‘It’s just a pile of rocks’. Take a look through the comments on Tripadvisor (or any review site) and you’ll find many visitors who were spellbound by the ancient stones at Stonehenge, and plenty of others for whom it was an overpriced and underwhelming attraction. Just how do different people experience the same place in such a different way, and what factors determine the effect that a place such as Stonehenge has on its visitors?

It had been almost 10 years since I’d last driven along the A303 and passed the famous stone circle. I must admit that it did seem a lot smaller than I remembered it to be as we got our first glimpse this time, slowing down with the other traffic on our way past. The road layout had changed since my last visit, so perhaps my memory was influenced by the fact that it’s no longer possible to drive so close to the stones; but I did wonder what someone who’d travelled from the other side of the world and made a special effort to get to this corner of rural Wiltshire would think. As a pile of rocks, I don’t think it’s particularly impressive.

Along with other speakers and delegates at the Social Travel Britain conference in Salisbury, we woke at a silly hour on a Sunday morning for a hosted private tour inside Stonehenge. We met our guide Pat Shelley at the newly built Visitor Centre and jumped on the shuttle bus for the 1-mile transfer which is now the only way (apart from walking) to access the site. In the following hour, Pat took us inside the stone circle, explaining (with the help of a children’s pop-up book) how Stonehenge would have looked when it was an active site, over 4,000 years ago. He presented us with a few of the theories about the possible purpose of the stone circle, as well as the various ideas about how the structure was built. We explored the rocks not only from the perspective of giant lumps of rock about which so little is known, but also on a micro level as hosts to various rare lichen, and as fragile objects which bear the long-term effects of pollution and of human contact. Despite the bitter dawn temperatures, Pat succeeded in having us go beyond just thinking of Stonehenge as a pile of rocks, and rather considering it as a window into an ancient world about which we know almost nothing.

It had me thinking about other historical sites I’ve visited, and how I’ve ‘consumed’ them. I was indifferent to the Colosseum in Rome, which I remember visiting with a bad audio guide which I soon abandoned. My first visit to Petra was a blur, with the day spent rushing from place to place trying to see everything and absorbing nothing. And yet sites such as Nan Madol in Micronesia stick in the memory, because we had a guide who tried to make sense of what we were looking at, and because the nature of the site meant that it was best explored by kayak; an adventure in itself.

Of course some places in the world are more visually memorable than others, and as such they don’t rely on any commentary to wow their visitors. The Grand Canyon is an obvious example, although even then my memories of spending several days there back in 2000 are largely shaped by the geologist who led the two of us on a full day of hiking inside the rim. And then there are times, particularly at the end of a long trip, when the appetite for absorbing information tails off sharply. So how we experience a place can be determined by internal factors as much as external ones; tough luck for those who invest millions in creating memorable visitor experiences. But as a rule, the visits to famous historical attractions (and travel experiences in general) which I remember most strongly are those for which a particularly good guide has managed to provide some context, and for which we’ve managed to see the place beyond merely something which needs to be photographed and ticked off a list.

A note on Stonehenge – while our special access tour was arranged for us, anyone can book a private visit which goes right into Stonehenge (although touching of stones is strictly forbidden). It does involve a very early or very late visit, as during normal opening hours all visitors must stick to a path which stays several metres from the stones. Details of the Stone Circle Access tours are here.

Seeing Stonehenge beyond a pile of rocks is a post from: 501 Places

Portsmouth has enjoyed plenty of media attention in the last year or so since the opening of the new Mary Rose museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. We decided to have a day out in Portsmouth recently to see the Mary Rose as well as to explore one of the few large towns in the UK which we hadn’t yet visited.

The people behind the creation of the Mary Rose Museum had a difficult task. While looking at a ship that’s over 500 years old might be remarkable in itself, it takes a lot more than the broken hull to make the Mary Rose into a top-class visitor attraction. Fragmented bits of wood will only hold people’s attention for a short time, even if they are in a shape that just about resembles an old boat.

What the Mary Rose Museum has done very well is to tell the stories of the people who would have been on the ship on the day it sank. They’ve reconstructed faces from skeletons found on the wreck, and created descriptions of the typical lives of the different characters and tradesmen who would have been on board a gun ship of the time. Thanks to the quantity of artefacts recovered from the wreck site the resulting displays contain meticulous details and it is these stories, of the surgeon, the cook, the carpenter and many others, that really make this exhibition special. The modern gadgetry enhances the stories but it is the piecing together of the many clues and creating those stories that for me is the real success of this exhibition.

Next to the Mary Rose Museum is the relatively young HMS Victory, more than 250 years junior to Henry VIII’s favourite boat. Nelson’s ship looks magnificent from the outside and the crowds on board clearly enjoyed exploring the ship’s many decks and dark corridors, connected by steep ladders and narrow gangways. The ship has been set up to resemble how it appeared at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and as with the 1860 HMS Warrior at the other end of the Dockyard, the most striking memory is the contrast between the different worlds in which the officers and lowly crew members lived while on board the same vessel. Astounding levels of opulence existed a few steps from very cramped and basic conditions.

A visit to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard requires proper advance planning, as seeing all there is to see would certainly take longer than a full day. And let’s face it, most of us have a tolerance level of 2-3 hours, four at a push, before we reach a saturation point at even the most enthralling of attractions. This to me is the frustration with sites such as the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard: there’s just too much there to realistically do in a single day. It’s not their fault of course, but you need to make a choice what to see and it’s always the high profile items, in this case the Mary Rose Museum and HMS Victory, which most people choose to visit. Those two visits alone will take 3 hours even at a brisk pace, with the crowds (especially during holidays) preventing you from going round quicker even if you wanted to.

Tickets allow for repeat visits within a 12-month period and many will no doubt leave Portsmouth with a wish to return and use their ticket again within that window to see the other attractions; I wonder how many people actually do come back.

The other new(ish) attraction in Portsmouth is the Spinnaker Tower. The 170-metre tower has been open since 2005 and looks out over the Solent to the Isle of Wight and across the dockyard. There’s a glass floor on the first viewing deck on which children were happily jumping around while adults approached the same space with visible trepidation. There’s also a free audio-guide which tells you a little bit about the various places visible from the deck.

We could easily have spent the full day at the dockyard but I was keen to wander around Old Portsmouth, towards the old pubs and painted houses by the harbour which I’d spotted while looking down from the Spinnaker Tower. And it was down here that I found some of the town’s most interesting historical sites. We took a walk along the wall past the Square and Round Towers, defensive structures that have stood here since the 14th and 15th centuries. As late as the Second World War, a chain was tied from the tower across the harbour to Gosport to protect the port from naval attack.

Old Portsmouth tells its story through the medium of public art, with statues in the area commemorating Nelson and the pioneers who left to America. While the houses have been renovated you can still spot many of their original features – I found the old fire mark below on one. As elsewhere this run-down port district is now probably one of the town’s most desirable areas.

Many thanks to Visit Portsmouth for providing us with complimentary passes for the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and Spinnaker Tower.

A Day Out in Portsmouth is a post from: 501 Places

I can’t help but feel that there’s something unadventurous about taking a trip in our own country. People speaking the same language, familiar food and even the reassuringly boring shops when we need to pick up something we’ve inevitably forgotten to pack.

And yet there are few places that I look forward to visiting as much as I do in taking a trip in the UK. On our recent trip to the north-east of England we took the chance to revisit some of our favourite haunts from our time living in the region over 10 years ago. We took a detour to do one of my favourite walks in Upper Teesdale and it was great to see those big brooding hills after all this time living in the south where it’s hard to find anything steeper than what is a gentle slope in comparison to the northern landscape.

Most special of all was the chance to wander around the streets of our old home city of Durham, catch up with some of our old neighbours who we’d lost touch with and even peer over the fence into the garden I had spent so long digging up when we’d bought our house as a new-build, way back in 1997.

The familiarity of a domestic trip is a comforting factor, although whether that’s a positive or negative thing depends on your perspective. While a trip in England is hardly trail-blazing and despite the comfort of not leaving the country, or perhaps because of it, I do find a chance to experience things quite differently compared to a big foreign trip. And travelling close to home brings a certain freedom. We pack the car full of our ‘stuff’ – no weight restrictions, no worries about what fits into which bag; the worst that can happen (and inevitably does) is that there will be two or three trips to unload the contents of the car into our B&B room.

But there’s something else too. There’s a deeper understanding not just of what we see, but of why and how things are as they are. If we stop on a old railway that’s now a footpath and I read the interpretative board, the stories make sense to me. I can understand how the old line used to link two important industrial towns, about the line closures ordered by Beeching and about the way in which local community action has helped create a nature trail. How can I understand the story behind this type of detail in Japan, or Brazil, or even France? It’s in Britain that I know about the politics, the history, the social context into which I can fit and make sense of what I see. It’s one thing to experience a place with your eyes and quite another to be able to understand the how and why.

Then there’s the satisfaction in sharing your own knowledge with visitors. At the different bed and breakfasts we visited on our trip we met visitors from across the UK, from the US and from around Europe. I’m forever grateful when local people we meet on our overseas travels go out of their way to take an interest in why we are visiting their home country and when they offer their advice on what to do and see (even if we don’t always follow their suggestions). Once in a while it’s good to play the role of local and to be able to share our experience of travelling around the UK with people who may be on their first visits.

There’ll always be a place for foreign travel, but I don’t think I will ever tire of the excitement of exploring our own back yard.

Travelling close to home – why nearer can be better is a post from: 501 Places

St James Church in Dunwich

The main street through the village looks pretty but unremarkable. A pub on the corner giving off the tempting smell of freshly-fried chips; a row of old cottages with a rusty bench in a modest front garden; a stone church with a sleepy, slightly overgrown graveyard. But Dunwich in Suffolk is no ordinary village. Despite having a current population of barely 100, at one time this was the largest port on England’s east coast and in the 13th century had a population of over 4,000, making it one of the most important cities in the country.

Where is that old Dunwich? The answer lies down at the beach, or to be precise under it. Staring at the waves lapping harmlessly against the shore I try to imagine a major trading port with merchant ships from across Europe coming and going; a thriving community with churches and monasteries, a busy marketplace, money-lenders, craftsmen; and people from miles around coming into town to buy exotic items from foreign shores. But I can’t; all I see is the brown water of the North Sea, a few people enjoying the sun and in the distance the giant golf-ball dome of the nuclear power station at Sizewell.

The yellow line showing the current shore, with everything to the left now lost to the sea

I head to the village museum to learn more about the demise of Dunwich. It’s been a gradual, relentless process of erosion in which the sea has claimed 2000 metres of shoreline since Roman times – that’s a metre a year on average. It was erosion that made the perfect harbour which allowed Dunwich to flourish for several centuries; the same process then silted up the harbour in a major storm in 1328. With ships unable to come and go from the port, they took their trade elsewhere. The town lost its most important asset and people drifted away.

Over the centuries the sea gradually ate away at the shoreline, with each storm taking another 20 metres here, another 100 metres there. The houses, typically made of mud and straw, were abandoned to the elements, leaving the churches, the only buildings that would have used stone, to fall into ruin. There were 12 churches and monastic buildings in Dunwich’s heyday, all but one now a pile of rocks somewhere under all that silt and water.

The museum, staffed by local volunteers and funded entirely by donations, does an excellent job in telling the story of Dunwich. There are artefacts found along the shore, including an elaborate Dutch treasure chest. There’s also a short film and a simple graphic that shows the process by which the erosion has changed the local landscape.

Treasure Chest in Dunwich Museum

I visit the Church of St James on one of the higher points in the village. It’s home to the ruins of a leper hospital, one of the only surviving traces of old Dunwich. There’s a stone pillar in the graveyard; this is the last remaining piece of the once-mighty All Saints Church. One of the largest churches in Suffolk until the early 18th century, the coastline approached and gradually consumed it, by the early 20th century leaving this solitary ruin waiting to be claimed. It was then that the stones were taken to the relative safety of St James churchyard.

The gradual collapse of All Saints Church

I ask the volunteer at the museum about the future prospects for Dunwich. The elderly man tells me that the museum lies on the 70 year line; in other words, if erosion continues at its current rate, the museum, and all the land between it and the coast, will be lost in around 2084 (give or take). He’s hopeful that recent measures by the Environment Agency will help save the village from further loss; I can’t help but wonder if people have shared the same optimism over the centuries.  In any case he tells me, at his age he’s hardly going to lose any sleep worrying about it.

Churchyard of St James Dunwich

Solitary salvaged pillar from All Saints Church Dunwich

The ruins of the old leper hospital in Dunwich

Dunwich – an English town lost to the sea is a post from: 501 Places

When I posted my first set of photos of the St Albans kingfishers back in January, I assumed our good fortune in having these colourful birds frequenting our local park would be short-lived.  Here we are in mid-March and they’re still with us, visible most days along the River Ver as it runs alongside the lake in Verulamium Park. I’ve met photographers and birdwatchers who have come to St Albans from the other side of the country just to take what is an extremely rare opportunity of seeing kingfishers at such close quarters.

To emphasise just how easily these birds have been sighted recently, the photos on this post were taken within a brief 10-minute period yesterday when I took a lunchtime walk to the park.

They are getting a little more camera-shy lately and with the river levels finally dropping they might soon retreat to their more typical habitat away from the crowds. So if you want to see our local kingfishers in action, now is a good time to head to St Albans and catch what is a very special sight.

St Albans kingfisher – more photos is a post from: 501 Places

We must have walked around Verulamium Park in St Albans hundreds of times, dodging the swans, geese and marauding hordes of small children as we make our way around the lake and along the banks of the River Ver. During that time, we’ve gone out of our way to try and spot kingfishers on our regular trips hiking through the countryside of southern England, always on the look-out for the tell-tale flash of electric blue flying low over a riverbank.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that a pair of kingfishers had taken up residence in our local park, barely 5 minutes walk from our house. Having spotted them in the middle of the January (it turns out they’ve been here since Christmas), we’ve made several trips down to watch their antics along the river; they seem to attract a regular crowd. January has not been the sunniest of months and with a lack of decent light it’s been a challenge to take photos at the fast speeds required to get these lightning-quick hunters in any sort of clarity. The grainy nature of some of these photos is evidence of the difficulty in catching them at their best.

Hopefully they’ll make the park their long-term home and will provide us with plenty of opportunities to get sharper photos as the weather (eventually) improves.

Sitting pretty

I spy with my little eye… my next meal

Going in for the kill

Watching the crowds watching her

Flying back to the perch after another successful fishing trip

For some reason I think she’d look better with glasses on

Never talk with your mouth full

Too fast for me – Kingfisher in a blur

Update: More photos of the kingfishers can be seen in this second post from 11th March.

The Kingfishers of Verulamium Park in St Albans is a post from: 501 Places

Whenever I see the view of the London Eye from Westminster Bridge I’m reminded of the conmen who often sit along its busy eastern pavement. A line of men and women perform the ages-old scam of inviting punters to guess under which of the three cups they have hidden a ball. The crowd around each hustler is inevitably made mostly up of their own stooges, with £20 notes passing back and forth as the combination of good and bad guesses is elaborately played out to entice members of the public to play. It’s such an obvious con that you’d think nobody would fall for it, but the number of players suggests that there are plenty of takers for a game in which there will only ever be one winner.

The hustlers stay away from Westminster Bridge in the dead of winter and it’s at these times that the view from the bridge can be enjoyed in relative peace. Of course the London Eye dominates the skyline of the South Bank, yet until the late 1990s the photos taken from the bridge by the vast majority of tourists were set against the backdrop of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

A little over 200 years old, William Wordsworth wrote of Westminster Bridge,

“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear.

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”

Wordsworth didn’t have the railway line from Charing Cross to contend with, let alone the London Eye. Even the Palace of Westminster existed in a completely different form, with the current design only being built after a major fire destroyed the medieval building in 1834.

In Wordsworth’s day many considered crossing over to the south of the river as an entry to a world of slums, disease and immorality. Even in the post-war years there was little reason for a tourist to cross the river. Ward Lock’s guide to London (1951) affords a brief mention to County Hall but otherwise a reader would be excused for thinking London ended abruptly at the Thames.

No doubt Wordsworth would have chosen different words to describe today’s Westminster Bridge, yet despite the changes that London has undergone since his day this otherwise unremarkable bridge remains one of London’s most visited landmarks; the hustlers with the fast hands and £20 notes are just another part of its long and colourful history.

The changing views from Westminster Bridge is a post from: 501 Places

I’ve mentioned this before on this site, but the history you can uncover with even a minimal effort on a walk through London never ceases to surprise me. Take last week for example…

We popped into the church of St Martins Within Ludgate, just down from St Paul’s Cathedral, to admire one of the few surviving churches built by Sir Christopher Wren. Most of Wren’s masterpieces had been destroyed during WW2 and a great many on a single night in December 1940, when the Luftwaffe launched a ferocious attack on the City of London with the objective of destroying St Paul’s Cathedral. St Paul’s came within a whisker of destruction and St Martin’s was spared too, thanks only to a favourable wind that kept the surrounding flames at bay.

While St Martin’s saw its share of London’s high and mighty come to worship over the centuries, two names stand out. William Penn, whose son would later be the founder of the American state of Pennsylvania, was married here in 1643. Sometime before this, probably in 1616, an American Indian lady by the name of Pocahontas paid a visit with her husband John Rolfe. Pocahontas, known then by her Christian name Rebecca, was apparently seen by London society as a curiosity and living proof that savages could indeed be tamed.

The animated film Pocahontas depicts her love affair with Captain John Smith, the then governor of Virginia. Although he met her several times on both sides of the Atlantic, there is no evidence to suggest they had any sort of physical relationship. Even so, their stories overlap perfectly here in the City of London, with Captain Smith buried in the church of St Sepulchre Without Newgate, barely 100 metres away.

Old London was a crowded place and a stone’s throw often separated the sacred from the profane. Next to St Sepulchre’s Without Newgate is the Viaduct Tavern. The pub has its own colourful history as a Victorian gin palace and brothel opposite the notorious Newgate Prison. The gallows on which many prisoners were hanged in public were just outside the window. But it’s what’s in the cellar of the Viaduct that has provoked much debate.

When you visit the Viaduct, ask to be shown to the cellars – if the bar isn’t too busy the staff will usually oblige. Below there are five caged compartments – said to be cells used as an overflow for Newgate Prison, or in another version of events, by the remand gaol the Giltspur Street Compter. There’s even a hole above the cells which the bar staff will tell you may have been used as a feeding tube. The stories are debunked as impossible myths here and I have to admit that while enjoying the history lesson in the basement of the Viaduct, I did find it hard to imagine that this would indeed be the set-up of a prison.

And just to bring the story back to 21st century relevance, the road linking St Martin’s with the Viaduct Tavern is Old Bailey and it’s here that the UK’s most high-profile criminal cases are heard. Don’t be surprised to find crowds of journalists, protesters and even the occasionally errant celebrity as you wander past the entrance to the court – proof that London’s history is an ever-evolving story.

Why the City of London is an open history book is a post from: 501 Places

Having visited London quite literally hundreds of times in recent years and being cursed with a well-documented weak bladder, I’ve often been caught short on my trips around the city. Central London is a haven of presentable and reasonably hygienic toilets and there’s absolutely no reason why you’d ever need to pay any money to spend a penny or why you’d queue impatiently at the few public toilets that are found in the main tourist areas.

I’ve been meaning to write this list for a while, so here goes: a list of free toilets in London that I turn to when I’m in need (note: some of these places would not welcome you entering their premises purely to use the toilets if they knew your true intentions).

National Gallery  – many of London’s museums offer free admission and by extension free toilets. Few are as conveniently located as the National Gallery. Avoid the busy and often grimy public toilets in Trafalgar Square and walk up the grand staircase in front of you instead. The toilets here are reasonably well- maintained and rarely busy. Exit through the gift shop.

London Eye – useful if you’re caught short on the South Bank, these toilets are down in the basement of County Hall through the same entrance as the London Eye ticket office. The downside of these toilets is that they are very busy at peak times.

National Theatre, Southbank – this is my preferred option on the South Bank. Far more civilised and cleaner than the ones in County Hall, you may even be tempted by a temporary exhibition or a cake in the cafe.

Piccadilly – two good places to visit here. Closest to Piccadilly Circus is Waterstone’s bookshop, with toilets on the stairwell on each level. If you can hold out for another 5 minutes, or feel as though you might be staying awhile, stroll a little further along Piccadilly to the upmarket Fortnum and Mason for a more refined lavatory experience.

St Paul’s Cathedral – you might to have to work hard to persuade the staff to let you pray for free in London’s most famous church, but peeing for free is easy. Just enter through the side entrance that leads to the cafe and find the toilets on your left. They’re not grand and you’re unlikely to want to hang around for a cake, but free loo stops are quite hard to come by in the east of the city.

Charing Cross Hotel – I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but when I really want a top notch toilet I head to the 5 star hotel to the side of Charing Cross station. Walking in with confidence and smiling to the doorman and receptionist, I’ve yet to be stopped as I walk through into the lobby, up the stairs and to the rather pleasant loos on the first floor. They’re so clean and bright that you could bring a coffee and newspaper and make a morning of it.

Apple stores (Covent Garden and Regent Street ) – I’m no Apple fan and their conveniently-located toilets are the only reason I’ve visited these stores on so many occasions. I’m usually asked at least twice how I’m doing and always offer a more cheerful response on the way out of the store.

A guide to free toilets in London is a post from: 501 Places

You don’t expect to find a church completely surrounded by a double ring of barbed wire in the heart of the English countryside. But then St Giles is no ordinary church, with very few services and access to the building allowed for a maximum of 50 days a year. For the rest of the time the church and the empty buildings of Imber on Salisbury Plain are strictly off-limits to anyone except those on active military duty.

Imber was once a lively community, with residents living in homes leased by the Ministry of Defence. St Giles was in turn a thriving parish, with the 13th church acting as the hub of a closely-knit community. Then in November 1943, without any prior warning, the tenants received a letter giving them a little over a month to evacuate their homes and find alternative places to live. The village was needed for D Day rehearsals (although of course the residents were not given any such details). With the assurance that they would be allowed back to their homes once the war was over, the residents of Imber packed up their belongings and left the village for what they believed would be a short-term move; nobody has been allowed back since.

Excerpt of notice of evacuation

For a few days every year public access is granted to this tiny village with a population of zero. The buildings along the main road into the village look more like concrete shells than houses – they were erected in the style of a typical German village, in preparation for house-to-house combat with the enemy of the time. They are apparently still used today for the same kind of training, although they now serve as Afghan houses. The most obvious roadside structure that looks as though it may have pre-dated the war is the old pub – the Bell Inn – although there’s little left now to suggest it was once the social hub of the village.

On the rare open days when the public is allowed into Imber, it is the church that draws in the curious visitors (it’s the only building visitors are allowed to enter). In 2002 the church of St Giles was given back to the Diocese of Salisbury, who are now responsible for its upkeep although the MoD still have a firm control on access.

So why the barbed wire surrounding what is surely one of Britain’s most secure churches? According to the volunteer on duty in the church, the wire is there to keep out soldiers who might not be in the mood for the battle rehearsals that take place in and around the village. I can only wonder whether in the past some soldiers chose to seek sanctuary in the church and let the mock battle rage outside. Whatever the full story, the coils of barbed wire make a very unsettling addition to the 13th century church and its crumbling graveyard.

For more photos from Imber check out this photo essay on Eye4apic.com (my wife’s website). For more information on Imber church, including upcoming Opening Days, see here. And here’s a post I wrote about Tyneham, a village abandoned in very similar circumstances in 1943.

Imber – Britain’s abandoned village is a post from: 501 Places