05_138199 ch01.qxp 8/28/07 10:54 AM Page 4 1 The Best of England Planning a trip to England presents a bewildering array of options. We’ve scoured the country in search of the best places and experiences; in this chapter, we share our very personal and opinionated selections to help you get started. 1 The Best Travel Experiences • A Night at the Theater: The torch peppered with ivy-covered inns and passed from Shakespeare still burns honey-colored stone cottages. brightly. London’s theater scene is • Punting on the Cam: This is acknowledged as the finest in the Cantabridgian English for gliding world, with two major subsidized along in a flat-bottom boat with a companies: the Royal Shakespeare long pole pushed into the River Company, performing at Stratford- Cam’s shallow bed. You bypass the upon-Avon and at the Barbican in weeping willows along the banks, London; and the National Theatre on watch the strolling students along the the South Bank in London. Fringe graveled walkways, and take in the theatre offers surprisingly good and picture-postcard vistas of green lawns often innovative productions staged along the water’s edge. See p. 540. in venues ranging from church cellars • Touring Stately Homes: England has to the upstairs rooms of pubs. hundreds of mansions open to visitors, • Pub Crawling: The pursuit of the some centuries old, and we tell you pint takes on cultural significance in about dozens of them. The homes are England. Ornate taps fill tankards often surrounded by beautiful gar- and mugs in pubs that serve as the dens; when the owners got fanciful, social heart of every village and town. they added splashing fountains and Quaint signs for such names as the miniature pagodas or temples. Red Lion, the White Swan, and the • Shopping for Antiques: Whatever Royal Oak dot the landscape and treasure you’re looking for, you can beckon you in, not only for the pint find it in England. We’re talking but also for the conviviality—and Steiff teddy bears, a blunderbuss, an perhaps evenCOPYRIGHTED the entertainment or 1890 MATERIALtin-plate toy train, an egg cup the food. allegedly used by Queen Victoria, a • Motoring through the Cotswolds: If first-edition English print from driving involves a determined trip from 1700, or the definitive Henry one place to another, motoring is wan- Harper grandfather clock. No one dering at random. And there’s no bet- polishes up their antiques and curios ter place for it than the Cotswolds, less quite as brightly as English dealers. than 161km (100 miles) west of Lon- From auction houses to quaint don, its rolling hills and pasturelands shops, from flea markets to country 05_138199 ch01.qxp 8/28/07 10:54 AM Page 5 THE BEST OF LITERARY ENGLAND 5 fairs, England, particularly Victorian its tilled valleys lying in the shadow England, is for sale. of forbidding peaks, as it was meant • Cruising on Lake Windermere: to be viewed—from the water. A Inspired by the lyric poetry of great jaunt is the round-trip from Wordsworth, you can board a boat at Bowness to Ambleside, at the head of Windermere or Bowness and sail the lake, and back around to the vil- England’s most famous lake. You’ll lage of Lakeside, at the southern tip. see the Lake District’s scenery, with See p. 636. 2 The Best of Literary England • Samuel Johnson’s House (London; Stratford gleefully peddle Shake- & 020/7353-3745): The backwater speare’s literary legacy, including his at no. 17 Gough Sq., situated on the birthplace, where the son of a glover north side of Fleet Street, was John- was born on April 23, 1564. Anne son’s home from 1748 to 1759. Here Hathaway’s Cottage, in the hamlet of he worked on his Rambler essays and Shottery, is also popular; Shakespeare his dictionary, and here his beloved married Hathaway when he was only wife, “Tetty,” died in 1752. See p. 182. 18 years old. See “Stratford-upon- • Keats House (London; & 020/ Avon,” in chapter 14. 7435-2062): Most of the poet’s brief • Sherwood Forest (East Midlands): life was spent in London, where he You won’t find Errol Flynn in Techni- was born in 1795 in a livery stable color-green tights gallivanting through run by his father. He moved to a forest of mighty oaks with his band Hampstead in 1817 and met his of merry men. Although most of the fiancée, Fanny Brawne, there. In this forest has been open grassland since house, he coughed blood into his the 14th century, it lives on in legend, handkerchief. “That drop of blood is literature, and lore as the most famous my death warrant,” he said. “I must woodland in the world. At the Sher- die.” He left for Rome in 1820 and wood Forest Visitor Centre at Edwin- died there a year later. See p. 187. stowe, the world of Friar Tuck and • Jane Austen Country: The author of Little John lives on. See “Notting- Pride and Prejudice and Sense and hamshire: Robin Hood Country,” in Sensibility wrote of rural delights and chapter 16. a civilized society—set mainly in her • Grasmere (The Lake District): beloved Hampshire. In 1809, she William Wordsworth lived here with moved with her mother to Chawton, his sister, Dorothy, who commented 80km (50 miles) south of Bath, on the “domestic slip of mountain” where she lived until 1817. Her behind their home, Dove Cottage. house is now a museum. Her novels The cottage itself is now part of the Persuasion and Northanger Abbey are Wordsworth Museum, displaying associated with the city of Bath, manuscripts and memorabilia. The where she visited frequently in her poet also lived for a time at nearby youth and lived from 1801 to 1806. Rydal Mount, just north of Amble- In her final year, she moved to 8 Col- side (one of his descendants still owns lege St. in Winchester. She is buried the property), where you can see gar- in Winchester Cathedral. See p. 319. dens landscaped by the poet. • Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwick- Throughout the region, you’ll find shire): The folks who live in touristy the landscapes that inspired this giant 05_138199 ch01.qxp 8/28/07 10:54 AM Page 6 6 CHAPTER 1 . THE BEST OF ENGLAND of English romanticism, including Museum. Here the famous Brontë sis- the shores of Ullswater, where ters lived and spun their web of Wordsworth saw his famous “host of romance. Emily wrote Wuthering golden daffodils.” See “Grasmere,” in Heights, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre and chapter 18. Villette, and even Anne wrote two • Haworth (West Yorkshire): Second novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and only to Stratford-upon-Avon as a Agnes Grey, though neither measures major literary pilgrimage site is the up to her sisters’ works. See “Haworth: home of the Brontë Parsonage Home of the Brontës,” in chapter 19. 3 The Best of Legendary England • Stonehenge (near Salisbury, Wilt- came here as a child with Joseph of shire): The most celebrated prehistoric Arimathea. According to another monument in Europe, Stonehenge is legend, King Arthur was buried at some 5,000 years old, but its original Glastonbury, the site of the fabled purpose remains a mystery. The Avalon. See p. 381. romantic theory that Stonehenge was • Tintagel (Cornwall): On the “constructed by the Druids” is non- windswept Cornish coast, the castle sense; it was completed before the of Tintagel is said to be the birthplace Druids reached Britain in the 3rd of King Arthur. The castle was actu- century B.C., but the legend persists. ally built much later than the See p. 359. Arthurian legend, around 1150. But • Glastonbury Abbey (Somerset): who wants to stand in the way of a One of the great abbeys of England good story? No one in Cornwall, and once a center of culture and that’s for sure. Tintagel merrily touts learning, Glastonbury quickly fell the King Arthur legend—in town, into ruins following the Dissolu- you can order an Excaliburger! See tion of the Monasteries. One story “Tintagel Castle: King Arthur’s Leg- about the abbey says that Jesus endary Lair,” in chapter 12. 4 The Best of Ancient & Roman England • Roman Painted House (Dover, • Roman Baths (Bath, Avon): Dedi- Kent): Called Britain’s “buried Pom- cated to the goddess Sulis Minerva, peii,” this 1,800-year-old structure has the baths were founded in A.D. 75. exceptionally well-preserved walls and Among the finest Roman remains in an under-floor heating system used by the country, they’re still fed by the Romans. It’s best known for its Britain’s most famous hot spring. The unique Bacchic murals. See p. 275. site of the Temple of Sulis Minerva is • Avebury (west of Marlborough, excavated and open for viewing. See Wiltshire; east of Bath, Avon): p. 370. Although not as famous as Stone- • Corinium Museum (Cirencester, in henge, this is one of Europe’s leading the Cotswolds): This museum con- prehistoric monuments. Its circle of tains one of the best collections of more than 100 stones—some of archaeological remains from the them weighing in at 50 tons—is Roman occupation of Britain. You’ll arrayed on an 11-hectare (28-acre) see Roman mosaics that have site. See p. 360. 05_138199 ch01.qxp 8/28/07 10:54 AM Page 7 THE BEST OF NORMAN & MEDIEVAL ENGLAND 7 remained in Britain, along with 118km (73 miles) from Wallsend, or provincial sculpture, such as figures Wall’s End, north of Newcastle upon of Minerva and Mercury.