UNITED KINGDOM

INTRODUCTION

Until recently England was generally thought of as a gentle, fabled land freeze-framed sometime in the 1930s, home of the post office, country pub and vicarage. It’s now better known for vibrant cities with great nightlife and attractions, contrasted with green and pleasant countryside.

From Stonehenge and Tower Bridge to Eton and Oxford, England is loaded with cherished icons of a past era. But it also does modernity with a confidence and panache left over from its days in the never-setting sun. Fashion, fine dining, clubbing, shopping – England ‘s rates with the world’s best.

England is looking forward into the new century while trying to forget many of the developments of the previous 100 years. That period witnessed the fall of the empire, the loss of the trading base and the nation’s inability to adjust to a diminished role in the modern world – from colonial empire to member of the EC. But while the Family may have taken a right Royal battering, many of the other august institutions at the cornerstone of British life have muddled their way through with a stiff upper lip and a strong sense of protocol.

Language: English. Some Welsh is spoken in parts of Wales , Gaelic in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland , and French and Norman French in the Channel Islands. The many ethnic minorities within the UK also speak their own languages (eg Hindi, Urdu, Turkish, Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc).

Religion: Predominantly Protestant (Church of England), but many other Christian denominations also: Roman Catholic, Church of Scotland, Baptist, Methodist and other free churches. There are sizeable Jewish, Muslim and Hindu minorities.

Currency: Pound (?) = 100 pence. Notes are in denominations of ?50, 20, 10 and 5. Additional bank notes issued by Scottish banks are legal tender in all parts of the UK . Coins are in denominations of ?2 and 1, and 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1 pence.

CLIMATE

England ‘s climate is mild and damp, with temperatures moderated by the light winds that blow in off its relatively warm seas. Temperatures inland don’t get much below freezing in winter (December to February), or much above 30�C (86�F) in summer (June to August). The north is the coldest area; London, the southeast and the West Country are the warmest. Rainfall is greatest in hilly areas and in the West Country. You can expect cloudy weather and light drizzle in any part of England at any time.

England , bound by Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, is the largest of the three political divisions within the island of Great Britain.

When to Go

July and August are the busiest months, and best avoided if at all possible. The crowds on the coast, at the national parks, in London and popular towns like Oxford, Bath and York have to be seen to be believed.

ATTRACTIONS

London

London – the grand resonance of its very name suggests history and might. Its opportunities for entertainment by day and night go on and on and on. It’s a city that exhilarates and intimidates, stimulates and irritates in equal measure, a grubby Monopoly board studded with stellar sights.

London is one of the favourite urban haunts of visitors to Europe because of landmark sights like Big Ben, St Paul’s Cathedral and the historically rich Westminster Abbey. The city also boasts some of the world’s greatest museums and art galleries, and more parkland than most other capitals.

Canterbury Cathedral

The most impressive and evocative, if not the most beautiful, cathedral in England is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of All England. Like most cathedrals, it evolved in stages and reflects a number of architectural styles, but the final result is one of the world’s great buildings.

The ghosts of saints, soldiers and pilgrims fill the hallowed air, and not even baying packs of French children can completely destroy the atmosphere. After the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas a Becket in 1170, the cathedral became the centre of one of the most important medieval pilgrimages in Europe, a pilgrimage that was immortalised by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales . Canterbury itself was severely damaged by bombing in WWII and parts of the town have been insensitively rebuilt, but it still attracts flocks of tourists, just as it has for the past 800 years – though numbers may decrease now pilgrims are charged a fee to enter the cathedral.

Durham

Durham is the most dramatic cathedral city in Britain . It straddles a bluff surrounded on three sides by the River Wear and is dominated by the massive Norman cathedral which sits on a wooded promontory, looking more like a time-worn cliff than a house of worship. The cathedral may not be the most refined in the land, but no other British cathedral has the same impact. The cathedral shares the dramatic top of the bluff with a Norman castle and the University College, while the rest of the picturesque town huddles into the remaining space on the teardrop-shaped promontory.

Lake District

The most green and pleasant corner of a green and pleasant land, the landscapes of the Lake District are almost too perfect for their own good: 10 million visitors can’t be wrong, but they can sure cause a few traffic jams.

The area is a combination of luxuriant green dales, modest but precipitous mountains and multitudinous lakes. Be prepared to hike into the hills, or visit on weekdays out of season if you have any desire to emulate the bard and wander lonely as a cloud.

Oxford

Arguably the world’s most famous university town, Oxford is graced by superb college architecture and oozes questing youthfulness, scholarship and bizarre high jinks. The views across the meadows to the city’s golden spires are guaranteed to appear in 30% of English period dramas, but they manage to remain one of the most beautiful and inspiring of sights. Back in the real world, Oxford is not just the turf of toffs and boffs: it was a major car-manufacturing centre until the terminal decline of the British car industry and is now a thriving centre of service industries. The pick of the colleges are Christ Church, Merton and Magdalen, but nearly all them are drenched in atmosphere, history, privilege and tradition. Don’t kid yourself, you wouldn’t have studied any harder in such august surroundings.

Stonehenge

It’s the most famous site in prehistoric Europe, and is both a tantalising mystery and a hackneyed tourist experience: tantalising because no one knows why the stones were dragged up from South Wales 5000 years ago; hackneyed because tourists are processed through Stonehenge like cans on a conveyor belt.

Five-thousand-year-old Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric site in Europe, but it remains both a tantalising mystery and a hackneyed tourist experience. It consists of a ring of enormous stones topped by lintels, an inner horseshoe, an outer circle and a ditch. Although aligned to the movements of the celestial bodies, little is known about the site’s purpose. What leaves most visitors gobsmacked is not the site’s religious significance but the tenacity of the people who brought some of the stones all the way from South Wales. It’s estimated that it would take 600 people to drag one of these 50-ton monsters more than half an inch. The downside of Stonehenge is that it’s fenced off like a dog compound; there are two main roads slicing past the site; entry is via an incongruous underpass; and clashes between new age hippies and police at summer solstice have become a regular feature of the British calendar. Each year New Age Druids celebrate the summer solstice, but closer access at other times is strictly limited.

The Cotswolds

This limestone escarpment overlooking the Severn Vale is an upland region of stunningly pretty, gilded stone villages and remarkable views. Unfortunately, the soft, mellow stone and the picturesque Agatha Christie charm have resulted in some villages being overrun by coach tourists and commercialism.

York

For nearly 2000 years York has been the capital of the north, and it played a central role in British history under the Romans, Saxons and Vikings. Its spectacular Gothic cathedral, medieval city walls, tangle of historic streets and glut of teashops and pubs make it a great city for ambling around.

York is a fascinating city of extraordinary cultural and historical wealth. Its medieval spider’s web of narrow streets is enclosed by a magnificent circuit of thirteenth-century walls. The city is thick with museums tracing its long history, and, especially in summer, is a tourist honeypot.