Places to visit, of interest or beauty, in Britain’s countryside.
Time to go for a walk. So here’s Pen-y-Ghent, one of the Three Peaks of the Yorkshire Dales. To get the full set, you need to conquer Ingleborough and Whernside too. Some folk hike scramble or totter up all of ‘em in a single day, a distance of about 24.5 miles; it’s a challenge. Before
Perambulating Pen-y-Ghent Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
Legendary Britain is a more illusive place than it once was. But there are still places where it is sometimes hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. Mysterious Glastonbury Tor, a natural feature rising some 500 feet above the watery Somerset Levels, has been a sacred site since before the Romans came. It
A journey to Glastonbury Tor Read More »
South West
My female reader of a certain age may recall the scene in the film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), in which Kevin Costner in the title role bathes naked under a waterfall. He is surprised by the fragrant Maid Marion, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and the rest is inevitable. With all due respect
Before anyone gets carried away with gratuitous salacity, the Seven Sisters are chalk cliffs on the south east coast of England. Do not confuse them with another Seven Sisters, an area of London in N15, near Tottenham. Exciting and attractive though the latter undoubtedly is, today – today we’re striding out across the cliffs, perforce
On top of Seven Sisters Read More »
South East
Just past Stoney Cross, in a woodland clearing down a leafy lane off the busy east-bound A31 in Hampshire, is a memorial to one of England’s least popular kings. We are told that William II, known as ‘Rufus’ and who ruled from 1087-1100, was a really nasty piece of work – a cruel, merciless, tyrant
We needed to get out. You know how it is; one of those days when the list of jobs can go hang, because it’s just too good to waste time doing something you should be doing. “Where shall we go, then?” “Somewhere with snow.” “Like…?” “I dunno. Nowhere too strenuous. You choose”. “What do you
Everywhere in Britain, we walk in the footsteps of the past; it’s just not always that obvious. However, a relatively short, lung-bursting, stagger up to St David’s Head (Penmaen Dewi) in Pembrokeshire will take you to a reminder of a 5th century saint, the remains of an Iron Age settlement and field systems, a feature
Driving through Cannock Chase, a lovely area of heath and woodland in Staffordshire, I was surprised to see a sign pointing to the Katyn Memorial. Katyn Forest is about 1600 miles away, near Smolensk, in Russia. There, in 1940, more than 4,500 Polish nationals were murdered by the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s sinister security police
The Cross of Sacrifice instantly identifies a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery. Beautifully tended, as they all are, the information panel tells you that this one contains 383 burials from the First World War, 97 Commonwealth – mainly New Zealanders – and 286 Germans. There are also three burials from the Second World War. Shortly after
Cannock Chase War Cemetery Read More »
West Midlands
Yorkshire’s Ingleborough is a curiously shaped hill, large and looming. That said, there are bigger features in the world, even in our ever-modest Britain; but being over the benchmark height of 1,000’ (2,372’ or 732 metres to be precise), Ingleborough qualifies to call itself a mountain. Locally, it’s known as a ‘peak’ – one of
Introducing Ingleborough Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
ABAB’s regular reader (thank you – the cheque’s in the post) will know that my knowledge of art could be sketched on the back of very small postage stamp. Nevertheless, in the endless pursuit of intriguing stories and occasionally stimulating bits of Britain, which may attract and amuse, the intrepid Bit About Britain team set
A bit about Constable Country Read More »
East of England
The Devil was a busy little bee in days gone by. Some might say he still is, but in any event he crops up all over the British landscape – including at the Tarr Steps, a famous clapper bridge over the river Barle, Somerset, in the Exmoor National Park. Clapper bridges, river crossings of dry-stone
