In Britain, the city of Durham – about 20 km south of Newcastle – is mainly famous for two things: a bishop who did not believe in God and a university that serves posh kids who have failed their Oxbridge entry exams. We will come to both of these later but start with what Durham…
No visit of Newcastle would be complete without a trip to the famously dark rocks of the Northumberland coast … … and the historic castles that proudly stand at the North Sea’s edge – as well as the ice cream vans that are parked underneath their walls. Rocks, castles and ice cream vans are all…
Let’s play a game! Please think of famous British sights that you can name off the top of your head – three or four will do. And now please think: how many of these sights are located outside of London? I bet that for most of you the answer will be zero. That, in a…
I have always held that every town, no matter how frumpy and dull it may appear, can give you one day of good entertainment. After that, the metropolitan wheat is divided from the Palookaville chaff, but for a single day, day trippers should not struggle too hard to find what they are looking for: a…
Some countries do city tourism well, others badly or not at all. At one end of the scale, you have France, Spain and Italy. Their great cities are firm fixtures on the global tourism itinerary, and most of these countries’ regional capitals have become popular destinations in their own right. Toulouse and Strasbourg, Seville and…
For a daytrip outside Bristol, we recommend a hike around the Clifton Suspension Bridge, easy-to-reach via city bus line no. 8, … … or an urban walk through Bath, one of Britain’s foremost tourist attractions and the only place on earth that has been listed twice as a UNESCO World Heritage Site: once in its…
For centuries, Bristol and Liverpool were the two main hubs of Britain’s highly lucrative Atlantic trade, but when this trade collapsed after the end of WWII (mainly because Britain lost its empire of colonies), the tales of these two cities took sharply different turns. Liverpool entered a steep decline, losing nearly half of its population…
All right, we do admit that many visitors of London and the United Kingdom will allot a good deal more than two hours to this famous university town in the east of England. For every day tripper from London (trains from King’s Cross or Liverpool Street take little more than one hour), there is at…
Manchester was the world’s first industrial town, the cradle of the global manufacturing economy. Today‘s Manchester, however, is no museum: busy and forward-looking, it seems prouder of its soccer clubs and its modern-day prosperity – a rare thing in Britain’s troubled north – than of any past glories. There is little in the streets of…
Chichester: Roman Walls, Cricket’s Babe Ruth and Philip Larkin I normally shy away from dishing out general travel advice, but here is one: rather than picking your destinations according to fashion and the dictates of the travel press, base your choice on expedience and opportunity. If someone, for example, invites you for a job interview…