verified. But walk in on a misty autumn afternoon and you may find yourself glancing over your shoulder anyway.
7. Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor, England
On the slopes of the West Dart valley in Dartmoor sits a tiny remnant of the forest that covered the moor thousands of years ago. Its dwarf oaks grow barely seven metres tall, twisting out of a jumble of granite boulders, with almost every branch and rock smothered in thick green moss.
Wistman’s Wood is one of only three high-altitude oakwoods left on Dartmoor, and it has gathered more ghost stories than almost anywhere in England. Legend says it was a sacred grove of the druids. It is also said to be the kennel of the Wisht Hounds, black hellhounds with blood-red eyes that hunt across the moor at night. Many writers have called it the most haunted place on Dartmoor.
Visit on a damp, misty morning for the full effect, and admire it from the edges: the mossy boulders are fragile and very slippery underfoot.
8. Zhangjiajie, China
In China’s Hunan province, a forest of towering sandstone pillars rises out of the trees, often wrapped in cloud so that their tops seem to float. If the scene looks familiar, there’s a reason. The filmmakers behind Avatar said the floating mountains of Pandora were partly inspired by Zhangjiajie, and in 2010 one of the pillars was officially renamed “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain”.
The pillars are quartz sandstone, carved over a vast stretch of time by ice, rain and creeping plant roots. In 1982 Zhangjiajie became China’s very first national forest park, and the wider Wulingyuan area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992.
Even the view comes with a thrill. The Bailong Elevator, built onto the side of a cliff, carries visitors 326 metres up in under two minutes and is billed as the tallest outdoor lift in the world.
9. Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
Sixteen lakes, stepped down a valley in Croatia’s Dinaric mountains, spill into one another through a series of waterfalls. Their colours shift from emerald to turquoise to steel blue depending on the minerals in the water and the angle of the sun, so the same lake can look completely different by the afternoon.
The most remarkable part is how the lakes were made. The natural dams between them are built from travertine, a type of limestone deposited over thousands of years with the help of moss, algae and bacteria. In other words, living things built this landscape.
Plitvice has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. Wooden boardwalks carry you right across the water, close enough to touch, though swimming is not allowed.
10. World’s End, Horton Plains, Sri Lanka
High in Sri Lanka’s hill country, the grassy plateau of Horton Plains sits more than 2,100 metres above sea level. Walk across it at dawn, through cloud forest and open grassland, and the land suddenly stops. World’s End is a sheer cliff that plunges more than 800 metres to the valley floor below.
On a clear morning you can see all the way to the island’s southern coast. But clear mornings don’t last long up here. As the day warms, mist rolls up the cliff and fills the gap completely, leaving you staring into a white void, as if the world really does end at your feet.
The full loop, which also takes in a smaller drop called Mini World’s End and the cascading Baker’s Falls, is about 9.4 km and takes around three hours. The park opens at 6am; aim to reach the edge before 9am, before the mist arrives.
11. Son Doong Cave, Vietnam
In 1990, a local man named Ho Khanh was searching for agarwood in the jungle of Vietnam’s Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park when a thunderstorm forced him to take shelter. That is how he stumbled on the entrance to what turned out to be the largest cave on Earth. In 2009 he led a team of British cavers back to it, and what they found broke records.
Guinness World Records lists Son Doong as the largest natural cave by passage size. Parts of it reach 200 metres high and 150 metres wide, and experts estimate its widest chamber could hold a 40-storey skyscraper, or let a Boeing 747 fly straight through.
Where the roof has collapsed, sunlight pours in and a jungle grows underground, with trees up to 50 metres tall. The cave even has its own weather: cool air flowing out creates drifting mist that looks like clouds. Visiting means joining a multi-day guided expedition with strictly limited places, which only adds to the legend.
12. The Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
On the north coast of County Antrim, around 40,000 interlocking stone columns step down into the sea. Most are near-perfect hexagons, so neat they look as if they were cut by hand, and the tallest reach about 12 metres.
Science says they formed 50 to 60 million years ago, when molten lava cooled and cracked into columns, rather like mud drying in the sun. Irish legend has a better story. The giant Finn McCool built the causeway to cross the sea and fight his Scottish rival, Benandonner. When Benandonner came looking for him, Finn’s wife disguised Finn as a baby. Reasoning that if the baby was that big the father must be enormous, Benandonner fled home, tearing up the causeway behind him.
The same columns reappear across the water at Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa. The Causeway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and walking down to the stones is free; you only pay if you use the visitor centre.