How do you keep moving when you travel?

Travel is the best excuse to move and the easiest excuse not to. Routines vanish, meals get longer, and the hotel gym looks like a storage room with a treadmill in it. The trick is to stop trying to keep your home routine and instead use movement as a way of getting to know a place.

Walk the city

Walking is the finest way to see almost any city. You notice the courtyards, the side streets, the bar where the locals stand at the counter. Some ideas:

• Walk between sights instead of taking taxis or the metro for short hops.
• Pick a long walk with a destination: across the city to a particular market, up to a viewpoint, along the river to a famous gelateria.
• Take a walking tour on the first day to get your bearings and some stories.
• Get gently lost in a neighbourhood that is not in the guidebook. Have a map handy, but resist checking it every corner.

Run as sightseeing

An early-morning run in a new city is one of travel's quiet pleasures. The streets are empty, the light is good, the cafés are just opening, and you can see the famous square without anyone else in it.

• Plan a loop past landmarks the night before, or ask the hotel desk for a favourite route.
• Run along water when you can: a river path, a seafront, a lake promenade. They are usually easy to navigate and lovely to look at.
• Join a local running group or a free community run if there is one, and get a guided tour with conversation thrown in.
• Carry a card, a phone and the hotel address, and run at an easy pace so you can actually look around.
• Stop whenever something is beautiful. This is not a training run.

Swim

Hotel pools are underrated. Even a small one can be pleasant for an early swim before breakfast. Look further afield, too: city lidos, public pools, a lake beach, the sea. Swimming somewhere new becomes a memory in a way an ordinary gym session rarely does. If you are swimming in the sea or a lake, follow local safety advice and our guide to open-water swimming.

Ride

Many cities have bike-share schemes or rental shops, and a day on a bike covers a lot more ground than walking. Countryside trips are even better: hire bikes and ride between villages, with lunch as the point of the day. We have more on that in planning a cycling day trip.

Pack a light kit

You do not need a separate bag of sportswear. One small set that works for most things:

• One pair of shoes you can run and walk in.
• Shorts or leggings and a quick-drying top, which you can wash in the sink and dry overnight.
• Swimwear, always. Opportunities appear.
• A light layer for early mornings.
• Optionally a resistance band, which weighs almost nothing and turns a hotel room into a tiny studio.

Let the trip set the rhythm

Not every trip needs daily exercise. On a walking city break, the walking is the movement. On a beach holiday, swimming twice a day is plenty. On a work trip, a single early run might be the best hour of the week. Fit movement to the place and the moment, and you will come home with better stories than a hotel gym ever provided.