Stuff to do in the Isles

[Samwise]

In a couple of months I'm going to have about a week of vacation time in "the Isles"¹ and I'm looking for some suggestions on things to do.  The last time I was over that way I spent about three days getting dragged through a lot of frantic sightseeing, mostly in London.  This time I'll have a bit more time and I'll be free to wander about on my own, as near or as far as I please.  Here are a few ideas I've come up with so far:

 - Stay in London again, but bum around and soak it in rather than doing the tourist thing.
 - Take the Guinness brewery tour.
 - Go to Liverpool, find the Cavern.  Say "oo" and "ah".
 - Track down ancestral homelands.
 - Go to Wales and look at old castles.

I know we've got at least a few people on this board from around there.  Ideas?

¹Wikipedia informs me that the term "British Isles" is confusing and objectionable.

[Strazos]

Wow, we can do footnotes here? How awesome.

And heh....if you want a challenge, go around London without using the Underground, like I had to do for about 1.5 days when I was there last year.




Sorry, I have no actual suggestions, as I just walked (literally) around London for the few days I was there.

[Engels]

Its sort of impossible to give advice without knowing your tastes. Me? I'd get on the ferry to France asap, simply because I've been subjected to weeks of English food and for me, its one of those existential things. I get morbidly depressed in England, simply because of the food.  I weep over that crap. They go on about how good their Indian food is, but really, its just decent by contrast to the utter rubbish the English manage to cook. Plougman's lunch? The fuck is that? Average plougman who isnt sleeping on the job would pass out from malnutrition. And don't even get me started on what they do to beef there. No shit they got mad cow's disease. I'd be furious too if I was being killed to be served up as sailor tack.

Now, if you're into gardens, England can't be beat with a stick. I'm serious. I could give a rat's ass about gardens, in general, but I was impressed with their gardens. Huge gardens, to get lost in, with wide boulevards with trees from all over the world. The cathedrals are ok, but just about everywhere in Europe has rocking cathedrals. Shopping is too expensive, especially with the weak dollar.

Skip Cambridge and Oxford unless you like that sort of thing. There's fuck all else going on there other than their old buildings. Well, there's standing on a plank of wood and pushing yourself along a dirty canal with a long pole. Some people really go in for that.

Londoners are jerks, for the most part, but if you travel up north the folks get nicer. On the whole, a little xenophobic, but never ever impolite. Even when they're being incredibly rude and all but flipping you off, they're incredibly polite about it. Its an English art form, I think.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Anglophile. I watch English television more than American TV, I read tons of British fiction, and of course, great music. But its like a good meal; you don't want a tour of the kitchen, you just want it brought to the table.

My apologies to any English person I have offended in this small diatribe. I humbly submitt that I wouldn't know what on earth to recommend to a tourist in the US other than maybe the Grand Canyon and perhaps Philadelphia.

[Strazos]

My hublest apologies to any English person I have offended in this small diatribe. I humbly submitt that I wouldn't know what on earth to recommend to a tourist in the US other than maybe the Grand Canyon and perhaps Philadelphia.

Even I would have a hard time recommending that one, and I live less than a half hour from the city. It's old, and it's dirty.

OOo look, some old buildings....but they're rather ugly and drab.

Currently, the only, ONLY reason I go into the city is for hockey games. That is it.

[Engels]

I hear ya, but I kind of liked that the old district is part of the city in general. They aren't that impressive, but there's something 'wow' about a historic building in the middle of everything else, living next to it perse. I lived in Annapolis, with its very well manicured historical buildings and I prefer Philly, simply because their history seems part of every day life, whereas in Annapolis, its like 'LOOK HERE, WE'RE OLD AND VENERABLE'.

Anyways, its probably all a matter of taste. I bet the average Briton could give a shit about historical buildings clean or otherwise. Its not like there's a dearth of them there.

[Samwise]

No France.  Though I did notice the last time I was in the UK that the food generally sucked.  I've had some very good "British" food in the US, though, so I'm convinced that it must exist in its supposed land of origin as well.  I'm hoping all I have to do to find it is get far away from the tourist traps.  (Like in San Francisco.)

[Strazos]

Somehow, I didn't eat any actual British food while I was in London.

[Rasix]

Somehow, I didn't eat any actual British food while I was in London.

Only "English" food I had in London was the breakfast they served at the B&B.  Seemed like a normal breakfast for me.. just with baked beans for some reason. I think I had Italian, Spanish tapas, and French the 3 nights I stayed there. 

The food in France was epic.  EPIC. 

[Engels]

Actually, you know what, I must ammend my prior attack on British food. They do breakfast like Americans do breakfast, on the same awsome scale. I even developed a taste for beans on toast, which for brits isn't only for breakfast. So its not all bad. And Samwise, I'm sorry to inform you that yes, American 'british themed' pubs often do make good english food...This gets to the heart of the matter; its not that in principle English food is bad, its just that its cooked by the English, who must have learned this as a means of repelling the French from their shores.

[tar]

Going by what you've listed so far, you seem interested in old things? Castles and the like? Scenery? Could try Devon, Cornwall. Tintagel castle is out there, might want to visit it before it falls into the sea :) Unless you don't like heights that is.

[Jeff Kelly]

Why not visit Ironwood and be insulted by him live and in person ;-) it so much more personal when its not done over the intarwebs ;-)

[Ironwood]

Always welcome.

[NowhereMan]

When in London I really don't see the point in trying to eat 'real' English food. While good English food is nice, it certainly isn't very interesting or exciting and London's got restaurants with cuisine from all over the world. And yeah, getting around London without using the Tube is certainly a good way to get to know it. Wouldn't recommend it if you've got any kind of tight schedule, it really is easy to get lost here. You might want to look at http://www.whatsoninlondon.co.uk/ for your time there and see if anything takes your fancy.

That aside not sure what to recommend, yeah if you like pretty picturesque countryside or half decent beaches then Devon and Cornwall could be good places to visit. While I've only ever been there to visit friends for a weekend (which mostly involved drinking, etc.) York seemed like a nice place and I've heard good things about it from people who have visited properly.

[raydeen]

My hublest apologies to any English person I have offended in this small diatribe. I humbly submitt that I wouldn't know what on earth to recommend to a tourist in the US other than maybe the Grand Canyon and perhaps Philadelphia.

Even I would have a hard time recommending that one, and I live less than a half hour from the city. It's old, and it's dirty.

OOo look, some old buildings....but they're rather ugly and drab.

Currently, the only, ONLY reason I go into the city is for hockey games. That is it.

The only thing that gets me down to Philthydelphia is Chinatown. And the occasional trip with the inlaws because they think the zoo and the Franklin Institute (with Tuttleman iMax of course) are things you have to see once and sometimes twice a year. I prefer once or twice a decade but I do it for the kid because she gets a charge out of it.

[/derail]

[Sky]

Is there a UK music scene or is it all trendy Spin magazine style shit? Whenever I travel I like to hit up music clubs.

[Signe]

Isn't Ironwood a Scottsman?   

[Sky]

I'm Irish, but I've got about a fifth of Scotch in me.

 

[Kenrick]

Visit Edinburgh if you have the time.

[Signe]

Edinburgh is filled with English people from Surrey.

[Strazos]

Somehow, I didn't eat any actual British food while I was in London.

Only "English" food I had in London was the breakfast they served at the B&B.  Seemed like a normal breakfast for me.. just with baked beans for some reason. I think I had Italian, Spanish tapas, and French the 3 nights I stayed there. 

The food in France was epic.  EPIC. 

Honestly, I don't think I even had a French dinner...I think we had Cantonese or somesuch one night....

But I did do French for Breakfast and Lunch....superb. You'd be amazed how cool a meal of just cheese is.

I had Mussels in Brussels...that pretty much counts as French, right?

[penfold]

Re : British Food

I'm somewhat of a gastronome, and can find a really good meal at about any budget, more or less anywhere I've been in the UK. These days good food is everywhere, especially with the rise of the gastro-pubs and a culture of cooking and food experimentation as highlighted by the many food programmes on TV.

All i can suggest is you've been to the wrong places?

[WayAbvPar]

A couple of months should be right in the middle of the Premier League season. I would try like hell to get to one of the games if at all possible.

[eldaec]

Edinburgh is filled with English people from Surrey.

Everywhere in the UK is full of English people from (near enough) Surrey. The number of people hailing from almost any other part of the UK is more or less negligible.

Except in bars, which in all major cities are exclusively staffed by Aussies and New Zealanders.

- Take the Guinness brewery tour.
 - Go to Liverpool, find the Cavern.  Say "oo" and "ah".
 - Go to Wales and look at old castles.

I wouldn't do any of that. Especially the part about the Cavern, as it's long since been converted into a car park. The only thing good about Wales is the walking & natural scenery (admittedly that's a pretty big 'only thing'). And the Guinness tour is a set of halls with very large barrels in them.

London should still have plenty for you to do, Edinburgh is nice, so is Cambridge or Stratford-upon-Avon at this time of year, though both are chock full of tourists. Stratford is small and utterly dominated by the RSC of course, so don't plan to go there long or without seeing a play. Newcastle, Bath, or Leeds can be fun; while Manchester, Birmingham, and Coventry are utter holes. As someone else said, any clues on what you are looking for?

I'm supposed to recommend people do the London eye, it's what you are supposed to do in London.

When in London I really don't see the point in trying to eat 'real' English food.

The key thing is it's difficult to find cheap good British food in the UK. I live half my life out of hotels, and it's not hard to find good English restaurants if you can put a £25 - £30 expense claim in for a meal. The problem is that at the cheaper end you're looking at bad pub food, Engels is basically right - find a nice looking Italian, Indian, or Chinese. Brick Lane in London is always fun for Indian (though don't enter a restaurant there without negotiating 20% off, free poppadoms and a free beer).

If you are planning to leave the UK at all, go to Belgium/Holland, or further afield to Italy or something. Avoid northern France at all costs (southern France is fine).

Wikipedia informs me that the term "British Isles" is confusing and objectionable.

It only causes problems around Irish nationalists and people who voted for the Labour party in 1983, and even then, it's basically the same as referring to the homeland of a Canadian or Mexican as being part of 'North America' so I wouldn't worry too much.

A couple of months should be right in the middle of the Premier League season. I would try like hell to get to one of the games if at all possible.

What he said. And depending on fixtures and where you are based it's something you may well have to book ahead.

[eldaec]

I had Mussels in Brussels...that pretty much counts as French, right?

No.

Mussels while in Belgium is considered to be Belgian food.

Belgian food in summary : Mussels, chocolate, fish/seafood soup.

[Samwise]

Picturesque countryside is nice.  I also have a fondness for old things.  Where I'm from, "old" architecture usually means 1930s art deco, so I'm easily wowed by medieval castles and cathedrals and the like.  Not a big sports fan, but I do like music and theatre.  Stratford sounds fun; I hadn't thought of that.

As for food, I can get decent Italian and Chinese pretty easily in my hometown, so I probably won't be seeking those out.  Good call on the English breakfasts, though; I do remember breakfast being the most tolerable "authentic" English food I had.  Does the English culinary curse extend to Wales, Scotland, etc., or does it get better the further you get from London?

Also, I'd like to say that French food is IMO largely overrated.  After a couple of days in Paris I never wanted to see pastry or cheese again.  They do make a damn good salad over there, though.

And Ironwood, I might take you up on that.  You're in Glasgow, right?

[Ironwood]

Yeah.  You're more than welcome.  If you come later than the 20th of August, bring blankets and a lot of hot water.

[NowhereMan]

Welsh national dish=cheese toastie. Scottish cuisine seems to consist primarily of deep frying things that shouldn't be and washing it down with Irn-Bru. As much as I quite like the stuff Scottish people seem to be addicted.

Also if you like Shakespeare and don't feel like taking the time to go out to Stratford you might try the Globe theatre next to the Tate Modern. Recreation of Shakespeare's theatre and you can get a standing ticket for £5, pretty good if that's your thing and it's not raining.

[Ironwood]

Old Stereotypes that don't apply for teh win.

[sigil]

I Figure you'd find more places for curry or west indies than you would a "traditional English/Scottish/Welsh" meal.

[Righ]

London might as well be New York for the most part. If you want to look at some specific buildings or the contents of some museum or gallery (mostly the stuff we stole from elsewhere) it has its uses, but otherwise everything it contains can be had more locally. Unless I've got particular places or things I want to see, I prefer to actually get a feel for the country rather than just visit its sanitised major cities full of international retail chains and shops selling tourist tat.

Here's the good news - the greatest distance between two points in Briatin is 874 miles - a touch over 1000 by road. You can comfortably drive from London to Glasgow in a day, and if you chose to break the journey for an overnight stop, you can avoid all major roads, and see some fantastic scenery, and stop off at a couple of seriously impressive sights.

As a grubby foreigner from a sprog of a country, I'd suggest you check out a couple of megaliths - Stonehenge being the most famous, but there are many more worth seeing too. Skipping that experience would be like passing up Machu Pichu on a trip to Peru. The megaliths, barrows, chalk carvings and stone settlements of prehistoric Britain are pretty special. The Roman ruins, including Hadrians wall and Bath's ... baths should be seen, as should some of the great castles though here I'm strongly biased towards the Scottish ones. In England, Leeds, Lincoln and Warwick castles are worth seeing, in Scotland - Edinburgh, Glamis, Culzean, Eilean Donan, Brodick and Inveraray. The scenery's pretty fantasic in the highlands of Scotland, even the southern highlands. Climb Ben More. Nice mountain. Its also worth seeing the Cotswolds, Dartmoor, and the Lake District.

Google some of this crap and see what appeals and I'll recommend more.

Eat curry. You won't find a better curry in a restaurant than ones you get in Britain. If you visit Ironwood, have him take you to the Shish Mahal, Chandigrah, Ashoka, Koh-I-Noor or whatever is the best these days.

[Kenrick]

Great post, Righ.  The Isle of Sky, Loch Ness, Oban, Stirling, Caledonia Forest, and Glen Coe are a few things I'd add to that Scotland list.  The Highlands are gorgeous... if you are a scenery person and can find time to squeeze in a 2-3 day tour, you won't regret it.  I ended up doing a full week-long tour of the Highlands through this company and it was a blast.

And re. eating lots of curry while you're there... I can attest to this.  There was this one little hole in the wall joint in the southwest of London around Hounslow that was to die for.  But seriously, you can find a good curry just about anywhere.  I haven't eaten Indian food in the 3 years since returning to the U.S. because I'm afraid I'd be terribly disappointed.

I didn't get to do Stonehenge or Bath while I was living there, and I really regret it.  And for you, there's just obviously way too much to fit into a week.

[Samwise]

As a grubby foreigner from a sprog of a country, I'd suggest you check out a couple of megaliths - Stonehenge being the most famous, but there are many more worth seeing too. Skipping that experience would be like passing up Machu Pichu on a trip to Peru. The megaliths, barrows, chalk carvings and stone settlements of prehistoric Britain are pretty special. The Roman ruins, including Hadrians wall and Bath's ... baths should be seen, as should some of the great castles though here I'm strongly biased towards the Scottish ones. In England, Leeds, Lincoln and Warwick castles are worth seeing, in Scotland - Edinburgh, Glamis, Culzean, Eilean Donan, Brodick and Inveraray. The scenery's pretty fantasic in the highlands of Scotland, even the southern highlands. Climb Ben More. Nice mountain. Its also worth seeing the Cotswolds, Dartmoor, and the Lake District.

The megaliths sound interesting; I hadn't given much thought to there being more of them besides Stonehenge, since that's the only example one tends to hear about.  I did go and see Stonehenge and Bath last time I was in the UK.  Bath was fun, but I was a bit disappointed that I had to view Stonehenge from behind a little fence.  I assume the less well known sites are less uptight - any in particular you can point me at?  Googling terms like "megaliths" and "prehistoric" turned up a whole bunch of things, but most of them seemed to be along the lines of plaques marking the locations of old wells (currently part of a storm drain system), or stone circles that you'd trip over if you didn't know they were there.  Know of any interesting carvings, big giant standing stones, that sort of thing?

The castles all look neat, and I'm thinking I should definitely check out Edinburgh at least.  The places I liked the best on my last trip were the ones that had been touched the least in the centuries since their construction, i.e. the ones that hadn't been torn down and rebuilt multiple times.  Any recommendations on that front?  Most of the castles that have snazzy websites or are located in modern towns seem to be of the more modernized variety, so info on the older ones is a bit sparser when Googling.

Ben More looks steep.  What's the weather like in Scotland in late September?

Curry gives me wretched heartburn nowadays, but I might have to give it a shot anyway since I keep hearing how great it is over there, and I was a big curry fan before I became an old man with a tender stomach.  I suppose if I'm on vacation and don't have to go to work the next day it won't matter if I'm up all night.   :-D

[Signe]

It is steep.  Don't go up there.  Don't listen to Righ.  You could fall down and it would hurt.  Ask your doctor for a Prevacid script and you can eat anything you like and never pay the price.  Go to Portsmouth and look at rotting hulks of old warships.  When the tide complies, pick cockles.  They spit.  You can eat them, too.   Is Wolf passing out avatards these days? 

[Righ]

Stonehenge is unique in its size, complexity and the number of druids and hippies that want to clamber on it. After a dozen years of free rock festivals in an adjacent field, there was a danger of the festival being granted permanent rights under common law if it continued. Thatcher dispatched stormtroopers to beat the sun worshipers with large sticks, and there's been fences and barbed wire around the monument ever since. You can fondle almost any other historic site in Britain provided some toffee nosed git isnt using it for housing.

If you're inclined to go for Scotland, you probably don't want the Devon/Cornwall megaliths. Perhaps a ferry trip to the Isle of Lewis (an easy crossing compared to most Scottish islands) and the Callanish stones:



You could then go see a fairly unmolested iron age fort:



A pretty darned big standing stone nearby:



Lewis is pretty awesome, and the bars in Stornoway (the main town) are a riot. The weather in the west of Scotland during September is mild but wet. This pretty much applies to the other eleven months too.

Browse the significant megalithic sites:

http://www.stonepages.com/home.html

Chalk figures are peculiar to Wiltshire and surrounds, as that's where the greatest amount of chalk is.

http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/ChalkFigures.htm

Ben More isn't too steep if climbed from the Northeast. It's properly a hill climb, but it's 3000ft up, the lower parts can be wet and difficult walking, higher up it can get windy and thus cold. If you get a good day, it's a fantastic walk to some spectacular views.

You'd probably like Eilean Donan castle - its certainy restored, but its not done so in a way that spoils it. And it's postcard Scotland, and in every bloody movie, so you'd recognise it instantly:

[Ironwood]

Stirling is beautiful.