Feb 11th, 2012 at 8:00AM:
Thanks to the London Olympics, which will open on July 27, and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, 2012 is expected to be a boom year for tourism in Great Britain. In the hopes of capitalizing on this trend, six historic cities have teamed up to get noticed by travelers intent on venturing beyond the English capital.
Bath, Carlisle, Chester, Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and York, Britain's ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
wales posts
Britain's Heritage Cities are ready for visitors
Feb 11th, 2012 at 8:00AM:
Thanks to the London Olympics, which will open on July 27, and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, 2012 is expected to be a boom year for tourism in Great Britain. In the hopes of capitalizing on this trend, six historic cities have teamed up to get noticed by travelers intent on venturing beyond the English capital.
Bath, Carlisle, Chester, Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and York, Britain's ...Weird monument in Wales has interesting history
Dec 6th, 2011 at 1:00PM:
If you're staying in Aberystwyth, Wales, you can see it from pretty much everywhere--a tall tower on a bluff to the south of town. At first it's hard to see what it is, so my wife, five-year-old son and I decided to walk there and have a look.
It was an easy two or three kilometers from town through a wooded trail up a fairly steep slope. What greeted us once we made it through the trees was ...Medieval painted churches in England and Wales
Oct 6th, 2011 at 11:00AM:
England and Wales are full of beautiful medieval churches. From the famous like Christ Church cathedral to the lesser-known like Dorchester Abbey, they offer breathtaking architecture and decoration, and since many are free, they make good budget travel destinations.
Some even preserve fragile paintings from the Middle Ages, like this one photographed by Roger Rosewell, author of Medieval ...Woman killed by cows serves as warning to walkers
Sep 2nd, 2011 at 11:30AM: A woman has been trampled and killed by cows yesterday on the outskirts of Cardiff, Wales, the South Wales Echo reports.
Marilyn Duffy, 61, was walking her dog through a farmer's field. It's believed the cows were frightened by the dog and attacked. Cows are calving at this time of year and can become easily frightened by dogs or even lone people. Farmers say it's best to give cows a wide berth ...Tomb of Stonehenge builder found?
Sep 1st, 2011 at 5:00PM:
A prehistoric tomb discovered in Wales may be the grave of one of the builders of Stonehenge.
Archaeologists found the tomb at the Carn Menyn site in Wales, generally thought to be the quarry for the so-called "bluestones" used for the inner circle of Stonehenge in 2300 BC.
The tomb is a passage grave, a cigar-shaped enclosure of stone that was once covered in earth. The tomb is in ruins ...Oldest cave art in UK discovered and vandalized
Aug 31st, 2011 at 11:30AM: A design of a reindeer hidden in the back of a Welsh cave may be the oldest cave art in the UK, archaeologists say. Sadly, it's been vandalized.
Unlike the more familiar cave paintings of France and Spain, the reindeer is scratched into the rock instead of being painted, like this horse from the Scottish cave of East Weymss courtesy Europe a la Carte. No photo of the reindeer has been released ...United Kingdom: 3G service survey crowdsourced
Aug 24th, 2011 at 1:30PM: This morning, the BBC released a survey regarding the reach of 3G service across the United Kingdom. The BBC obtained its data the newfangled way, via crowdsourcing. In July, almost 45,000 people downloaded an Android app that allowed their mobile phones to be tracked for the survey.
And the outcome of the survey? The BBC found that about three-quarters of the time people in the UK appear to be ...Flags without countries
Jul 29th, 2011 at 1:00PM:
Do you recognize this flag? Neither did I. It's the flag of Lapland. Lapland isn't a country, but a region in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia where the Sámi (Lapps) live. Only Norway recognizes this flag, and it's flown throughout the country on February 6 to celebrate Sámi National Day.
I discovered this flag in Aberystwyth, Wales, of all places, while walking ...Riding the rails in Wales: a steam train into the Welsh hills
Jul 28th, 2011 at 2:00PM:
If you like old trains, you're going to love Wales. The region has several narrow-gauge steam locomotives. The website Great Little Trains of Wales tells you about ten of them traveling various routes around the country. Most are clustered in the north and west, which most travelers say has the best scenery.
Having never been on a steam train and knowing it would be a guaranteed hit with our ...Exploring the Welsh coast: Aberaeron and New Quay
Jul 27th, 2011 at 2:00PM:
Yesterday I mentioned that Aberystwyth is a good base from which to explore western Wales. On our second day in Wales my wife, son, and I hopped on a local bus and went south down the Welsh coast to the ports of Aberaeron and New Quay. Aberaeron is about 40 minutes from Aberystwyth and New Quay is only about 20 minutes further south from Aberaeron.
While we didn't have long in Aberaeron, we ...Aberystwyth: Exploring a seaside resort in Wales
Jul 26th, 2011 at 2:00PM:
When deciding where to go for a beach vacation, Aberystwyth in Wales probably isn't the first place you think of. It wasn't ours either. My wife and I picked it on the advice of an English friend who had never been there and about an hour's research on the Internet. We like to travel by the seat of our pants because it usually leads to a great experience. Usually.
Since this will not be an ...UK strike slows down ports and airports
Jun 30th, 2011 at 8:30AM: UK airports and ports are experiencing delays as many customs and immigration officials are on a one-day strike.
The UK Border Agency is one of several UK public sector unions on strike over plans to change pensions, a move they say will have employees working longer, paying more into the system, and getting less out of it when they retire.
Some Border Agency workers started early, at 6pm ...Boy drifts a mile out to sea in rubber ring
Apr 30th, 2011 at 3:30PM: A twelve-year-old boy was rescued a mile off the coast of Wales today when he drifted away from shore with only a child's rubber ring to keep him afloat.
A lifeboat crew saved the boy as he suffered from hypothermia and was about to fall unconscious. If he had, the crew said, he would have slipped out of the floating ring and drowned.
The boy had been playing by the seaside and had been ...Prince William and Kate Middleton: Royal Wedding build-up starts in Wales
Feb 24th, 2011 at 12:45PM: Prince William and Kate Middleton made their first official public appearance together today, a milestone in the lead-up to the Royal Wedding on April 29.
The couple visited Trearddur Bay on the island of Anglesey in Wales to dedicate a Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeboat. The lifeboat, it turns out, is the most technologically advanced inshore rescue boat that the RNLI ...Ordnance Survey maps: sometimes government CAN do a great job
Dec 22nd, 2010 at 3:30PM: The BBC recently interviewed a cartographer for the Ordnance Survey. This government department is in charge of mapping the United Kingdom, except for Northern Ireland, which has its own agency.
If you like maps or plan to hike in the UK, the Ordnance Survey maps are simply amazing. They've been measuring and drawing this green and pleasant land since the eighteenth century and produce the best ...Help Wanted: one mermaid
Oct 28th, 2010 at 4:30PM: With the economy the way it is, it's hard to get a job, so if you can't find a position in your own field perhaps you should try a career change and become a mermaid.
That's what the SeaQuarium in Rhyl, Wales, is offering. It wants one mermaid (or merman) to swim around with its fish during visitor hours. The applicant needs to wear a half-fish costume, have good hygiene, be a licensed scuba ...Mystery hitchhiker becomes poster child for National Library of Wales
Oct 6th, 2010 at 9:30AM: Have you seen this man?
This is Islwyn Roberts, who was photographed in 1958 by Welsh newspaper Y Cymro as he set off to hitchhike around the world. It was a different world back then--flying was only for the rich, and many countries were sealed off behind the Iron Curtain. Mr. Roberts would have seen traditions and cultures that have all but died out today.
It must have been an amazing ...Conversing with the Welsh ghosts of Nant Gwrtheyrn
Sep 30th, 2010 at 11:34AM: Editor's note: Jan Morris is universally considered one of the greatest living travel writers. She is the author of some 40 books, including the Pax Britannica trilogy and major studies of Wales, Europe, Sydney, Venice, Hong Kong and Trieste. She recently sent us this epistle from a sojourn into the linguistic heart of her homeland, Wales.
There is only one way to approach it. Down a violently ...Photo of the Day (9.18.2010)
Sep 18th, 2010 at 6:00PM:
Is this a kaleidoscope, or a ceiling? I feel like the shapes should shift and circle, like one of my childhood toy kaleidoscopes, or a 70s music video. This is a photo by Flickr user hostelmanagement of Cardiff Castle in Wales, and the gold in the ceiling is the real stuff. Groovy. While I can't say much about the photographer's technique, which appears to be similar to my own (point up and ...Love the past? There's a new website for you
Apr 18th, 2010 at 1:00PM: Hotels have review sites, restaurants have review sites, heck even strip clubs have review sites, so why not ancient monuments?
The folks at Current Publishing, who publish two of the UK's most popular archaeology magazines, Current Archaeology and World Archaeology, have started a website so people can review archaeological attractions in England, Scotland, Ireland (North and Republic), Wales, ...
