OK, so the thing is that my wife and I are kind of planning to visit the UK next year. We aren't sure of our finances on it yet...but it turns out that it can be pretty much any time of year after about April.
So, I'm asking the assembled might of the Ars Magica braininess: what's in the UK that I should make sure I see? Is there any seasonal thing I need to make sure I see?
(And, guys, I'm sorry, but I can't take a day to do the Ars Magica Con...this is Linda's dream trip, and I can't head off for the day to roll dice and tell stories. If I can I'll gatecrash the curry dinner the night before, though...if it links up with other stuff so that we are in the country at the right time.)
So, any suggestions?
(Sorry for the offtopicness - but I know that this is one of the web's centres of historico-mythic British excellence.)
Pitty that about the Tribunal. It is the first thing I would have suggested
A few castles. You have seen thousands of them in picture and movies, but it is like New York: having seen it and having BEEN there are 2 different things. England has a few well kept castles.
When you are in London, The British Museum, the Tate Modern, the Tate Britain and the Victoria & Albert museums are a "must see" IMO. I have not been to Bath or Stonehenge, but I have been told that both are pretty cool as well. The great lakes area is just awesome
By the side of trafalgar square there is an old books street with 7 or 8 old books, maps and the like. I always stop there when I am in London. Oldest map I have bought so far is from the 18th century.
I would also take Heirs to merlin with me and visit a few of the locations there.
Either oxford or cambridge are cool to visit.
If you want to see one of the few remaining "pure" norman castles, Colchester has one of them. Colchester is fairly dull, so I doubt you take that detour, but if you do it is by the side of Wivenhoe, a small village where you have the tea room with the best carrot cake in England. Confirmed by around 30-ish girls I know. If you are interested in that, the library of essex university os quite cool in political theory, but I guess that is more Alex's area than yours.
So much good stuff to see. If you head to London, you could spend all day every day doing something different. Tower of London, National Gallery, British Museum (there's a library there too...), Tate Modern, St Paul's Cathedral, London Eye, etc. And plenty of nightlife!
But I'd try to make time for Stonehenge. I mean, if you're coming all that way to visit the Stonehenge Tribunal... That whole area actually has a lot to see. If you like a bit of botany, or just an interesting day out, try the Eden Project.
Further East, Canterbury Cathedral is really impressive. And going north, there's Stratford upon Avon of course. Other cities like Liverpool, Manchester, and even Cardiff really aren't that far from London.
And Eastbourne has a pier. Not much else, but it does have a pier.
It seemks it also happens to have the Lawfords, though Another interesting place with a Pier is Brighton. A nice jane austen-ish city by the coast. Victorian style to the core. 2 interesting old book libraries there as well. I bought a couple first editions from kipling, Austen, Burke and Wilde there (yes I am something of a bookworm).
For London: The British Library (Original old English texts!)
I used to live in the North. So my favourites are regionally flavored:
Lindisfarne: Walk to the island at low tide (if that fits your schedule). There's THE abbey (ruin) and a small castle
Alnwick Castle (close to Lindisfarne, in Alnwick): you know some of it from the Harry Potter movies + the town of Alnwick has some amazing second hand book shops (I found a first edition of Sweet's Anglo-Saxon reader there, and a 19th century edition of Le Morte D'Arthur).
Durham: Beautiful old town, great bookshops, St. Cuthbert in the Cathedral (which was also used for Harry Potter)
York: leave out the Viking Interactive Jorvik museum - it's beneath you. The rest is wonderful, though.
"Bede's World" near Newcastle: wonderful Anglo-Saxon museum, beautiful books, reconstruction of houses, etc
Richmond: Old town, castle, starting point for hiking through the Yorkshhire dales
Maybe Whitby (because of Dracula, the whaling history, the ruined abbey) - with a walk to Robin Hood's Bay (along the cliff)
Maybe Corbridge (Roman site near Hadrian's Wall with museum) and Hexham (church with green man)
Whatever you do - you might want to consider joining "English Heritage", and or "National Trust" because it may be cheaper to become a member and pay reduced fees to many sites (you can become a member at most sites they manage)
Since this is your wife's dream trip and not yours, I'd caution you about spending an inordinate amount of time visiting medieval and Ars-related sites, unless she is into that. Two years ago, my girlfriend quickly tired of castles and museums. She likes gardens, so I focused on gardens within range of where we were staying at the time. Find out what your wife would like to do and what her interests are and go from there, armed with a good travel book.
I would say Manchester (but I'm biased, being a resident) as the oldest industrial city, and still one of the few with a really nice contrast between old and new.
Also because we have 1 of the few towns in the world which has foreplanning for global warming and world flooding. Atherton, despite being miles and miles inland, has a pier.
That's wisdom speaking.
To really help you, we must know: What's your wife like? All we know is that she probably likes cats. I mean she might be any age between 18 and 99. She might be into drugs and discos, or into pureed food because her teeth keep falling out. She might be into history, art, flowers, literature, bird watching, musicals, freeclimbing, haute cuisine or mummies.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to pry and I'm not asking for the juicy details - but the more you can tell us the easier we can help you.
She was a faeire princess until I stole her feathers ansd hid them?
OK: she's in her thirties, more athletic than me, into history, reads mostly science fiction, and collects artistic representations of spiders, which is easy to do in Australia. Occupationally she a library assistant. She's a keeen photographer. She's into medieval stuff (I got her a set of plate gauntlets for a wedding present, for example.) She prefers hack and slash computer games, particularly the Diablo series. We'll need to take in a zoo at some point...we'll need at least one castle but likely more. She's a vegetarian, so we'll need to find the UK vego restuarant guide. We always go on ghost tours when we go on holiday, but hate the ones with props that spring out at you. She loves musicals, so we need to visit Portabello Road and we may see the Phantom sequel. (We've already seen Wicked twice, and our cats are named for the lead characters.)
Vegetarian restaurants are easy to find in any not-small-village part of the UK. For castles, I reccommend Scotland and North East England. You can't swing a cat around here without hitting them - hell, the East Coast Main Line actually passes within a few metres of the Newcastle castle keep. The Zoos probably won't have many if any british animals though - they're more likely to have antipodean beasts. For them, you'd need places like the Chestnut Centre ( chestnutcentre.co.uk/welcome.htm ) in Derbyshire, also with convenient castles. I'm biased, but the south of England is mindnumbingly boring (save Cornwall, and as they'll tell you there, they're not English), and the photogenic bits start around Sheffield and get better as you go north - Cumbria and Scotland in general being the highlights.
Kew Gardens on a sunny day is awesome - it's accessible by Tube from Central London. It has history and biology and is peaceful: even though it can be quite busy there's masses of room.
Well, for 12th/13th Century castles, I'd suggest Warwick Castle.
If you were going to have, say, three bases of operations during your stay, then London allows pretty easy access to Warwick (two hours or so by train or car.. so not much for you people from a decent sized country...). Within London itself you've got Charing Cross Road for specialist books, Portabello (as you've mentioned) for overpriced antiquities (most of London's overpriced, mind), and lots of musicals in the West End. The zoo's ok, but limited by not being able to expand (it's in a park, very central), so most of the big creatures are up at Whipsnade (about an hour from London). I love London. I live there. For me, The Thames at high tide is a treat in itself.
Assuming your interest might stray into the Neolithic, you could try Salisbury: a mid-13th Century cathedral, near to Stonehenge and Avebury. You could also use it as a base to explore the Dorset coast (about an hour and a half away) - cos, if you prefer your castles ruined, you might like Corfe Castle - which isn't too far from a small but lovely site: early medieval Upwey Wishing Well (a little tea room with excellent Dorset apple cake and a water garden channelling some of the water that rises from the well). Hmm. If you were going to spend a few days down there, you could also take in the Jurassic Coast, Lulworth Cove, etc. And the abandoned village of Tyneham, none of which are medieval, but I like them.
Then I think you should head up to Edinburgh... possibly via Dumfries... Caerlaverock Castle...
Surprised no-one's mentioned Glastonbury yet! Definitely worth a visit, and so is nearby Wells. I also like Bristol, Bath and the south west in general, and my wife loves Cornwall. I'd also recommend putting Edinburgh and St. Andrews on a list of places to visit if you have time to go up to Scotland.
I've been to London many times, but haven't really seen much else of England. Living in Denmark, it's very close by, and not very costly to travel, nor time consuming. I've always liked the Tower, those Beefeaters telling stories use the words "bloody" (as the original usel not the swear word use!) and "murder" a lot.
I really enjoyed visiting Hampton Court Palace, it has exciting buildings and gardens as well. You can go there very easily by train from London, and I also think you can go by boat on the rivers and canals (but that takes several hours). The castle itself is an architechtural bastard, since much of the early buildings were too expensive to tear down and rebuild, according to the fashion of the times. So there are parts of the 14th (IIRC) century castle side by side with 16th and 17th.
Taking a boat from Embankment to Greenwich is also enjoyable. You see a lot of the city from the riverside, and the captain siling the one I took told a lot of good stories. Be sure the weather is ok though, this trip is considerable morw windy than just walking on the streets.
Thanks for this all. Cornelius, what's the skinny on the Dungeon? My wife seems kind of pro the dungeon, so I need to know what the problems with it are.
Another interesting place with a Pier is Brighton. A nice jane austen-ish city by the coast. Victorian style to the core. 2 interesting old book libraries there as well. I bought a couple first editions from kipling, Austen, Burke and Wilde there (yes I am something of a bookworm).