There’s enough to see and do in Britain to swallow up months of travel. The rundown of country-by-country highlights over the following pages will help you plan an itinerary – or remind you of how much you’ve yet to see.
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WORCESTER AND BIRMINGHAM CANAL, BIRMINGHAM
FACT FILE
• Britain is a constitutional monarchy, whose head of state is Queen Elizabeth II. Parliament is composed of the directly elected House of Commons and the unelected House of Lords. The Prime Minister is the head of the largest political party represented in the House of Commons.
• The lowest point is in the Fens of eastern England, at 13ft below sea level; the highest mountain is Ben Nevis, in Scotland, at 4406ft. The longest river is the Severn (220 miles), which flows through England and Wales.
• The population of Britain is about 63 million: 55 million in England, 5 million in Scotland and 3 million in Wales. The biggest city is London, with over 8 million inhabitants.
• The distance between the two extreme points of the British mainland – a journey beloved of charity fundraisers – is the 874 miles, from Land’s End (Cornwall, England) to John O’Groats (in the Scottish Highlands).
• You can always plan a day out at the seaside – nowhere in Britain is more than 75 miles from the coast.
• Cary Grant, Stan Laurel, Robert Pattinson, Christian Bale and Guy Pearce? They’re all Brits – oh, and Gregory House, MD (Hugh Laurie) too. But London-girl Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) and Mary Poppins’ Cockney chimney sweep Bert (Dick van Dyke)? Definitely not.
London is emphatically the place to start. Nowhere in the country can match the scope and innovation of the capital. It’s a colossal, dynamic city that is perhaps not as immediately pretty as some of its European counterparts, but does have Britain’s – arguably Europe’s – best spread of nightlife, cultural events, museums, pubs, galleries and restaurants.
The other large English cities – Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool – each have their strengths and admirers. Among much else, Birmingham has a resurgent arts scene, Leeds is the north’s prime shopping city, and Newcastle’s nightlife is legendary. Manchester can match the capital for glamour in terms of bars, clubbing and indie shopping, and also boasts two of the world’s best-known football teams, while its near-neighbour Liverpool is successfully reinventing itself as a top cultural destination.
History runs deepest in England’s oldest urban settlements. The glorious cathedral cities, like Lincoln, York, Salisbury, Durham and Winchester, form a beautiful national backbone of preserved churches, houses and buildings, while you’re never more than a few miles from a spectacular castle, a majestic country house, or a ruined monastery. There are world-famous, UNESCO-recognized sites galore, from Blenheim Palace to Canterbury Cathedral, but all English towns can rustle up an example of bygone glory, whether medieval chapel, Georgian mansion or Victorian mill. Meanwhile, reminders of more ancient times are ubiquitous – and reveal quite how central England has been to thousands of years of European development. In the southwest there are remnants of an indigenous Celtic culture that was all but eradicated elsewhere by the Romans, who in turn left their mark from Hadrian’s Wall in the north to Colchester in the south. Even more dramatic are the surviving traces of the very earliest prehistoric settlers – most famously the megalithic circles of Stonehenge and Avebury.
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MICHELDEVER FOREST, WINCHESTER
For many visitors, it’s not the towns or monuments that are most beguiling, but the long-established villages of England, hundreds of which amount to nothing more than a pub, a shop, a gaggle of cottages and a farmhouse or two. Traditional rural life may well be on the wane – though that’s been said of England since the Industrial Revolution, over two hundred years ago – but in places like Devon, Cornwall, the Cotswolds, Cumbria and Yorkshire there are still villages, traditions and festivals that seem to spring straight from a Constable canvas or a Wordsworth poem. Indeed, the English countryside has been an extraordinarily fecund source of inspiration for writers and artists, and the English themselves have gone to great lengths to protect their natural heritage. Exmoor, Dartmoor, the North York Moors, the Lake District and the Peak District are the most dramatic of the country’s ten national parks, each offering a mix of picturesque villages, wild landscapes and wonderful walks.
The Scottish capital, Edinburgh, is – whisper it to the English – a far more handsome city than London, famous for its magnificent setting, majestic castle and ancient royal quarter of Holyrood, not to mention an acclaimed international arts festival and some excellent museums. A short journey west is the larger city of Glasgow, a sprawling postindustrial metropolis on the banks of the River Clyde that’s an upbeat destination with great bars, clubs and restaurants. Its museums and galleries are some of the best in Britain, while the city’s impressive architecture reflects the wealth of its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century heyday.
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FAIRY POOLS, ISLE OF SKYE
Scotland’s other towns and cities are only fitfully enticing, though central destinations like Stirling, Perth and Dundee, and Aberdeen in the northeast, make a valiant tilt at tourists, and, in the university town of St Andrew’s (Prince William and Kate Middleton’s alma mater) Scotland has a college town to rank with Oxford and Cambridge. However, what usually resonates most with visitors is Scotland’s great outdoors, whether it’s the well-walked hills of the Trossachs in central Scotland – home of Loch Lomond – or the Highlands, whose mountains, sea cliffs, shadowy glens and deep lochs cover the entire northern two-thirds of the country. In Highland Scotland in particular, famous destinations trip off the tongue – Loch Ness, Culloden, Cape Wrath and John O’Groats – while Ben Nevis has Britain’s highest mountain.
Some of the most fascinating journeys are to be had on the Scottish islands, the most accessible of which extend in a long rocky chain off the Atlantic coast. Whether it’s mooching around Mull, investigating the early Christian heritage of Iona, whisky-tasting on Islay, or touring the Isle of Arran – the most visited of the Hebrides – there are unique experiences on every inch of the Inner Hebridean archipelago. The outer Western Isles, meanwhile – from Lewis and Harris in the north to Barra in the south – feature some of Britain’s most dramatic scenery, from towering sea cliffs to sweeping sandy beaches.
At Britain’s northern extreme lie the sea- and wind-buffeted Orkney and Shetland islands, whose rich Norse heritage makes them distinct in dialect and culture from mainland Scotland, while their wild scenery offers some of Britain’s finest birdwatching and some stunning Stone Age archeological remains.
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Despite the crowded motorways and urban sprawl, Britain can still be an astonishingly wild place. Natural habitats are zealously guarded in fifteen national parks, from the far southwest to the distant north – a jaw-dropping number of protected areas for a nation of Britain’s size.
Even in the most popular parks – the almost Alpine Lake District, say, or the rugged Peak District – it’s never a problem to escape the day-tripper crowds, while true wilderness awaits in the Cairngorms of Scotland or Snowdonia in Wales.
Outside the parks, too, every corner of Britain has its own wild charm – whether it’s tracking Northumberland’s wild cattle, seal-spotting at Blakeney Point, dolphin-watching on the Moray Firth or hiking across windswept Lundy Island to see its famous puffins.
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It’s Cardiff, of course, the vibrant capital, that boasts most of Wales’s major institutions – the National Assembly, Principality Stadium, Millennium Centre, National Museum – and is the best place to get the feel of an increasingly confident country. The second city, Swansea, is grittier by far, a handy base for the sandy bays, high cliffs and pretty villages of the wonderful Gower peninsula. Meanwhile, in the postindustrial Valleys – once a byword for coal mining – a superb sequence of heritage parks, memorials and museums illuminates the period when South Wales produced a third of the world’s coal.
Castles are everywhere in Wales, from the little stone keeps of the early Welsh princes to Edward I’s ring of doughty fortresses, including Beaumaris, Conwy and Harlech. Religion played its part too – the cathedral at St Davids was founded as early as the sixth century AD, and the quiet charms of the later, medieval monastic houses, like ruined Tintern Abbey, are richly rewarding. Much older relics also loom large – stone circles offer a link to the pre-Roman era when the priestly order of Druids ruled over early Celtic peoples.
If England glories in its villages, perhaps it’s the small towns of Wales that appeal most – New Age Machynlleth and lively Llangollen, the foodie centre of Abergavenny and festival-fuelled Llanwrtyd Wells. You could concoct a delightful tour that goes from one attractive, idiosyncractic town to another, but even so, you wouldn’t want to miss Wales’s other great glory – the wild countryside. The Cambrian mountains form the country’s backbone, between the soaring peaks of Snowdonia National Park and the angular ridges of the Brecon Beacons. These are the two best places for a walking holiday – though you can get up Snowdon, Wales’s highest mountain, by railway if you prefer. Mountainous Wales also offers world-class mountain biking – Coed-y-Brenin in Mid-Wales is the name all bikers know. As for the Welsh seaside, don’t miss the magnificent clifftops of the rippling Pembrokeshire coast or the sandy beaches of the western Cambrian shore. Most of the coast remains unspoiled, and even where the long sweeps of sand have been developed they are often backed by enjoyable, traditional seaside resorts, such as Llandudno in the north, Aberystwyth in the west or Tenby in the south.
BRITAIN ON A PLATE
You might think of roast beef or fish and chips – but, only half-jokingly, chicken tikka masala is by now well accepted as a national dish, a reflection of the extent to which Britain’s postwar immigrant communities have contributed to the country’s dining scene. Even the smallest town will have an Indian restaurant (more properly, Bangladeshi or Pakistani), with Chinese (largely Cantonese) and Thai restaurants common too – not to mention countless Italian trattorias and pizza places and Spanish tapas bars. For the most authentic food, there are a few ethnic enclaves you need to know about – Chinatown in London and Manchester’s “curry mile” in Rusholme are probaby the best-known, but there are all kinds of treats in store in the lesser-touristed parts of the country. Pakistani grills, Turkish meze or Polish pierogi in London’s unheralded suburbs, a Kashmiri balti in Birmingham or Bradford, or South Indian snacks in Leicester – all are as British as can be.
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WESTON-SUPER-MARE, SOMERSET