I can think of many reasons for visiting the Keighley area of West Yorkshire. It’s a popular destination for tourists given that Haworth, the home of the Bronte sisters, is just a couple of miles away. The ancient market town of Skipton is also nearby and...
Mallory Park in Leicestershire is well-known as a racing circuit. And a favourite experience for visitors is to attend one of the frequent track events where you’ll be taught by a professional racing driver how to handle a supercar around the 1.35-mile track....
Main image courtesy of Ell Brown I’ve written often suggesting that visitors to the UK venture beyond the usual London tourist traps. But if you are in London, the Canal Museum is a great place to visit. The UK was the first country in the world to have a...
The Lombardy region in Northern Italy is a fabulous place to visit – and still so very Italian. If you’re visiting the area I have a great, albeit sad little story for you to bore entertain your companions. The story dates from 1957 and the list of...
An online thesaurus has 493 synonyms for the word ‘penis’. You might be amazed by that. I am. (You can see them here … if you like.) I admit that I found that many of them were completely unknown to me. But I bet that Sigurður Hjartarson is familiar...
Image credit If you should ever find yourself in Rio de Janeiro, which sounds like a great idea to me, then travel about fifty miles to the west to Santa Cruz to visit a very eerie place.It could just be me, but I find airships remarkably spooky. I get the feeling...
I’m from England, now living in the USA, and I have to say that I have got rather tired over the years of people ‘telling’ me that it always rains in England. Or that in England, you never see a blue sky because it’s always grey and raining....
Abandoned anythings are spooky. Abandoned places that were once the scenes of fun and frolics are somehow even spookier. I’m thinking here about derelict funfairs or holiday camps. I get a bit weird and tend to imagine the ghostly sounds of laughing children....
When you're visiting London and if you're strolling down Westminster Bridge Road, watch out for the building you see above. The architecture is pretty lovely of course. But it also has a rather unusual history It's close to Waterloo, The Houses of Parliament, various...
… then here’s a story to tell your companions. Baron’s Court is a tube station in West Kensington, London. The building itself is intriguing. The station opened in 1905 and features a terracotta facade and that lovely Art Nouveau lettering. However,...
If you asked most people to name a Victorian serial killer, I bet that they would think of Jack the Ripper. Well, forget old Jack. He was a very junior player when compared to Amelia Dyer. Her crimes, too many to be counted, were particularly horrible. The story is...
I imagine it’s one of those Marmite things – you either love it or hate it. I think it’s rather splendid, the Bierpinsel. This building, dating from the 1970s, is supposed to ‘look like a tree’ (truly) but from day one has been known as...
As you can see from the map below, 122 rue de Provence is not far at all from several of the tourist sights in Paris. But if you happen to pass the building today, although it now houses offices, here’s a fascinating story you can tell your companions.Back in...
I’ve said here before that New Orleans is one of my favourite places in the States but one of my absolute favourite places in Europe is somewhere that’s so different – Monte Carlo. I was only about eleven years old when I first went there and –...
You never know, one day you might find yourself in the Polish village of Nowe Czarnowo. It’s just outside the town of Gryfino not far from the German border – see the map below.This isn’t an ancient forest. The trees, about four hundred of them, were...
If you’re visiting England, then the chances are good that you’ll include Windsor Castle as one of your must-see places. It’s one of the most popular tourist attractions in England and is an easy drive from Central London. It’s easy to get...
I don’t know about you but I don’t think I’ll find myself in United Arab Emirates in the near future. But nevertheless, I’ve just spent the morning checking out the exhibits and the remarkable architecture at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Before I...
When I was a kid, my dad’s business was the motor trade. His businesses sold cars, repaired cars, sold petrol, sold oil … this was a long long time ago and it seemed that this relatively new business – based on the motor car – would be around...
Okay. Recently I wrote about the Shivering Sands Army Fort and described it as one of the spookiest places I’ve ever seen. Actually, it’s a toss-up – England’s Shivering Sands or Germany’s Ferropolis. You can get a glimpse of what the...
I’ve written about some seriously creepy places over the years but this must be one of the spookiest. Built during the Second World War, and about 9 miles from the nearest land, these anti-aircraft fortifications were interconnected by walkways and probably...
A modern castle – that’s what it was called when it was built. And remarkably, that was seventy years ago. It was seen as being astonishingly modern, nested as it was in the countryside of the somewhat traditional Northern France. It was created as the...
An American chap was once telling me a joke. It was about cars, two men were arguing; an American and a something-else that I don’t remember. The punchline was that the American said “Well, I should know because we Americans invented the car”. I...
As I write this, in June 2020, museums and places where people gather are closed in the UK. There’s nothing good about this – apart from the obvious one of preventing the spread of the coronavirus – but although it’s not possible for us to...
It’s still a very imposing place. But had I been there towards the end of the Second World War, I think I would have found Colditz completely terrifying. Seeing it today, in the sunshine, it’s hard to believe that this was the most secure Nazi...
Yes, it’s sort of a trick question. The Penguin News is a proper newspaper and is published once a week giving local news to the residents. Its office and its readership are located in a place where penguins outnumber the human residents by a hundred to one....
If you’ve been to London, you might have noticed them. If you’re planning to go there, then watch out for them. These curious little structures, looking rather like a Victorian garden shed, are scattered throughout the city.There are only thirteen of them...
I could spend weeks in Berlin just looking at the architecture. And one building to see before it gets destroyed, or simply crumbles away, is the Stadtbad Lichtenberg. The building was opened in 1928 as a public baths. But more than that. It had swimming pools, a spa,...
It will only take you a couple of hours to drive to the Dolmen of Guadalperal from Madrid. And the best time to visit this monument – thought to be around 7,000 years old – is during a spell of dry weather. Zoom right in on the map below and you’ll...
Just look at the sparkling ocean. Wouldn’t you love to swim in the clear, warm Mediterranean water? There’s a lovely beach too, of course, and in days gone by this resort was popular with the rich and famous. It wouldn’t have been unusual back in the...
If you’re visiting London and have had your fill of the usual tourist attractions, then head to Kennington Road where you’ll find the site of a gory murder, the childhood home of Charlie Chaplin, a war museum, a one-time residence of Vincent van Gogh and...
It must be very difficult these days to create new buildings and structures, bearing in mind the ecological pressures brought to bear upon architects. But the local people of northeastern India discovered many years ago that you don’t necessarily need building...
Believe it or not, there are actually several good reasons to go to Middlesbrough. You may have the impression, as I did, that this is a pretty ugly old industrial town. Okay, it is. But there are still many things to see and do there. There are a handful of stately...
Clocks – marvellous things. Strangely, clocks and watches are still popular, despite the fact that we have digital readouts on our phones, laptops, car dashboards, cookers, microwaves and so on. True, clocks are more likely to be decor items these days and...
Considering that it’s a completely abandoned ghost town, Craco has seen a good amount of activity in recent years thanks to film & TV companies, occasional religious festivals and of course, visiting travellers. As you can see from the map below, it’s...
I never really think of Switzerland as being a pioneer in vegetarian cuisine. Yet the world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant is in Zurich – the Hiltl Restaurant which opened in 1897. It’s still in business today – in fact, there are several...
At first glance, they look modern don’t they? As though someone got a can of spray paint and directed it towards they hand to make a silhouette? That’s what I thought anyway but these cave paitings are actually thousands odf years old – between 9000...
They can be found all over the world now, these floral clocks. Indeed. there was even one at Michael Jackson’s Neverland home. But the tradition began in Edinburgh in Scotland well over a hundred years ago. Over the years I must have walked past dozens, if not...
Now you might have heard the expression ‘as dim as a Toc H lamp’ or you could be familiar with a track called Pow R. Toc H.from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. So it may be that you’ve heard of Toc H but do you know what it means?...
The abbey was founded in 1148 – which by anyone’s standards is a very long time ago. Little has changed since that time. To this day. the monks gather, seven times every day, to pray within the chapel. And just as they have for hundreds of years, in order...
What’s the difference between a canyon and a gorge? There isn’t one apparently. The two words mean the same thing. However, the word ‘canyon’ is more likely to be used in America than in the rest of the world. So imagine a canyon – or...
Now, Jeremy Clarkson and I have very different views on one certain subject.His views have been widely aired on TV and in print and mine, sadly, haven’t. On this particular subject though, Jeremy and I – were we to meet in a cosy pub somewhere for a chat...
You can no longer stay there, but if you’re in the Brighton area and a fan of splendid architecture, then a detour to Saltdean is well worth the trip just to see the Ocean. It’s now fully restored and has a fascinating, of oh-too-familiar history. This...
They call it the Big Buddha so it's pretty obvious that an English person like me is going to say "and it is a big bugger'. But what else would they possibly call this huge 112 ft. tall sculpture? The thing is massive. On the right of the photograph you can just see,...
There are two museums in England dedicated to the work of sculptor Barbara Hepworth. This one, the one in St Ives in Cornwall, is where Barbara lived and worked until her death. She and her husband, artist Ben Nicholson, had moved to St Ives at the outbreak of war in...
Isn’t that just gorgeous? The bridge was built in the last few years of the last century, opening in 2000, but the idea for the connection between Denmark and Sweden had been on the cards since before the Second World War. In fact, it was the war that was the...
The island’s official name is, deep breath, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep Island and despite that, it’s decidedly spooky. The island was first inhabited in the early eighteenth century but was soon abandoned. This was because of a ‘high mortality...
It it lace that I’m reminded of? Or a canopy of leafless trees, maybe? It was inaugurated in 1998 and sometimes it reminds me of those highly ornate railway stations of Victorian times with their soaring glass canopies or a grand but spooky gothic cathedral. At...
To be fair I’ll have to admt that I don’t truly know what the top attraction is in Barcelona for visitors. But if I had to guess, I’d say the Sagrada Família, wouldn’t you?But I’d imagine that La Boqueria, the huge market, would run a...
I’m sure that you know what Mount Vesuvius did almost two thousand years ago? Famously, it erupted and destroyed the Roman settlement of Pompeii. There had been other earthquakes of course. Some years before, Pompeii had been pretty badly damaged and the repairs...
Meet Cumil. And as the title says, he is (allegedly) the most photographed tourist attraction in Bratislava. One of the surprises of Bratislava is the number of lifesize bronze statues that are scattered about. Cumil is described as ‘Man at Work’ although...
Sculptor David Černý created the ‘babies’ that you see in the photograph. And they are ‘crawling’ up and down the Žižkov Television Tower. The fibreglass sculptures were added to the tower as a temporary exhibition – Černý is a...
Some people like foodie tours or trips that include museums or journeys that include rail travel – and so do I, and a lot more besides. But I still haven’t found a rummage-about-in-bookstore tour.If ever I do, then I’m sure that it will include the...
You know what Londoners are like. If you think that there are buildings in London that have official names such as the Gherkin then you’d be wrong – although just about everyone refers to it as such. There’s also no building that’s officially...
You might think that Count Cesare Mattei was really a bit of a nutcase but let’s be nice and call him eccentric. He founded a medical treatment known as ‘electrohomeopathy’ that was, evidently, total quackery. But, being a rich bloke, he also built a...
The building started life in 1924. Not as a ballroom or music venue though – it orginated as a garage. The internet tells me that this was ‘for Wyatt Tate Brady’s automobiles’. At first I took this to mean that Mr Tate Brady was in the motor...
Right until Victorian times, Tintagel in Cornwall was a remote place with few – if any – visitors. The landscape was wild and inhospitable, the shoreline craggy and naturally fortified. In fact, the island – it’s only narrowly separated from...
Airports these days can be pretty okay, architecturally speaking. But as so many people now prefer to experience travelling by train instead of being sardined into a cylindrical tube in the air, the beautiful railway stations of the world are being fully appreciated....
Although it looks pretty much like something from another world – or at least from ancient times – the Blue Lagoon has only been in existence since the local power station was created. It’s the overspill; the by-product. To be sure that I’ve...
You’ve probably read here before about how I like to immerse myself in the local culture when I travel. And one of the easiest ways to do that is by experiencing the local cuisine. This is especially the case when the country’s speciality is something as...
I might as well tell you, right now, that I wouldn’t. Not for all the tea in China. I admit to being the person who hides behind a cushion when death-defying stunts are shown on the TV. And despite all the safety precautions in the world, this is one travel...
You don’t really expect calling in for a bite at a cafeteria to be a weird experience. That is, unless you’ve been to Clifton’s. The best way to find out about it, apart from walking through the doors of course, is to take a look at the video below....
There’s really no doubt about it – there are two particularly outstanding things that most people enjoy when they are visiting the UK. They are the history of the place – you can’t move without bumping into something or other that’s...
Did you read that fantastic story about Carlo Giarratano at the end of July 2019? He is the captain of a fishing boat who, despite new laws to the contrary, went to the aid of 50 migrants in a poorly prepared and ailing boat one night out at sea. Carlo Giarratano...
It’s not the sort of building you expect to see in New York. And many hundreds of people walk past it every day and don’t look up at the somewhat astonishing architecture of Alwyn Court.This apartment building was built in the two years from 1907 to 1909...
Many people visit London because it’s jam-packed with history. Visitors from newer countries love the fact that there are buildings, streets and stories that existed long before their own country did. But history from way back, although fascinating, is only part...
I guess that the clue is in the name. A feature with a German name in Italy does make you wonder just what it is and (if you’re me) whether it’s a relic from the Second World War. Kleine Berlin is a network of tunnels and yes, the tunnels were built during...
Okay, who wouldn’t want to visit a place that had a sign like the one in the photograph above? If you can’t read it, it says ‘Don’t Hurt the Plant’. A lovely sentiment.Valladolid, which is a lot more difficult to pronounce correctly than...
There are so many things to see in the old German town of Heidelberg. You’d need, I think, at least two weeks there in order to enjoy everything that the place has to offer.But one site, often overlooked by visitors, is the Thingstätte. The whatstatte? Well,...
If you love to drive then I imagine that photograph made you wonder where that is. And can you drive along that road? And actually, it’s even more exciting than it looks in that photograph – see the video below.So you might be surprised to hear that you...
Now I don’t know about you, but when I first saw the photograph above, I assumed that it was taken somewhere pretty rural. Definitely somewhere in the country and somewhere, I thought, with a tropical climate. Either that or maybe some sort of zoo or tropical...
Of course, there are people who see the words ‘Costa Brava’ and think “oh no, far too touristy and isn’t it there that those cheap packae holidays to to and all the London gangsters go to retire?”Actually it’s the Costa del Sol that...
Samso is a Danish island located off the Jutland peninsula. It’s a picturesque and peaceful place and it is a model community, one of its outstanding features being the fact that it runs on planet-friendly power. One hundred percent of its electricity comes from...
Lee Miller was an American fashion model and photographer whose main claim to fame at one time was a photograph she had posed for … in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler. However, after that aberration, she married Roland Penrose, the English surrealist painter and...
Forget things that go bump in the night, this is one of the scariest things you’ll ever see.Now housed in the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in Oregon, the Spruce Goose is simply enormous. The WW2 enemy can thank its collective lucky stars that this...
Name a World War Two aircraft. Go on. I know nothing about planes but I bet that most people will have had the same answer I did – ‘the spitfire’. Many were built at the Castle Bromwich Assembly, a factory that now makes something equally speedy...
It calls itself ‘Denmark’s Most Distinctive Museum’ and I’m certainly not going to argue with that. It’s been open since 1935 and was the brainchild and creation of Danish artist, Anders Bundgaard. Originally a limestone mine, the museum...
Even if you’ve never set foot in Chicago I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re familiar with Daley Plaza. If nothing else, you know it from the 1980s film, the Blue Brothers. (See the video below). But since the 1960s, Daley Plaza has been home to a...
They say that most people, when asked about their favourite colour, will say that they prefer blue. In a way, this is understandable because there are so very many different shades and hues encompassed within that one descriptor.But no matter what your favourite shade...
The Carlsberg Brewery is a popular tourist venue in Copenhagen. Naturally, as it features history and beer – a good combination to be sure. And if you’re visiting, don’t miss the four elephant sculptures hold up the gateway to the ‘new’...
When you visit Shambles Square in Manchester, especially the Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar, you’ll be wrong if you feel that you’ve gone back in time. You haven’t. Well, you sort of have done. Oh how tricky, let me...
Today there are four branches of the Hollywood Wax Museum. The one above, for instance, is in Myrtle Beach. For the other locations, see the map below.Maybe you think that you wouldn’t be seen dead at a kitsch-y wax museum. But maybe Elmer McCurdy thought the...
You might be visiting Hagley Hall in Worcester. It’s an astonishingly magnificent stately home. It’s totally gorgeous, historic, set in wonderful parkland and gives you a very special glimpse into the lives of the aristocracy in the days when luxury was a...
I’m beginning to think that airports are getting better as time goes by. After all, it was way back in the nineteen-eighties that Douglas Adams wrote: It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as...
To be honest, the photograph above only shows a segment of Marina Bay Sands but I thought it was rather stunning and couldn’t resist. Here’s a photograph showing the entirety of this amazing structure. Pretty astonishing, right?It’s quite an...
One of the joys of visiting England is finding and experiencing country pubs. The Mug Inn is an excellent example and also very unusual as it’s situated on consecrated ground. It started life in the 15th century as the local church’s ale house. You can see...
For many years, the Chamberi station – part of Madrid’s metro system – was left abandoned.It was part of the original underground when it was built in 1919. It was one of the eight stations that formed the original network and was designed by...
Have you seen the 1962 movie, The Longest Day? It’s a docudrama (as these things are now called) about the World War Two Normandy landings. D-Day in other words. If you’ve seen the film you might remember the part played by Red Buttons. He played a...
I wasn’t really sure that there were any of the old telephone boxes left in England but there are – about 8,000 of them apparently. Why, I’ve no idea. I don’t know about you but I honestly can’t remember the last time I use a public...
The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village was and is a gay bar on Christopher Street. It was in 1969 that a police raid here led to the Stonewall riots, one of the most important events in the history of LGBT rights.If you’d like to visit the Stonewall, please see...
In 1971, so the story goes, people who lived near an abandoned military base in Copenhagen broke into the place. Their intentions were to let their children use the ex-base as a playground.Just a couple of months later, a journalist whose main contribution to the city...
Architecture buffs visiting Montreal are sure to head to see Habitat 67 in the flesh. I’d live in one of its 148 apartments in a heartbeat. What a fabulous complex in a wonderful location. I’d live there in a heartbeat. (Oh, I said that already – two...
Sometimes, it really astonishes me to see what people in history could achieve. That’s especially when it comes to matters of mechanics and the decorative arts. And therefore I’m amazed when I realised that Prague’s Astronomical Clock is over 600...
You might have heard of Woody Guthrie, especially if you’re from the USA or if you know about USA music in the 1950s and 60s. And if you were of a hippy-ish, anti-Vietnam war persuasion in the late sixties you might remember the song that made his son Arlo...
I enjoy some of the bizarre museums that exist these days but this must be one of the most specific. It houses arcade machines that were made in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s – so about forty years ago. Many of the machines were restored having been found...
Human rights is an issue that has been sneaking into our society so gradually that we tend to think that the days of persecution and prejudice are a thing of the past. People in our society who stereotype or speak ill of an ethnic group are viewed with distaste and...
The location scouts looking for fantastic places to make part of the Harry Potter films probably were delighted to find Leadenhall Market. It was featured quite a few times in the movie series – just take a look at the photographs and the video below and you can...
‘Magnificent, moving and utterly haunting’ is how one reviewer sums up this unusual museum. Yes, you can certainly call a visit to this museum ‘dark tourism’ but it gives the strange details of an event that is mostly unknown outside Italy. And...
San Servolo was once known, eerily, as ‘the island of the mad’. This is because for many years it was an asylum for the insane. Before that, it was a monastery and during that time, the monks were joined by nuns who were escaping from a dramatic seaquake....
It’s only a short drive from the beach. And when you approach Easterlin Park you’ll wonder where on earth you are going. You’ll drive along a built-up road and underneath the busy I95. Surely there can’t be an area of parkland in this very...
If it isn’t one of the most visited places in Scotland then it certainly must be a contender for the most romantic. It’s certainly one of the world’s most popular wedding destinations. And it has been since the 1700s so you can forgive the locals if...
