After a great weekend celebrating Dad’s 60th birthday with family and friends I am off for a couple of weeks to try and continue my county challenge. Over the next 10 days I am going to go down the west of England right down to Lands End and then along the south coast to Dorset …
Category Archives: County Challenge
Warwickshire
This is one of those cases where the historic counties diverge from the current ones. Birmingham and Coventry are now in the County of West Midlands but in the past they were part of Warwickshire. The last time in Birmingham it was in a real state, exhibiting everything that’s bad about 60’s architecture and town …
Middlesex
This was always going to be one of the easier counties as it is basically London and there is always something new to do. So I have been playing tourist today with a ride on the London Eye followed by a trip down the Thames on a boat to Greenwich. To be honest after last …
Surrey
It’s the first really hot weekend of the year as the picture shows and it actually got hotter than that on the drive home this morning. I have been neglecting the County Challenge for the last few weeks but managed to get going again with a trip down to Surrey. There isn’t a huge amount …
County Durham
All I knew about Durham was that, in my experience, people who go to Durham University always seem to have a massive chip on their shoulder that they weren’t at Oxford, not sure why as the city is absolutely stunning. The view from the bridge back up to the castle and cathedral is amazing and …
Northumberland (Part 2)
Newcastle is basically a party city as far as I can tell as every other store front in the centre is a bar, a pub or a kebab house. Down at the waterfront the millenium bridge is pretty stunning,
Northumberland (Part 1)
I carried on going north after Carlisle and even dipped over the border into Scotland as I headed utlimately east towards Kielder Water. Kielder is famous as site for rallies (indeed there is one there this week although I didn’t see any cars). It is just great fun to drive around, there are very few …
Cumberland
Right up to the Scottish border today as I visited Carlisle in Cumberland. The place itself is just a nice typical small English city with all of the usual shops, tourist-y bits and pieces and so on. The one bit which does set it apart is Carlisle Castle, there are some photos that I put up …
Westmorland
This might well be a bit of a cop-out for me. I have been to Kendal and Windermere before (when we were kids, camping up here) but Westmorland is really small and I couldn’t think of anything else to do on a cold, wet May Monday. What I don’t remember doing is the Windermere boat …
Lancashire (Part 1)
Another city that I had never been into and comes as a great surprise is Liverpool. It’s really gearing itself up for when it becomes the 2008 City of Culture for Europe. They obviously have a huge amount of money to spend, especially on the waterfront. The Albert Docks is a great success with a …