When did travelling become so much work? How often do you return from a holiday thinking you really need a holiday? The do-it-all and see-it-all itineraries we make for ourselves are emotionally and physically demanding. What happened to restful sojourns where you don’t have to do anything, but can still feel a sense of accomplishment for having gone and done something?

While a Corona commercial-style holiday on a beach in Tulum (or wherever) is lovely for the first day or two, our metabolisms, and our minds, need a little excitement. But is there a compromise between lying comatose on the sand and frenetically racing around Rome getting shin splints? Well, yes, there is. We like to think of this type of holiday as “slow travel”, in which the journey is itself the destination (shout out to photojournalist Mr Dan Eldon). And so the journey itself ought to be done in the finest style. Here we’ve collected a few of our favourites.

What was, at the time of its inception at the fin de siècle, the most grand and efficient mode of transport, journeying by train has now become the standard bearer for luxurious slow travel. Sure, you can take a budget flight to Charles de Gaulle, Marco Polo or Istanbul Havalimanı in less time, but can you dine on Petrossian caviar in a plush bar car to the tinkling soundtrack of a jazz pianist while jammed in the middle seat? Can easyJet give you a reason to drape yourself in fantasy and your finest suit? Probably not. In 1977, Mr James B Sherwood, the founder of Belmond hotels, picked up a couple of train carriages at an auction in Monte Carlo and began to recreate the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express lines that had fallen into disuse. Over the years, he gathered dozens more carriages from former greats such as Le Train Bleu and the Rome Express and restored them. This year, the VSOE train is offering three new Grand Suites, each comprising an entire carriage with a private shower and bathroom – compare that with the 13 people who shared the Calais carriage with Hercule Poirot. It’s definitely an option if you don’t want to charter the entire train for a custom journey of your own.

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Just three years after his thrilling train ride home from Istanbul, Poirot boarded a steamship for a cruise up the Nile, stopping along the way to visit the temples at Karnak and the Temple of Amun – both of which will be familiar to Bond fans as locations in The Spy Who Loved Me – and the beloved Sofitel Legend Old Cataract in Aswan, where Ms Agatha Christie herself stayed and first began to muddle the facts and fiction of her famous story. These days, travellers in search of a more finely appointed vessel take one of three dahabiyas with signature red-and-white-striped sails offered by Nour El Nil. The company, started by Mexican expat Mr Enrique Cansino, his wife Eleonore and boat builder Memdouh, expressly intends to counteract the swiftness with which we travel today. “We go at the same pace as the grands voyageurs of the 19th century, who first began using the dahabiya, these double-masted boats,” says Mr Cansino. “No rush.” Lord Of The Flies author Sir William Golding, who took a similar cruise up the Nile, described it as the art of doing nothing.

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“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” Mr Hunter Thompson wrote in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, a novel that begins very much on the road “somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert”. No part of the US has worked harder in myth, movies and books. The old Route 66 meanders from Duarte in the chaparral of California to the red rocks of Arizona, past diners, drive-thrus and truck stops, to the dunes of New Mexico and the scrub of Texas, where national monuments and Native American reservations occupy a vastness of our imagination. If you’re a little wary of striking out on your own, luxury road-trip company All Roads North will design your journey and book the whole thing for you. It provides a bespoke itinerary complete with shopping and eating suggestions and a custom app to help you along the way. All you have to do is shift into drive.

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Maybe your invitation to go yachting this summer got lost in the post. Maybe you’d prefer a little more privacy than the paparazzi afford your famous friends and a boat of your own is a bit too much, er, upkeep. The folks at Sailing Collective have you sorted. Book a boat (or eight) with your friends for a custom itinerary along the Dalmatian coast, around Corsica and Sardinia, the Greek islands, or points beyond to Thailand, Madagascar or Maine. The best part of this trip is that, once aboard, you and your companions are not beholden to any sort of schedule. If you wake up one morning and feel like doing little other than cannonballs and diving for sea urchins, then that’s what you’ll do. You’re the captain now.

sailingcollective.com

If open water isn’t your thing and you’d like a more fine-dining sort of cruise, Belmond Afloat In France offers a floating feast through some of the best food and wineries in, well, France. Book one or all of the exquisite barges in the fleet, which accommodate from four to 12 people (each individually fitted, some have onboard pools, some have pianos), and you can chart your own course through the waterways of Burgundy, pop corks in Champagne and drift through Provence to the culinary capital of Lyon. Alternatively, you can design your own trip to your favourite sights, golf courses or what have you, grazing on Michelin-starred food and grand cru vintages along the way while the onboard chefs prepare dinner from ingredients sourced at the farmers’ markets you pass.

belmond.com