Top 10: History tours that combine learning and leisure

Greek temple in Selinunte If there's one thing that's guaranteed to steer you away from a well-worn itinerary and into uncharted territory, it's a love of history. Some historical highlights punctuate every tourist itinerary , but the true enthusiast normally has to forego the finer side of travel to be able to add that final fresco, ruin or forgotten city to their list. From exploring the unimaginable depths of geological time to discovering your very own place in the scheme of things, these tours show that it's possible to combine learning with fun, and that a serious passion for the past doesn't always have to involve sacrifices in the present.
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1 Fossil trails, Dorset, UK
Very few visitor experiences allow you to take the history home, but that's exactly what you can do with any fossils you find along Dorset's Jurassic Coast. A Natural World Heritage Site and area of outstanding natural beauty, the coast is home to one of the most complete sequences of Jurassic rocks ever found, spanning almost the entire period from 200 to 145 million years ago. These rocks enabled 18th- and 19th-century scientists to understand the geological processes behind the Earth's development. They also produced the fossils that led to the discovery of extinction, discoveries that paved the way for the theory of natural selection. Palaeontologists still come to the Jurassic Coast to obtain fossil specimens, but amateurs are even more common, so why not visit, and leave with your very own, unique prehistoric souvenir?
An eight-night tour with six days spent walking the Trail is available from Footscape (www.footscape.co.uk). Accommodation, ranging from b&bs to historic country houses, costs from £85 (Dh495) per person, per night, based on two sharing, including breakfast, transfers to and from the trail, a trail guide, and a map with the route marked on it.
2 Palaeoanthropology, The Cradle, South Africa
The Cradle of Humankind, an area of dolomitic hills and high veld grass and woodland, spans 47,000 hectares in the Witwatersrand Basin, only 40km from Johannesburg. It is home to 12 major fossil sites and the world's longest running archaeological excavation, active since 1966, which between them have produced more than a third of the world's early hominid fossils, crucial links that helped to confirm Charles Darwin's claim that the roots of humanity were in Africa.
Palaeo Tours uses palaeo-anthropologists and archaeologists as guides on their private tours of the Cradle. These include private explorations of the Sterkfontein cave, the richest hominid fossil site in southern Africa, and the site of the discovery of the earliest human ancestor in South Africa, dating from 3.5 million years ago.
A half-day tour of the archaeological sites in the Cradle by Palaeo Tours costs 3,500 rand (Dh1,680) per person. Visit www.palaeotours.com for more details.
3 Ancient culture, Malta
More than 1,000 years before the monuments at Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza were built, the Neolithic peoples of the tiny Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were using stones weighing up to 50 tonnes to make what are now the oldest surviving free-standing stone structures in the world. Nobody knows for sure why this extraordinary culture developed, and the only intriguing glimpses that remain of these early peoples are the figures that have been found as statuettes at some of the sites. Dr Nicholas, a senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of Malta, is the guide on a seven-day tour of the islands that investigates this ancient culture. Visits include the World Heritage Site of Valletta and the temple complexes at Mgarr, Ggantija, Tarxien and the magnificent Hagar Qim.
A seven-day tour with archaeological travel experts Andante Travels costs £1,480 (Dh8,620) per person, including all local travel, most meals and six nights in a five-star hotel in Valletta. International airfare not included. Visit www.barebonestours.co.uk/ for more details.