As posh as it gets in London, Kensington is about staggering wealth, boutiques, rows of elegant townhouses, a royal palace and lots of European embassies. Kensington is also a cultural quarter extraordinaire, with three of the UK’s best museums on a single street. The Natural History Museum and Victoria & Albert are world leaders in …
The home of black pudding, this town to the north of Manchester has a lot more going for it than sausage. Of course, meat-eaters have to sample that black pudding at Bury’s award-winning market as a priority. But there’s also a rich cultural menu, at the Bury Art Museum and live music venues like the …
A few short miles north of Oxford, Bicester is a market town with a pretty centre. People have been trading in the heart of the town for almost 800 years, but nowadays Bicester is associated with a more exclusive kind of commerce. On the edge of town, Bicester Village is a designer outlet mall that …
A New Town in West Sussex, Crawley’s recent fortunes have been tied to Gatwick International Airport a few miles north. Before the middle of the 20th century Crawley was a small market town constellated by little villages that are now suburbs. For visitors Crawley has parks crammed with facilities, and a town centre with every …
An old market town of cobblestone streets and cultured Georgian townhouses, Ashbourne is just a mile shy of the south boundary of the Peak District National Park. You couldn’t be in a better position to see the best of the southern White Peak, a green landscape with imposing limestone formations. Dovedale and its grass-topped ravine …
An ancient town and port on the River Taw, Barnstaple received its charter from the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelstan in 930. The pedestrian streets and alleys of the town centre are brimming with old landmarks like almshouses, a Norman castle mound and a quayside merchant’s hall, all on the Barnstaple Heritage Trail. Barnstaple is a few …
A port town on the North Sea with 1,400 years of history, Hartlepool was born around a 7th-century monastery. By the 19th and early 20th century Hartlepool had become crucial for its shipbuilding industry and because of this the town was a victim of a rare bombardment by the Imperial German Navy in 1914. Following …
Stranded among the drained marshes and peat bogs of the Somerset Levels, Glastonbury is a town on dry ground below the mysterious Glastonbury Tor hill. For a millennium Glastonbury was the scene of an abbey of serious power, still impressive nearly 500 years after it was suppressed and left in ruins. The abbey has spellbinding …
The county town of Buckinghamshire is on the edge of the Chiltern Hills in the Aylesbury Vale’s verdant farmland. Aylesbury has some strong regional attractions like the County Museum, along with a state-of-the-art theatre that opened in 2010. The children’s author Roald Dahl was a Buckinghamshire resident and is remembered with a wonderful hands-on children’s …
York is one of England’s most historic and iconic cities to visit. This charming, walled city can trace its history far back to the days of the Vikings and to the Romans before that, and the cobbled streets are awash with ramshackle rows of houses and elegant buildings that are perfect for a day’s walking. …