Where to find easy hiking trails in the United Kingdom
A shrine for a world-famous pop star, the second largest private residence in London, the grave of London’s most iconic political émigré: you will come across all that and more in today’s walk – on top of some surprisingly wild scenery, so wild in fact that you would never expect to find anything like it…
One key difference between London and Paris is the pace at which these two largest cities in Europe change their face: in Paris, any such change is slow. Very slow. When I see photos of Parisian street scenes from the years before WWI, more often than not I can recognize the location. In London, conversely,…
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…
One of the best things about hiking and about travelling in general is that, every now and then, you are running into something totally unexpected. Something that you did not even know existed when you set out in the morning and that, in the evening, has enriched your understanding of that particular town, region or…
Legendary towns have legendary streets and quarters. I have never lived in New York City, but I know what everybody knows: that Madison Avenue is a by-word for the country’s (and the world’s) advertising industry, that Broadway is the home of live entertainment and that Wall Street is the place from where the gangsters operate…
Hikers can explore the Sussex Coastal Culture Trail from Eastbourne to Hastings – all 29 km of it – comfortably in two or, better still, in three stages. Such a longer trip ensures a better balance as otherwise, there is a risk that your Sussex Coastal Culture Trail experience will be all trail and no…
For many years, traditional seaside resorts have been in a state of crisis, but there are signs that they are springing back into recovery. There is life in the old dog yet. The glory days of old-style seaside resorts – in Italy and France but particularly in the UK – was a time when nearly…
In our previous London spy walk on the trail of the Cambridge Five, we left off with Maclean and Burgess just about making it to Southampton for the day’s last ferry to France, never to return to the UK. The sudden disappearance of two middle-ranking foreign service officials, at least one of whom was under acute suspicion…
London may not be the world’s most beautiful city but it is probably its most storied. Almost every street corner has a story to tell: about rock music, Charles Dickens, Jack the Ripper and so on – the list of themes is virtually endless. London is also the capital of spy stories, and the most…
If you want to see the largest number of ghosts crammed together into the smallest possible space to get the biggest spectral bang for your London-walking-buck so to speak, go to the City of London. After all, before the square mile became a business district, it was pretty much all of London there was. While cows were…