The case for a cooler summer

Travel editors have settled on a word for it: the coolcation. National Geographic wrote this month about where in Europe to take one, following an earlier piece on how summer heatwaves are changing the way people travel. The idea needs little explaining. Southern Europe now regularly passes 40 degrees in July, and more travellers each year are looking at the map and turning north.

The numbers back the instinct. The European Travel Commission found that 81 percent of Europeans are adjusting their travel habits to the changing climate, and the fastest tourism growth on the continent is now in the north, with Iceland, Norway and Finland all recording double-digit increases in visitors. A July day in south Iceland is typically 12 to 16 degrees. You hike in it, ride in it and sleep well in it, under a night that never fully darkens.

A cooler summer here is not a consolation prize. It is walking weather from breakfast to midnight, rivers loud with meltwater, and evenings that stretch on without heat or crowds insisting on a schedule. If July in the south has stopped being enjoyable, do not shrink the holiday. Move it north.