10 favourite coastlines

Forget those winter blues and daydream about visiting these spots soon. They are not all tropical beaches and palm trees, but they are all extraordinary:

It was a beautiful, windy, winding ride to Coffee Bay up and down steep-edged river valleys, the landscape crumpled like a screwed ball of paper. The wet, shining grass was warm under my bare feet and I breathed in the smell of the sea and the moist green hills of the gorgeous Wild Coast. The green sea stirred milky as waves crept in and crashed. Dolphins gently rose and fell, their shape clear below the green water. Massive waves boomed as cows daintily nibbled the very edge of the bluff.

I had never been this far north before. And already I was enchanted. A wan sunset drifted slowly across the western horizon. I looked out across nothing but the undulating white expanse of a frozen ocean. That is all there is. The stilled ocean, the vastness of a freezing, empty sky, and me. Wow.