Lazy Days Great British Getaways

It’s more than ok in the UK

Foreign holidays are out this summer. But as soon as our hotels open for business, try a trip closer to home. Here are some of the top destinations around the country should you wish to get away from it all.

As we go to print foreign travel is off limits. So why not discover that great holiday destination called Great Britain.

A place where we can dip our toes in the sea, marvel at some of the world’s finest architecture and ancient monuments.

We can survey wonderful landscapes, pop into museums and galleries and visit stately homes.

Freedom to walk woodlands and coastlines, to sit quietly and contemplatively beside a river.

What follows are some suggestions for great destinations around the UK.

But only suggestions, and a limited few. A trip, wherever it is enjoyed, is made not just by a mark on the map but by our memories of it – the smile on a face, a red kite in a blue sky, the feel of hot sand, a spectral view in the evening light of rising cliffs, the scent of wild flowers, a glimpse into a distant past, a hand held. Memories that last far longer than a few days.

Southern England

1. Stonehenge, Wiltshire
One of the most magnificent structures of the prehistoric world. Anywhere. And now with a visitor centre befitting the digital world. And if the cathedral of the henge is not enough to satisfy your wonder at the ingenuity and visionary imagination of our ancestors, you can always travel across to Avebury and its astonishing stone circles.

2. The Eden Project, Cornwall
Huge domes bubble from a disused china clay quarry, inside of each is recreated a floral ecosystem. Want to experience the tropical heat (and the plant life) of a rainforest or a Mediterranean wood on a breezy British summer’s day? Then step inside.

3. Brighton Palace Pier, East Sussex
Do as our forebears did: enjoy a splendid Victorian pier. Except with added modern entertainments such as adrenalin-fuelled rides that plunge out over the sea.

4. The Valley of the Rocks, Devon
Towering above the Atlantic, you almost feel you can see America. You can’t, of course, but you feel you might be able to on a clear, sunlit day, with the breeze breathing new life into you and the horizon melting into the sky.

5. Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
Landscaped parklands, formal and pleasure gardens, a miniature train, a butterfly house, a playground, a superb eighteenth-century palace, no end of special events and an exhibition on Sir Winston Churchill’s life in the very room where he was born.

6. Aldeburgh, Suffolk
A pebbly beach, fantastic fish and chips, Benjamin Britten’s muse and the chance to sit and watch the waves rolling gently in.

7. Slimbridge Wetland Centre, Gloucestershire
A wonderful bird conservation site, it is filled not only with our feathered friends but heaps of activities for everyone who isn’t necessarily a bird watcher, from canoe safaris to puddles in which children can get themselves soaking wet and build dams.

8. Snettisham Park, Norfolk
A place where children can delight in direct contact with the rural, feeding lambs and collecting eggs and venturing on deer safaris and riding on tractors.

Southern England

1. Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
Should you prefer your history a
little more refined and stately, Chatsworth offers sumptuous elegance, art, sculptures, a maze, a water garden, acres of parkland and a woodland.

2. Ironbridge, Shropshire
More heavy lifting with a celebration of the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. And a reconstructed Victorian town complete with shops and a fairground.

3. Black Country Living Museum, West Midlands
With more than 40 buildings, carefully transplanted from other parts of the Black Country, the museum occupies a huge open site where you can flit from a chapel to a pub, slip into a 1920s cinema before popping into a 1930s fish and chip shop. And if you wish to discover what it was like being a hewer of coal in the 1850s, you can embark on a tour of a drift mine.

Northern England

1. Jorvik Viking Centre, York
Rampaging Nordic warriors, under-the-sword Anglo-Saxons, and lots of tenth-century smells and noises. Life perfectly recreated as it was lived over a thousand years ago.

2. Alnwick Castle, Northumberland
Built stark and dominating against the skyline in the fourteenth century, a bastion of northern baronial power, it has since enjoyed a more modern re-incarnation as the location for both the Blackadder television series and the Harry Potter films.

3. Ainsdale Beach, Lancashire
Should you become wearied with paddling or swimming in the sea, you can always explore the local nature reserve or go kite surfing.

4. Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland
Focus your attention on the stretch between Brampton and Hexham of this testimony to Roman engineering and military might. As well as granaries, barracks and Roman toilets, you will be able to look, in the Army Museum, at finds excavated at Vindolanda that reveal imperial Rome in a softer light: shoes, jewellery, party invites and postcards home from the cold, shivering soldiers.

Scotland

1. Crathes Castle,Aberdeenshire
Nuanced gardens, yew hedges and, in summer, fluorescent borders girdle a castle from which every stone seeps the tales of centuries past. In 2013, archaeologists discovered in the castle’s grounds what might be one of the world’s oldest lunar-solar calendars, dating back some 10,000 years.

2. Inverewe Gardens, Ross-shire
A lush, tropical oasis perched on a peninsula at the edge of Loch Ewe,
amid the rugged landscape of Wester Ross, this world-famous historic garden, stretching over 2,000 acres, blends such exotica as Tasmanian eucalyptus, olearia from New Zealand and Chinese Himalayan blue poppies with the local wildlife of red deer, pine martens and otters.

3. Burnt Island Beach, Fife
Breasting the Firth of Forth with its dunes and rockpools the beach itself will keep a family preoccupied for a whole day. But if you need more entertainment, there is the nearby Seaside Park with its summer fairground.

4. Rothiemurchas Forest, Aviemore
Gentle walks, tough walks, a loch, a gorge, rafting and kayaking, mountain biking and pony trekking, heart-moving scenery, a wild glory and maybe the occasional sighting of an osprey.

Wales and Northern Ireland

1. Barafundle Beach, Pembrokeshire
Acclaimed as one of the best beaches in Europe, it is a gem of the Pembrokeshire coastline. Hillocked by sand dunes, and with a slow drop into the sea, the beach is speckled with rock pools and ringed, at low tide, by caves.

2. Big Pit National Coal Museum, Torfaen
Big Pit is one of Britain’s leading mining museums. You can either go on a virtual trip of a modern coalmine or try the real thing: a 300-foot descent by pit cage down the mineshaft that once used to disgorge tonnes upon tonnes of coal. There’s the original winding house engine, the blacksmith’s forge and fan house to see at this award-winning reminder of the role that the coal industry in Wales played in creating the country’s society.

3. Llancaiach Fawr Manor, Caerphilly
A fine Tudor manor, restored to look as it would have done in 1645. The summer sees various Civil War enactments.

4. Clywedog Valley, Wrexham
Walks, attractions, old lead mines, woods, gardens, mills and a heritage centre. Nature and industry cheek by jowl.

5. Murlaugh National Nature Reserve, Co Down
One of the most captivating shorelines in the UK. Strangford Lough is spellbinding for its wildlife; almost as spellbinding as the stories told about smuggling and other nefarious activities on the Dead Men’s Tales Lough tours organised in the summer.

6. Benone Strand, Derry
Stretching from the mouth of Lough Foyle in the west to Downhill in the east, it is one of Ireland’s longest and most beautiful beaches. Raths, standing stones, cairns, crosses, holy wells, a nature reserve, a ruined castle, and great fun.

You can read more articles like this one in the latest edition of Thame Out.