The western seaboard

Jeddah has the country's second international airport and is the standard arrival point for the west coast. You are met and driven to your hotel, with the evening free.

The morning is in Al-Balad, the old merchant quarter on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2014. Jeddah has been a major Indian Ocean port since the 7th century AD and the sea gateway for pilgrims to Makkah, and the trade built the tower houses of coral stone that survive, faced in roshan, the carved wooden bay windows. Restoration runs building by building, so the quarter is half ruin and half work site. Later, the corniche runs over 30 kilometres along the water, with King Fahd's Fountain, 312 metres high, in the middle of the Red Sea.

You travel inland to the AlUla valley: sandstone country that was farmed and settled for thousands of years because it has water, and that sat on the incense road running north out of southern Arabia. You arrive with the afternoon free.

Hegra is the first place in Saudi Arabia to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the largest surviving Nabataean city after Petra. More than 110 tombs are cut into sandstone outcrops standing on open desert floor, their facades carved into the rock and dating from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. Entry is by guided tour with an AlUla Rawi only, with daily numbers capped, so the place is booked ahead of your arrival.

Dadan, cut almost 50 metres up the cliff wall above the oasis, was the capital of the Dadanite and Lihyanite kingdoms; two of its tombs are guarded by carved lions. Jabal Ikmah nearby is a canyon whose walls carry hundreds of pre-Arabic inscriptions, with no ticket and a short level path. The day finishes at Elephant Rock, a 52-metre sandstone outcrop weathered into the shape of an elephant with its trunk to the ground, where sunken seating has been cut into the sand and the rock turns deep red as the light drops.

Out of the valley and back to the water at Umluj, one of the three points this coast is reached from. You arrive with the afternoon free on the shore, and your skipper and guide meet you to set up the following day.

A full boat day off Umluj. More than 90 islands lie off this coast, and the reefs here have been outside mass tourism for decades, which is the whole reason to dive or snorkel them: coral in a condition that has become rare in the northern Red Sea. Gear is carried on board, the day is built around two or three stops, and you are back on shore in the late afternoon.

Along the coast to Yanbu, a working Red Sea port with reefs directly offshore. The Yanbu Historic District, in Yanbu Al-Bahr south of the modern city, covers about 45,000 square metres of coral-stone buildings and lanes, with about 100 heritage buildings and no ticket to walk in. In the afternoon you go out to the Seven Sisters, walls of coral offshore where hammerhead sharks are seen.

A slow morning on Yanbu Beach if the flight allows, then the transfer to the airport.