>>415204

> How much of this fair land of ours have you lads actually visited?

Not that much of it lad, and there's a good reason for that; for about the price of a wet weekend in Warwick I can spend a fortnight in the Algarve getting pissed on 1 Euro pints of San Miguel.

A fair bit. Mostly cities.
Is that real? That looks suspiciously like it was made in terragen.

When I moved to Yorkshire I'd never been anywhere other than cities, so I was pretty floored when I took a walk up Ilkley moor. After that I've made a conscious effort to see more of this stuff, mostly in the north, with my car and a roof tent.

Any of the national parks will blow you away if you've never really thought about them before. It really feels like another country if you're a city dweller like myself. I had never considered it possible to feel isolated on this crowded island. Yorkshire Dales are great, Snowdonia and that part of Wales, and like you say, most of Scotland is breathtaking - I highly recommend doing the North Coast 500.

If you have a car, these places are a few hours away at most. If not, they're still pretty close.

>>415210

The OP picture? It's the Glennfinnan viaduct, which definitely exists cos I've been there. Probably the image is just HDR'd and edited to fuck

A fair bit. Most of it except further south than London, really.

Most of it's shit; it really depends what you're into though. There's some really nice forestry in North Yorkshire, for example.

If you like driving, mid/north Wales has some great, completely empty, NSL twisties through dramatic hills.

If you like getting into a fight outside a takeaway at 3am, my glorious hometown of Wakefield is the right place for you.

Some of the far northern Scottish beaches can look almost tropical at the right time of year; if you go in June it's almost 24hr daylight too.

Manchester has some decent cultural landmarks, and is a decent night out.

Do you know what blew my mind? West / North Wales. It feels like hardly anyone talks about Wales, but damn, it was breathtaking. Even the towns - places like Conwy seem like ye olde Britain in the most charming way.

I've never been to Northern Ireland, for what it's worth. But I'm sure it's lovely.

Absolutely loads.

>>415217
Part of me wants to go to Belfast, since I've heard it's come in massively in recent years, but at the same time the political climate has deteriorated and I don't really fancy getting shot or blown up.

>>415220

And Brexit isn't going to make it better, with the EU border now effectively running right through the island.

>>415221>>415220

Indeed. The situation and attitudes have steadily improved over the years (a decade ago you still had rockets fired at police stations, hand grenade bank robberies, and plenty of people being killed because of their surnames) and the impossible requirements for a brexit border will undoubtedly all of that very quickly.

It's baked into the Good Friday agreement that there's free trade and passage between the north and the republic, so even the subtlest border gate will quickly find itself stuffed to the brim with Semtex by the 'disbanded' para groups who are just waiting for a chance to play freedom fighter again. Even if you believe that won't happen (it will) it's undeniable that the political outrage will be massive and unrelenting. Nobody wants a physical or even political restriction on that border, not even the staunchest republican actually wants a big feckin wall between him and the north.

>>415222

I think a lot of the peace process of the last 25 years was directly facilitated by the fact that both the UK and Ireland began seeing each other as fellow EU members who were now united for a greater goal.

Now with Northern Ireland being non-EU and Ireland still firmly in the EU with a strong desire to stay that way, it sort of has the potential of propagating a new sentiment of "us" versus "them". The common thread of EU membership is missing now, if you know what I mean.

>>415223
Blame the DUP. Their insistence on being every bit as British as the rest of the union is more or less what's derailing everything. May managed to get agreement on the border, and then they undermined it by going on national telly and saying it was unacceptable to treat NI as a special case.

All of which is a real shame, because you can get a SailRail from more or less anywhere on the network to Belfast for around £60.

>>415224

I've frequently not even bothered to take my passport on flights to Belfast, and have crossed the border loads of times. I genuinely don't see it ever being more difficult than that, and it's going to be a huge problem soon enough.

I've visited more places abroad than places in Britain. I'd love to see the Scottish highlands.

>>415222

>Nobody wants a physical or even political restriction on that border, not even the staunchest republican actually wants a big feckin wall between him and the north

It's still going to be difficult having a fortified border as EU law requires it on the EU's outer boundaries, and making it just permeable enough that Irish citizens can cross it freely into the UK and vice versa.

This will probably not necessarily affect your cross-border commute every day if you live in Ireland and work in the UK or the other way round. But the whole countermilitant daft woggery and illegal mmigration what-have-you will make it difficult to keep truly open borders similar to the way they are now.

>>415228

There are only three options that are compatible with EU law:

1) a hard NI/RoI border
2) a hard border across the Irish Sea
3) the UK remaining in the single market

Option one would break the Good Friday Agreement. Option two would be vetoed by the DWP. Option three means that we can't negotiate our own trade deals. The EU negotiating team have made it very clear that no other options are on the table.

The Northern Ireland trilemma has rendered any possible Brexit scenario a political disaster. The entire fate of the Brexit negotiations rest on Sinn Fein and the DUP finding a mutually acceptable option. As far as I can see, we're totally buggered.

>>415230
Jimmy Saville has started campaigning for a second referendum. We're not going to leave the EU.

>>415231

>>415237

You can't help wondering if the majority of the public would still vote leave a second time if the question was put to them again. Now that we know what a complete unmitigated clusterfuck a decision like this can end up being.

Let's not forget that this started out as a power play by are pigfriend Cameron. It was a strategic career move that unexpectedly blew up in his face resoundingly.

>>415254
I voted Leave and I'd still vote Leave if there was a second referendum.

Anyway, let's not shit up this thread by talking about Brexit when we have /pol/ for that. The best part of the country to visit is probably North Wales, provided you miss out Bangor and Holyhead.

>>415231
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/Jimmy-Saville-backtracks-on-call-for-second-referendum-and-calls-it-fake-news-a3751816.html

?

>>415254
Unfortunately, after seeing some research done by YouGov, I think the result would be similar https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/02/year-remainers-warnings-havent-made-leave-voters-a/

>>415256
Yeah, I don't know what >>415254 is talking about, I thought it has always been widely reported that polling has been virtually identical since the referendum - the country split down the middle.

By now I think we'd get a Remain result by virtue of the old racists dying off.

>>415255

I voted remain because I knew that we would find ourselves in a clusterfuck if Britain left the EU. Then again, I was never as staunchly "remain" as some people that I know. My remain vote was more a reluctant one, you know, the lesser of two evils and what-have-you.

But before this thread really gets shat up by another remain or leave cunt off, let's get back to OP's original topic.

Four of my coworkers want to go to Cornwall for a four-day weekend in spring and have asked me if I want to come along. Among other things, that time will be spent fishing, beer drinking without their wives, and hopefully enjoying the spring sun. They will be staying in some sort of converted fishing cottage right above the beach and they've got room for one more person. It sounds very tempting, as I've never really been to Cornwall except as a weelad with my parents when I was about two or three years old.

>>415204

http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/

If it can be guaranteed that the housing prices will crash like george osborne promissed I'd vote leave in an instant otherwise I'll vote remain.

I realise my motives are as absurd as burning your floorboards to heat your house, but it seems like the government isn't ever going to solve the housing shortage in the south east so here we are.

>>415260
Osborne didn't say there'd be a house price crash; he said that the rate of growth in house prices would reduce if we left but they'd still be going up. Either way, it was a massive own goal and ended up increasing support for leaving.

>>415258
Do it. Why the fuck not. Suggest north Wales next year, cheap as fuck and all.

Because of this thread I've just gotten back from North Northumberland, and it was lovely compared to my shithole city. Cheers lads.

>>415294
Was it camping in Kielder or a caravan on the coast?

Neither, I ended up in Berwick. With a student ticket and the patience of a saint, you can end up on the Scottish border for £3.20 and 2 and a half hours of your life spent

I'm a huge fan of seeing tiny Northumbrian villages though, there's something very Catherine Cookson that breeds a pride in a time that never truly existed about the whole experience.

>>415298
Berwick's funny to an outsider, well me at least, you over hear people talking in the street, one will clearly sound Geordie while the other is clearly Scots but you never hear something in between.

>>415299

I know a lass from Berwick and you can basically hear whichever accent you're listening for, like observing an electron.

>>415204

The country is fantastic in regards to getting outdoors and scenery. Celebrating this is called racist by leftists, who prefer inner city stabbings and graffiti wank to Glencoe.

>>415506

Are you mental or just indoctrinated?

>>415516

Neither. I left Izlam a long time ago.

>>415506

>The country is fantastic in regards to getting outdoors and scenery. Celebrating this is called racist by leftists

I can't say I've ever found the letist who even suggested this. Honestly this shit leaves me scratching my head. Is this some sort of bad attempt to maniplate the conversation?

>>415518
“They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman 
and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they 
were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. Both the New Statesmen and the News Chronicle cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.”

- George Orwell, “England Your England”, 1941

>>415519

And how, if at all does that quote apply to "outdoors and scenery" and leftists calling that racist?

Or is this a demonstration that you are making a bad attempt to maniplate the conversation?

>>415519

A shocking indictment of modern society, if by 'modern' you mean 'nearly 80 years ago', of course.

>>415518

>>415521
Those who ignore history are bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

The Guardian is living proof that the mentality of the shallow leftist from Orwell's time still exists today.

>>415521

A lot of Orwell's stuff holds up very well today. The guy was remarkably prescient, and not just in that "hurr we live in 1984 for real!" way.

Although that is true as well.

>>415524

>Although that is true as well.

Not quite.

>>415523>>415524

Sure, he still knows how to make a cup of tea, and I won't deny there's a certain element of self-loathing involved in being a hand-wringing left-winger, but again, nobody in human existence has ever said it was racist to like the Lake District, until this thread, anyway.

>>415529
>nobody in human existence has ever said it was racist to like the Lake District, until this thread, anyway.

I've certainly read articles from Londoners stating they feel uncomfortable venturing into the countryside because of how white the demographics are there, with them insinuating it's a bad thing compared with modern and diverse London.

Then again, my other half's mum lives in Hull and when she comes to visit the town we live in now she can't seem to get over the fact that the school our kids go to is about 95% white British; her other daughter lives in a shithole council estate and the school her sprogs go to is approximately one-third chav, one-third eastern European and one-third eskimo.

>>415545
>her other daughter lives in a shithole council estate and the school her sprogs go to is approximately one-third chav, one-third eastern European and one-third eskimo.

That's pretty British compared to most in the country.

It took me a trip to Middlesbrough to realise how nice the rest of this country looks, thankfully I was only passing through.
It was a overcast day and I have fond memories of being in an Asda carpark looking at the smoke/fumes of a steel mill which was next to it, driving out of the city to find the "city" surrounded at all sides by one sprawling mess of pipe lines and what looked like oil refineries.
I remember the transporter bridge looking glum on the grey sky, it's blue paint work covered in grime and dirt but still blue.
Never again I promised myself, never again would I visit this hellhole.

>>415548
Take a visit to Immingham or Holyhead. Now they are proper shitholes.

>>415548
What about the Cleveland Hill, Captain Cook's monument, The Institute of Modern Arts with all its Picassos, Yarn village, the transporter bridge...

Ok, it's not as nice Hartlepool, but I tell you Middlesbrough is a darn fine place to live.

>>415570

>but I tell you Middlesbrough is a darn fine place to live.

Admittedly I've only stayed in Boro three times but the first time out travelodge was locked down because of nearby gunfire, the second time the van we were sleeping in was broken into, though they ran off when they noticed there was people in it, and the third time a drunk bloke with a baseball bat climbed into the back garden of the house we were in, and started screaming about his ex-missus that he presumably thought lived there.

The bridge is very inspiring, though.

>>415204
The Peak District - everything between Manchester and Sheffield - it is wonderful.

Just spent a weekend in Cumbria after not expecting a great deal and was blown away. I had no idea places like Ullswater and the Borrowdale valley actually existed outside of Wainwright paperbacks. It's easy to see how quaint glen-nestled villages like Grasmere inspired some of our nation's most outstanding literary laureates.

Cheap pints too.

I'm off to Glasgow in a few weeks, using it as a jumping off point for the central belt and the Trossachs. Any tips for not getting killed?

>>415590
City centre Glasgow has as many bearded alt-folk musicians, community jugglers and vegan cafes as Brighton and does not feel very dangerous at all, although people do like a drink there and the chavvier West Side is a bit lively on a weekend. Don't go into a flat-roof pub in a far-flung suburb and shout something about sectarian football is the only tip.

>>415590
I went a few years back and was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting roaming gangs of heroin-addicts and drunkards, abandoned boarded-up shops and brutalist tower blocks, but it all seemed very clean and civilized.

>>415590

The city centre is all craft beer and big food places. There will be a few steaming cunts and loads of tramps and rough sleepers.

West end is where all the hoi polloi tend to go. It's nice if you've got the cash. The kelvingrove and botanical gardens are really worth a visit.

The east end is really friendly these days barring a couple of areas. I'd avoid the gallowgate and Bridgeton all together but stay on Duke Street, but don't go any further than the Alexandra bar, lest you wind up in bigot land.

The north of Glasgow is a bit of a wasteland in places and really posh in others. The only place I can recommended (and it is barely north) is the Glue Factory in possil park. It gets used as an art gallery now and then, some interesting pieces on show.

The south is the new student hub, and also home to a lot of Glasgow's Asian community. Some properly nice food can be found there, and a lot of pubs too. OK for a visit but its still largely residential.

Glasgow is good for live music too, there is always something on in one of the venues. Start with Nice N Sleazy then adjust for taste on any given weekday.

Hope that gives you an overview.

If you're going the rest of the central belt, don't bother unless its Edinburgh or Stirling on a good day. Don't go to Falkirk.

I'm going to East Anglia for the weekend. One of my former coworkers bought an old country cottage there that he has now finished converting, and he is throwing a housewarming party.

I've never really spent much time in East Anglia, so it should be fun.

What's the closest 'proper' forest to London? I was considering Epping but it looks more like a glorified park.

>>415658
>What's the closest 'proper' forest to London?

You'll have to ask a true scotsman.

>>415658
New Forest, Thetford.

>>415658
Virginia?

>>415658
>>415662

The New Forest won't be good if you've heard the four minute warning.

Today I have been to Pontefract.

The first thing that struck me was the smell; due to the nearby Haribo factory the air was thick with the smell of sweets. The influence of Haribo on the town was clear from the majority of the Christmas lights in the centre being in the shape of gummy rings, cherries and fried eggs.

The town itself should be nice. It has a castle. It has a racecourse. It's a historic market town with nice wide streets and pretty buildings. However, the majority of the buildings are occupied by pound shops or other peddlers of cheap tat. It was also noticeable how the quality of the architecture declined drastically as soon as you were outside of the historic streets; concrete monstrosities. Other than the odd butcher I can't recall seeing much in the way of independent businesses.

The air was thick with the smell of sweets, but it couldn't mask the despondency that permeated everything. Pontefract strikes me as the kind of place where anyone with anything resembling ambition moves away from as soon as they are able to. It's hardly surprising that shoppers don't want to go there, what with the retail park and Xscape being a few minutes away on the other side of the motor junction and Leeds a little farther along, but it's a crying shame that a town centre like that is wasted and decaying.

>>423432

It's just one of those commuter towns with a couple of council estates. It feels grim because it's the sort of place where you live, and maybe have a local pub in, but you work in Leeds and more often go out in Leeds (or Wakey if you're on a budget). The only people stuck in the town itself are doleys, teenage delinquents and pensioners. There are places like that up and down this country.

Sor of related, I know a lass from York who works in Leeds, and is moving to Castleford. She says it seems nice and she never goes out in York anyway. She's in for a shock and it's going to be funny as fuck.

>>423432

You should go to M&Ms world in Leicester square. That place is bizarre. I went the other day and the stench is unbelievable: the smell of m&ms is so strong it almost gives you an instant headache.

What an odd thing. Leicester square itself is a bit of a mystery, but four floors devoted to one brand of chocolate? I'd forgive it were it something like 'Dairy Milk World' or 'Jaffa Cake Land'. I think, rather wonderfully, Leicester square demonstrates the clear crapness of our nation.

>>423432
If you think it's bad now, the Haribo factory USED to be the massive building near the Morrison's. Imagine the smell then.

I always though the new factory looks far too dystopic to be a sweet factory.

>>423434
Agreed, you never forget the smell of M&Ms World.

Even the concept of the place is utterly baffling. There are like five floors, maybe more. It's one in one of the biggest tourist spots in the country.

And it's filled, wall to wall, with merchandise of M&Ms.

And inexplicably, after ten years, it's still there.

It makes as much sense as a Twix theme park.

>>423433
>I know a lass from York who works in Leeds, and is moving to Castleford. She says it seems nice and she never goes out in York anyway. She's in for a shock and it's going to be funny as fuck.

Oh, she's in for an absolute treat. It's a toss up between Cas and Dewsbury for the worst commuter town for working in Leeds.

I feel like going camping in 'proper' Scotland this summer. Where are the best places to stay/visit? I'd be going with my kids so it'd be a mix of taking in scenery, visiting historic sites and whatever else there is for a decent day out.

>>427021

The thing that Scotland wants you to do is tour the North Coast 500 - a route that takes you around the entire country and is meant to provide you with the best scenery and landmarks. As you can legally wild camp in Scotland too, that's what I would do. I'm half planning it myself this summer.

https://www.northcoast500.com/explore-the-route/

>>427023

I'm not sold on the idea to tour Scotland.

For most of that trip, you will probably have to brave shit weather and people from the shallow end of the UK's gene pool.

>>427033

Then you're one of those mongs that think everyone in Scotland is a Glaswegian* and the whole place is just heroin and chips and you'll never really know what true happiness or awe or beauty is until you open yourself up to the possibility that the world might not be exactly as you imagine it, and that going to see it for yourself might actually be a pleasant experience.

*and doesn't realise that Glasgow is not even that bad

>>427023
The NC500 is just the very top of Scotland, from Inverness to John O'Groats, along the north coast, then down past Ullapool and then back round to Inverness. Ullapool is the most beautiful coastal town in the UK, imho.

>>427033
Oh to be such a naive flower again that the weather and people would top your list of annoyances. I bet with the weather we had this year it is going to be absolutely apocalyptic with midges come summer.

>>427036

>and the whole place is just heroin and chips

And deep fried Mars bars. Let's not forget the deep fried Mars bars.

>>427040
Barely anywhere still does this, much to my chagrin as I've always been too much of a coward to try it. Apparently there is a science to it, with only certain types of chocolate confectionery being suitable.

>>427041

I wonder what whoever invented deep fried Mars bars was thinking the moment they first put a chocolate bar in a deep fryer.

But you hear of stranger things. Like deep fried insects. Did that come about because some cooklad couldn't be arsed to give the tub a proper clean and then found a few roaches twirling around in the bubbling hot oil, and thought to himself, wonder what those taste like?

>>427042

Apparently it was invented by a 15-year-old boy as a prank, which seems like an oddly reasonable explanation.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/deep-fried-mars-bar-creators-6140625

>>427044

Still seems more like a backsplanation than anything else

>>427042

As a chef I can almost guarantee it was just someone bored on a quiet day, looking at their fryer and thinking "I wonder what we can put in here". I'm quite sure the deep fried chocolate bar was invented a thousand times over before someone finally decided to try and sell it.

>>427047
This. I've deep fried a lot of things due to boredom and just having the means to do so. Deep fried Twinkies are disgusting but in a surprisingly good way.

>>427049
Deep fried garlic gave me a stomach ache the next day.

>>427049>>427050
Proving beyond doubt that the deep fat frier is by far the most dangerous kitchen appliance.

Any of you lads got any suggestions for a weekend somewhere reasonably isolated and beautiful that you don't need a car to get to?
Been feeling the need to just go sit by myself in a forest or by the sea or up a fucking hill or something and just chill for a weekend.

Based in London so ideally somewhere not a million miles away, but also ideally somewhere with as few other people as possible. Happy to rent airbnbs/b&bs etc. Think I just need to get the fuck oot the city for a few days. Think the main thing is it needs to be accessible by some sort of public transport.

>>427706
If you can make it a long weekend it's nice to take the mega bus or a train to the southeast coast or Scotland, depending on your budget and patience.

>>427706
Purbeck. Direct train from London, plenty remote, and your pick of thatched cottage Airbnbs by the coast.

>>427706
I have almost the same exact question except I'm open to travelling to places by car/motorbike.

>>427708
The bits of Scotland served by good public transport links probably aren't going to fulfill his wish of having as few other people as people, at least that was my experience when I was in the highlands last November. I can't imagine how overcrowded it gets in the warmer months.

>>427706
https://www.surreyhills.org/

>>427706

Maybe the Peak District via Sheffield? There are adequate bus links from Sheffield city centre to most of the national park area.

>>415204
I went to Rendlesham forest about a month ago, it was lovely (no aliens, unfortunately). Gonna hopefully be going up to Thetford forest, soon.

When was the last time you watched the sunrise, lads?

>>429054
Last Friday. I couldn't sleep.

>>429054

It seems funny to me that people associate sunrise with wholesomeness and beauty. To me, they're synonymous with night shifts in shit jobs and horrendous comedowns from cheap speed. I could quite happily never see another sunrise in my life.

>>429054 See it most mornings, as I sleep with the windows open and it wakes me up. I shamble to the window, say good morning to the world, and shut the fucking relentless dawn chorus and light out. Sets me up for the day.
I do like sunrises, though, they're quite nice out here. About the only time they piss me off is when I've worked through the night to hit a deadline, and sunrise is a hint that I'm not going to make it.

I'm off to Cornwall in a few weeks. Where do you lads recommend visiting? I booked it last year so I'm hoping it's not rammed with people now staying in this country thanks to coronavirus, particularly as kids should be back in school by then.

>>438631
Bude Tunnel.

>>438631
Neither are in Cornwall, stricly speaking, but they are on your map - Dartmoor is a wonderful national park, and the village of Salcombe is better than most seaside places in Cornwall.

Drive to Lands End if you want to see how desperate a tourist trap something can be - awful place.

Tintagel has a nice castle, and the Eden Project is genuinely good.

>>438631
Truro is quite quaint, Mousehole is quite nice to stay and walk along the coast. Stay clear of cockles in pubs. Don't even try them unless you know what you're getting into.

>>438631
>I booked it last year so I'm hoping it's not rammed with people now staying in this country thanks to coronavirus

Unfortunately that seems to be the case, I've recently moved out of Cornwall but have friends dotted around there and apparently some of the beaches are an absolute state but it's probably seaside towns hit the worst, although there's a load of campers around too. I'd honestly just recommend exploring around the countryside, there's some bloody beautiful walks around, Bodmin Moor's just across from Dartmoor for instance. Prepare for it to be a bit chaotic, depending where you're going to.

Devon and Cornwall are rammed with holidaymakers at the minute, even with the shitty weather for the past week. The normally 2 hour drive from Bristol down to Jct 31 of the M5 was over 3 and a half hours on Friday. Thankfully I wasn't driving north because of an accident causing a 6 mile tailback.

Saying that it does depend on what you want out of where you're going. Tintagel, Looe and Mousehole are quaint seasidey places, with plenty of coastal paths which can make for a pleasant ramble. Of course there's Newquay for a piss up amongst the hordes of hen and stag does.

I would personally recommend North Devon near Ilfracombe for a good mix of the 2.

>>438646
>I would personally recommend North Devon

Agreed - this is the thing about Cornwall - it's a tourist shithole where the people are fucking yokels. It's a lot like Florida in that it has beautiful scenery spoiled mostly by the locals and their pursuit of the tourist coin. Devon is next door, there is much less traffic and its the smarter holiday destination.

Looking for recommendations of places that are a nice walk, and a nice drive on the way, because I've just got a new motor. Let's say I'm setting off from Beeston.

My favourite place was probably Snowdonia, it was only let down by being rammed with posh southern tourists and all the pubs charging accordingly. I've been all over the Dales and a fair few places in the Peaks, I've never visited the Lake District and I've been meaning to go up to Scotland for years but never got around to it.

>>438734

The lakes are lovely but will also be ram packed at the minute. Lancashire is very nice, but as you're from The Other Place it's probably too close to home and also your bitter rivalry will ruin the experience.

Scotland is personally my idea of a lovely place with a lovely drive, basically the whole fucking lot of it, but the North Coast 500 route is full of the sorts of locations you describe, and the drive is, of course, spectacular.

I'm not up on how friendly Scottish people are to us dragging our viruses across the border and wandering about small towns at the moment, but if it's all okay, then that's what I'd be doing.

>>438735

My missus lived there for the best part of her childhood so she has a bit of the accent, I could get her to do all the talking to conceal our Englishness.

Any particular recommendations? More seriously, I'll leave it til next year if the Scots are still taking the 'rona a bit more seriously than we are down here, but it'd be good to know.

Would a holiday home be a decent investment? By this I mean buying on a holiday park rather than an actual house where someone could live. It's my last day in Cornwall and these are for sale where I'm staying:-

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/55478651

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/55420741

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/53504242

They're leasehold, with about 960 years left on the lease, and there will be costs like cleaning and site fees but properties similar to the one listed for £40k were being let out for over a grand per week this summer, albeit with refurbished kitchens and bathrooms. I can't imagine there's much potential for the resale value to go up but it seems like a decent investment unless I'm missing a fairly obvious catch.

>>438734
Walking in the Yorkshire Wolds in mid-Spring is an absolute joy. Disused railway tracks, chalk hills, dales and glacial valleys. A properly underrated part of the country.
Please come visit unless you're from West Yorkshire or a Southerner.

>>438777

Too flat, no trees, it's shite. I'd rather walk along the canal in Dewsbury.

Absolute Humberfag cope, jesus.

I went to Rochdale today. It is a proper shithole.

>>447987
I have wanted to buy train tickets to Northern towns around Manchester ever since Northern Rail was nationalised, and today I went to Blackpool. It's nice enough that it didn't feel interesting or different from what I'm used to, and so I wound up slightly disappointed. Also, I went on my own and it's November. Anyway, I thought to myself at one point that I have also been to Rochdale, because it's the end of the line on the Manchester Metrolink, and that felt weirder and more exotic than Blackpool did, even though I didn't even need a train to get there.

>>447989
I'd probably go edge of the Peak District way, somewhere like Glossop or Greenfield would be a decent base.

>>447989
>>448014
The station pub on the platform at Stalybridge is a thing of beauty.

Today I went to Tadcaster. It's the closest experience I've had to being in Wonkaville because the town is completely dominated by the relatively huge John Smiths factory, which looms over everything. The town centre felt like a bit of a ghost town, as there were many buildings in a state of disrepair which looked like they'd been boarded up long ago and many shop fronts had window frames made of wood which had long since gone rotten. Outskirts seemed alright though.

>>448816
Did you have a drink?

A friend of mine introduced me to a rum and coke at a Samuel Smith pub. Because they're insistent on everything, not just the beer, coming from the Old Brewery or businesses associated with it, you get a nice rum and a proper old-fashioned cola rather than Coca-Cola mix in fizzy water. It's absolutely fucking delightful, even if you wouldn't normally drink rum or coke.

>>448818
It was late morning when I went and the pubs I remember going past weren't open at that time. I did pick up Excession by Iain Banks for 10p in one of the charity shops though.

>>448816

It is a very odd place.

Me and a couple of mates got a train up there (I think? Can't quite remember) once so we could do a "tour" of all the Sam Smith's pubs. But once we got there we realised quite quickly it was a bit of a Royston Vasey situation, we went in the first pub, which was a really big and quite classy one, and it was full of pensioners politely (and fucking silently) eating lunch. Really odd vibe, like if we said the wrong thing their eyes would all light up and they'd turn to face us in unison, screeching, and descend upon us.

We didn't dare actually get drunk because we knew we'd stick out like a sore thumb, so in the end we just bought a few bottles over the counter and went home.

>>448820
I know it was a weekday morning but what stuck out to me is that, other than a dimly lit tea room full of pensioners, everything else was polared. Nobody was in the butchers, barbers, hairdressers, opticians, dentists or any of the shops I walked past. The person I was with told me that anybody with any sense locally moved to the likes of Boston Spa, leaving only the dregs in Tadcaster.

Been around various parts of Birmingham today. What a shithole. It felt like just about everything there has been purposefully designed to make you feel glum.

>>449946

I've always been quite fond of Birmingham, but I do have a soft spot for post-industrial decay, Asian supermarkets and needlessly confusing road layouts.

>>449948
It did seem like every 100 metres or so one road was merging into another, so drivers constantly cutting off other cars. The roads were by far more aggressive than anywhere else I've been in this country.

>>449949
The worst driving I've ever seen for a city was Bournemouth. Manchester's Curry Mile (Rusholme) is even worse, but that's just one long street and the rest of Manchester drives normally, so Bournemouth is still the worst for me.

>>449946
I had to live in Birmingham for a few months for work and it was the most depressing place I've ever spent more than a few days.

>>449946
I've only been to the centre, Alum Rock, and Shard End, and thought it was quite pleasant. Having said that, I grew up in Bradford, so areas full of sari shops and shitty takeaways are nostalgic for me.

>>449950

I think every MP should have to walk down curry mile before they are allowed to make any decision regarding immigration.

>>449957
Why?

>>449958

Because it's hard to be a cunt when you've got a belly full of delicious and remarkably inexpensive curry.

>>447989
I went on a second "support Northern Rail by buying a random ticket" day out today, and I chose to visit the delightful and exciting city of Preston. It's very nice, but that could have just been the weather. I did like it, but it feels very strange, like it has no personality at all. It's a perfectly wonderful small provincial city with absolutely no identity. I wanted to take a picture of myself near a famous landmark, so I went to the bus station with its acclaimed architecture. It's a good thing I did, because that's really all Preston has. All the other buildings that you'd expect to be in big squares, like Preston Town Hall and the Guildhall for example, are actually hidden away on small side streets. Stephen Hendry owns a snooker club in Preston, so I thought I could go there and just fuck around on a table if I got really stuck, but it's miles away from central Preston so in the end I just went to the park. It's an absurdly hilly park, but again, it is very nice.

The utter lack of obvious tourist attractions in Preston is making me reconsider my plans to go to famously dull places like Blackburn and Burnley. Even if they just have different accents and funny-coloured wheelie bins, that would be enough for me, but Preston couldn't even manage that. Although again, the park is nice, and has free public toilets like a true socialist paradise.

>>451335
Did you see the garish statues near the corn exchange?

>>451336
Bugger. I don't think I did. I pretty much went up and down Fishergate and a few streets near there; I saw a couple of quite boring statues (Robert Peel by the small park with a silly name, like Winky Park or something) but if they were interesting colours then I missed them.

>>451339

>>451339
I was also going to say the National Football Museum, but turns out that's moved to Manchester.

>>451343
I know the faces are ridiculous, but I don't entirely hate this. It represents workers being killed, and the workers are all memorable, distinct individuals. The killers, meanwhile, look cool but they're all the same, identical copies of each other. It's a shame the expressions are so absurd, because other than that, it's quite a good piece of art. I can certainly see what the artist was going for with it.

>>451335

That's a scarily accurate description of my lackluster hometown.

Not far from where you were, you could have taken a delightful stroll down Old Cock Yard to see the garage (or remnants of,) where they found the remains of a suspected Peter Sutcliffe victim.

>>451349
See, this is what I never liked about Preston, always so full of themselves.

>>451349
Do you pronounce Aqueduct Street as Ack-ee-dock. My Dad and Grandad did (with tounge somewhat in cheek knowing that it was wrong, but just doing it the local way).

>>451351
No, I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced like that.

>>451335
Since I posted this, I have also been to Bradford (very nice but it's disappointingly difficult to find a proper curry place) and Burnley (it's so much nicer than I expected but incredibly dull; I visited my friend and we went drinking and I wound up unable to get home again), and today I went to Liverpool. I had no idea Liverpool was so touristy. It's like a theme park for football and the Beatles which is mental considering the actual best band from Liverpool is The Lightning Seeds, with stalls selling souvenirs in the street and everything. I was not expecting that.

Liverpool is also great to walk around, with something on every street, and it's much more scenic than Manchester. I must say I am aghast at how the legendarily left-wing city, full of outright communists, was so blatantly built on the proceeds of slavery. I know what sort of fantastic 19th-century architecture you get from the slave trade, and Liverpool's imposing and glorious city centre was really, obviously, paid for by selling Africans to the Caribbean. What would Militant Tendency say?

But speaking of architecture, holy fuck, why have I never heard of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral? I spent all afternoon wandering randomly, and I turned a corner and set off down a subdued side street which just happened to contain a motherfucking spaceship. It doesn't even belong to a weird cult like Heaven's Gate or the Scientologists; it was made for bloody Catholics. I wound up spending probably half an hour today just walking round it and admiring it; I am downright in love with this building. (I didn't go inside, though, because I think there was some service going on and I didn't want to interrupt the penitent God-bothering). I assume some people refer to this thriller with words like "eyesore" and "monstrosity", but fuck those people; it's incredible. The greatest achievements in art are when something is incredibly mental but somehow still makes perfect sense, and that's what this futuristic beauty achieves. And to think, I almost missed it.

Here is a picture I took earlier today. There are also a couple of pictures of me looking at it, including one with a frankly embarrassing YouTube thumbnail-face. That's how utterly disrupted my whole approach to architecture has been by this divine revelation. Fuck the rest of Liverpool; it's fine enough but it's nothing compared to the retrofuturist magic of a priest's house.

>>458455

When I was a teenager, I once did a shitload of mushrooms and went to mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral. It took me about three weeks to come back to earth. We did weird things to amuse ourselves before the internet.

It amuses me that the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool would have been a huge but dull Italianate dome if they hadn't run out of money during the war. The Gibberd design was to some extent a cheap post-war prefab and was massively controversial at the time, but the budget constraints forced them to entertain something a bit mad that went on to become iconic.

>>458455
You need to mingle more with the locals when you do these trips. The attraction of Liverpool and Manchester should really be the warm nature of the locals, much as you should really visit the Scottish highlands to enjoy their culture of stopping to have a chat with everyone they meet.

>>458471
>The attraction of Liverpool and Manchester should really be the warm nature of the locals
Is going up norf for sex tourism worth it? A lot of the northern transplants I talk to complain about the frigidness of southern lasses and how much easier it is to pull back home.

>>458455
>I assume some people refer to this thriller with words like "eyesore" and "monstrosity"

It's affectionately known as "Paddy's Wigwam". I hope you did a 180 thereafter and walked down Hope Street, that's where the Philharmonic and some of the greatest pubs are. And eventually you may have found our other Cathedral lurking at the end. Sounds like you had a decent time, and there's a better one in store if you come back with a bunch of mates.

>>458476
Northerners are generally warmer and more open than Southerners. Money grabbing is probably the wrong word but I'd say Southerners tend to treat interactions on a more transactional basis, calculating what they can get out of you.

>>458471
You could well be right, but how would I do such a thing? Go in a pub and drink alone till someone approaches me? Stop people in the street and ask them what their favourite building is? I'm a charming and friendly guy when I have at least one friend already with me, but on my own I am an absolute turbo-sperg and debilitating social coward.

>>458483
I did indeed walk past the Philharmonic on my way to the other cathedral. Unfortunately, with so many things to see and absolutely no plan, I only looked at the outside of buildings and no other building exterior even came close to the big MC. I also wasted over an hour trying to walk to those big electricity windmills (I walked down Great something Street, starting near the Liver Building and walking north for hours and hours), but I never actually reached them before I gave up and turned back.

>>458491
>I also wasted over an hour trying to walk to those big electricity windmills (I walked down Great something Street, starting near the Liver Building and walking north for hours and hours)

Sounds like Great Howard Street; you did the right thing by turning back because those are right on the waterfront inside the container port, so you have fortunately been denied a sore neck by get near enough to 'em. Early on you might have seen a pretty bland windowless tower that may have looked like some sort of silo peeking above the roof of Costco - or perhaps you may have already discovered the ventilation tower for the other end of the Queensway tunnel across the river while at the Pier Head. Those things look like a 1950's concept for a rocket launchpad, and I wouldn't have even considered it if you hadn't described the RC Cathedral as a spaceship!

>>458501
>Queensway Tunnel

I am tired and stupid, I meant "Kingsway Tunnel". Anyway, lemme kno next time yer in town lad and we'll get sum bevvies

>>458501
That's definitely where I went; I don't know how far I went but I know I passed Costco very early on. I also saw this derelict building that was very optimistically described as being full of investment opportunities. I turned back around the blue cranes, and I saw something that looked like a football stadium which I presume will one day be Everton's new ground.

>>458515

Oh yeah, the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouses. There used to be a bustling sunday market there which took all day to get around, and you'd still go home having bought nothing at all. I swear people just went there to do a few laps of the place. The largest building is being renovated into Duplex Flats that very few fuckers will be able to afford to live in.

I went on another random day trip to another Northern city. Today, I went to Sheffield. I am absolutely convinced I didn't get the full experience, because I got off the train and started walking, as I always do, and it seems like the whole area around the station belongs to Sheffield Hallam University, so I felt unwelcome since I went to a good university. I like snooker so I went and took a picture of the Crucible, and then I just wandered randomly and it really didn't work. There are maps all over the place, which is an excellent thing, but they are all rotated so that the top of the map is the direction you are facing rather than north, and this makes it very difficult to find anything. I found Bramall Lane football stadium, but I got there just as 20,000 miserable and angry football fans were walking in the opposite direction. At one point I even considered getting a tram to Rotherham for a 2-for-1 of Northern towns.

The shopping is very good, though. That was my favourite thing about Sheffield. Normally I spend all day wandering about with my bag-for-life in my pocket, but I never use it because I don't want to carry a load of shopping around with me. But today, I bought a bottle from Nisbet's that I can put my homemade hot sauce in, and this inspired me to go back to Decathlon and spend over £100 on stuff I could just as easily have bought back in Manchester. I'm going to Iceland (the country, not the supermarket) next year and I need a new coat for that, and the one I got is very warm and comfy.

Another thing I didn't like was when I saw a cool bridge and went over for a closer look, and instead of going over a nice river, it just goes over a road. I don't know what the bridge is called, but it's near the National Videogame Museum, which I very nearly went in but instead decided to go and look at the bridge. And this is probably why I am a crappy tourist who misses a lot of the worthwhile attractions.

Oh, and Sheffield's cathedral is very small too. Overall, I'd say Sheffield is better than Preston, but slightly worse than Bradford. The late-November sun was very low all day as well and was constantly in my eyes, and obviously that's not Sheffield's fault but I certainly didn't like it. I dread to think what great things I must have missed while I was there.

>>461511

A lot of the good things about Sheffield are just outside Sheffield- it's basically in the Peak District so it's ace if you like the outdoors.

I'd seen very little for a long time other than the major touristy destinations, then I became a defence contractor and got taken to ass ends of it

>>461511
What otherlad said. The appeal of Sheffield is the relatively high number of green spaces and being on the edge of the Peak District.

>>461511
And another one. Today I went to Chester. There are endless opportunities for walking around, and that's free so do try it. You can walk a full circuit of the ancient city walls, which are two miles long. It takes a little under an hour with all the stopping to read signs and things, so it's a great thing to do in Chester. You can also walk all the way to the border with Wales, but if you go the nice way along the river Dee, you're walking for ages until you can't see anything in any direction, like Lawrence of Arabia or something, and then you keep walking until you reach a sign inviting you to begin walking the entire coastline of Wales. It's 870 miles, so if we assume 20 miles a day, that's still a month and a half of walking.

The shopping looks nice, with various quality shops that sell art and suits and vinyl records, but as often happens, I wasn't willing to carry that around with me all day, so I bought nothing that I didn't eat or drink immediately. I did go into Waitrose and see these, though. Gravy. In a can. Am I meant to drink it? What absolute gibbering lunacy.

The architecture is very nice; Chester is famous for its old buildings from hundreds of years ago, and even the modern buildings are quite interesting a lot of the time. But you get used to it quite quickly, and then it's just part of the scenery. Like in Sheffield, the cathedral is smaller than I expected, but it's still a lot bigger than Sheffield's.

The worst thing about Chester is getting there: there's one train an hour from Manchester, and I somehow contrived to mistime my journeys both there and back again so I had to wait ages both times. Awful. But all in all, Chester is a decent place, with a fair combination of classy things and scrotey violent revellers (thanks a lot, Grand National), so I would assume it has something for everyone, while still being small enough to easily navigate.

>>463693
I haven't been to Chester in about 12 years but it felt to me like it had a similar vibe to York, just with more scouse accents. Anyway, I liked my visit; I watched a play in the open air theatre, had a nice Thai meal and took a boat out on the river.

I've got free tickets to go to Beamish tomorrow, but the weather is going to be so lovely I don't fancy going because it'll be absolutely rammed.

Where should I go for something relatively chilled on a nice sunny day? I'll consider anything between County Durham and Nottinghamshire.

>>464037

Don't say it, don't say it, no, fuck it, I've got to say it...

GO FOR A NICE DRIVE TO BARNARD CASTLE.

Sorry.

>>463693
Me again. Today, I went to the big one, the end boss of posting here: Leeds.

It's too big to do everything in one day. Too daunting, too much going on. I got a tourist guide from the art gallery for £1, telling me to look around Leeds for little owls who would tell me facts about Leeds. I found one owl, then failed to find the next two and gave up.

The shopping in Leeds is some of the best in the country. They have an entire shop devoted to hot sauce, which I went in, and for once I actually bought stuff on one of my day trips. I have several bottles of hot sauce already, plus some homemade hot sauce that I haven't even tried yet, but maybe I can just get through it all before I buy any more. They also have a branch of HomeSense (which Manchester no longer does), and I know there is some bizarre kitchen implement that I wanted to buy from a specialist shop. I went in, and was in there for about 40 minutes, 20 minutes trying to remember what it was I have been so desperate to buy from a shop - it was a grapefruit knife - and then 20 more minutes trying to see if they sell them there. Admittedly, they do not.

One downside that I noticed about Leeds is that the people there are fucking rough. On two separate occasions, I saw local people trying to bully or scam passersby in the street. I have not seen this anywhere else. The passersby were probably from Leeds too, so maybe there are some decent, innocent Leeds people, but 100% of the scum I have seen in the towns and cities surrounding Manchester have been from Leeds. You can't argue with those numbers.

So: brilliant shopping, horrible people, a terrifying amount to do. If you went there with friends instead of on your own, you could spend a week there and not get bored. You might not last the week if you get stabbed on the Tuesday by a crack addict, however.

>>465201
Also, this might not have been the best use of my time in Leeds, but since you both live there, I went out looking for that place that is a wordfilter here. That's right; I also went to B**ston.

It's fucking horrible. Bloody hell. I felt optimistic as I walked along the various footbridges over the motorway, and then there's a lovely park which might be grim but the lush open fields made the two heroin addicts I saw literally as soon as I went in feel a whole lot less intimidating. Then I walked down Dewsbury Road, which I'm sure you both know, and I kept walking for ages. I think that's actually Beeston Hill rather than real Beeston, but it's not a great road for tourism. I considered getting the bus back on more than one occasion.

There's another park, Cross Something Park, which I think is the border between Beeston Hill and Britfa.gs Beeston, and when I got there I decided to go into that park and then return to the good bits of Leeds. I could have sworn someone here said once that Beeston was a fancy place with expensive hipster bars, but I didn't see any. Just hand car-washes, Polish shops and igloos. And I was sick of walking by this point. To be fair, this park is nice enough.

In Manchester terms, I think Dewsbury Road serves the exact same purpose as Princess Road, and Beeston is the Moss Side of Leeds. However, it also feels a lot like Oldham. Definitely not somewhere I'd recommend as a sight to see, not even if you post here and feel really curious about the legendary Beeston. And to be fair, Beeston does seem to be all of south Leeds, so perhaps there are good bits too.

You bloody bastards. I should have gone to Cottingley, which looked lovely from the train, or Mirfield, which might not technically be part of Leeds but looks delightful.

>>465202
I used to live just behind those trees on the right, I assure you Beeston is a shithole. Not Leeds' worst but a shithole nonetheless.
Theres the best kebab shop in the city - Beeston Shawarma, behind the Premier on Dewsbury Road, and the fantastic Middleton Railway - those the only thing worth going to Beeston for. The highlight of my time living there was seeing the steam engines puff along from my bedroom window when they had them running.
>I felt optimistic as I walked along the various footbridges over the motorway, and then there's a lovely park which might be grim.
Might be grim? I assume you missed the massive tower block smack bang in the middle of it.
Theres the genuinely excellent Middleton park, Leeds' largest, to be found if you headed down the road on the left just before where your photo is taken. It has everything. Lush open parkland, woodland you can get lost in. Many weekends were spent there when it wasn't raining.
>There's another park, Cross Something Park, which I think is the border between Beeston Hill and Britfa.gs Beeston
I was always confused by what is and isn't Beeston Proper. To my mind Beeston Hill is the area around the top of cup of tea Road, to the right of the park (and your photo). If you went further up Dewsbury Road you'd find a KFC, a Dominos and then eventually a particularly rough pub and the Asda. Heading through the park and then left down Beeston Road theres a Co-op (apparently now a Nisa Extra, whatever that is), the pitiful Library and a smattering of charity shops and bookies. Theres a decent pub up that way as well. This is the area I'd say is probably technically Beeston Proper though the local community centre is confusingly called "Beeston Village" which is apparently something else. Google maps has the area I'm most familiar with - and where you inexplicably went - as "Hunslet Carr" but its cut off from Hunslet by the M621 so that can't be it. Whenever someone asked where I lived when I lived <300m from your photo I'd say Beeston. Does any of this even matter? Probably not.
>I could have sworn someone here said once that Beeston was a fancy place with expensive hipster bars.
There's a Beeston in Nottingham which is probably where they were referring to given its right next to the university. If you wanted that in Leeds I'd suggest Chapel Allerton or Headingley.
>I should have gone to Cottingley, which looked lovely from the train
As in the large council estate walled off from the rest of Leeds by the ring road?

I never found a terrifying amount to do in Leeds. Royal Armouries, Leeds City Museum, the art gallery. Thats about it as far as I was concerned.
Now I've moved away and wondering what I'm missing besides the ample selection of Polish shops, takeaways and the aforementioned museums.

>>465201
Did you find any knives whatsoever in Homesense? They seemed to have stopped selling them entirely when I last went. In fact I found it ridiculously difficult to get my hands on a couple of decent knives locally - Nisbet's being the only option.
No prizes for guessing why that was the case.

>>465202
Beeston is a proper shithole I can't believe you actually visited.

>Mirfield, which might not technically be part of Leeds but looks delightful.

Mirfield is a main road with a few shops on and then a bunch of houses. It tends to become incredibly gridlocked during rush hour, in case that needed factoring in.

If you went your best bet would be to stay south of the Calder/canal and either go west along the river, walk through Wheatley Park or maybe up to Hopton.

>>465205
They have a locked display cabinet with extremely sharp and dangerous butcher knives. Indeed, if you wanted to buy a knife and fork you wouldn't have been able to.

I saw a mink today. At least I believe it was a mink, it was black so I don't think it was a weasel. Never seen one before.

Yesterday I went to Nottingham. I was worried it was going to be an absolute shithole, based on all the areas I drove past on the way in, but that turned out to be unfounded. I was pleasantly surprised by the city centre although it was very quiet, which may have been because it was a Sunday. I bet it's a decent place to be a student.

>>466748

I've never been to Nottingham, but when I was a younger lad playing in a band we did a gig in Derby once, and it was by far the worst experience in my entire music career. We resolved never to play there again.

>>466748
What did you do here? I don't know what there is to do in Nottingham if you're a visitor, other than the castle, caves, and art gallery.

>>466750
I went to the National Justice Museum, then a brief look in the art gallery before going into the caves beneath it.

>>466753
Two out of the three Nottingham attractions ain't bad.

>>466750
Hatchet Harry's Axe Throwing.

Today I have been to Lincoln. I like the area around the castle and cathedral but there's a point near the bottom of Steep Hill, I think it's marked by an All Bar One or something like that, where it suddenly moves from the tourist area to where the locals frequent and you find yourself surrounded by window-lickers. I believe almost all of Lincoln's city centre shopping is concentrated on a single high street, so it was absolutely rammed. I'm fairly certain there was a human turd not far outside of the Primark.

>>467175

You should work for Visit England.

>>467175

Are you checking places off a list? Can we see your list?

>>467179
I think I should get involved and point out that this poster isn’t me. I’m the poster who has done Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Preston, Blackpool, Burnley, Chester, and possibly a couple more. I would love to visit Lincoln too, but it’s pretty hard to get to from Manchester via Northern Rail, which is how I travel. I’m glad that there’s someone else doing the same thing, and it’s doubly good that he lives a long way from me. But there are at least two of us doing this.

I'm probably a bit daft, but it took me far too long to understand that Snowdonia is not an eastern European country.

>>467179
Otherlad (>>467181) goes by train, I go by car. I wouldn't recommend driving in Lincolnshire as many drivers love speeding, love tailgating and hate using their indicators.

>>467181
>>467185

Fair enough. I am going to start doing it too in the new year when I have sorted my shit financial situation out a bit. I will probably go by train so I can have a few pints in whatever place I end up. I do a fair bit of driving to countryside places for walkies but I prefer having someone to come with me for those.

Is there some kind of price comparison site or whatever for trains, so I can just kind of look at cheap fares, pick a bargain, and let that decide where I am going for me?

>>467188
I just buy my ticket in person when I get to the station, but I think https://www.thetrainline.com/ is what you're looking for.

>>467185
There's nothing wrong with speeding or seldom using indicators. Tailgating is rude, I'll give you that one.

>>467189

I have the app on my phone but it only really helps if you know where you are going. I mean something like, you put in the station you are starting from, and it shows you all the outgoing destinations, like what you can do with air travel.

>>467191
There's also Real Time Trains, which shows you all trains from every station and where they're going and when, which is amazing. But you can't buy tickets from it.

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Rochdale is grim. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I find post-industrial shitholes in Lancashire to be much more bleak than their Yorkshire counterparts.

>>467291
It's the people. I went there a few months ago, and was impressed at how incredible a lot of the buildings were, and the park right in the centre, and the immense Town Hall. Then a man walked out of the pub next to the Town Hall and started pissing on it, at four in the afternoon, and that's why Rochdale is grim.

>>467291

I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about this, and I have concluded it's because it's much more flat. Places in Yorkshire still have some residual character because it's all hills, and that forces the towns to have daft illogical layouts. Most of Manchester and the Lanctastrian shitholes you refer to are just sprawling rows of nasty cramped terraced houses that should have been demolished by now as slum clearance.

That, and most of the Yorkshire ones are at least made out of nice sandstone, not red brick. I was around Woodhouse and Hyde Park, near the uni, in Leeds the other day. Reminded me how those areas are definitely the worst parts of the city. People always name Harehills or Seacroft or wherever, but they pale in comparison to those claustrophobic streets full of back to backs, where even when the sun is out you're always in the shade because you're so densely surrounded by buildings. All red brick, fronting directly onto tarmac.

Today I learned about Too Good To Go, an app where you can buy heavily discounted food direct from high street shops that would otherwise have been thrown away.

https://www.toogoodtogo.com/

Yet to try it out.

Today I've been to the National Space Centre in Leicester. It was pretty decent, particularly the planetarium and spaceport experience, with my main grumble being other people (mainly those with small children).

You get an annual pass but that only includes one free planetarium show, so you'll have to pay if you want to watch another one on a further visit. I don't know if there's enough there to justify a second visit without seeing what else is around Leicester, but it did seem like a bit of a shit hole. That said, I picked up some rather nice khaman from one of the newsagents there.

>>468376
Leicester is good for curries, but yeah it's a shithole. Did they fix the number of Jupiter's moons yet?

>>467341

In it's early days, I once had a TooGoodToGo meal at a chain carvery. The manager of the carvery in question took exception to my presence because she wanted to give the leftovers to some homeless who regularly came by for some. She stood in the middle of the restaurant screaming and shouting at me about how terrible a person I am, how I was stealing food from the hungry and how I didn't need it because I was working. It made me so stressed out that I couldn't finish the meal. This only enraged the woman further.

In the end I left feeling humiliated. I got a limp apology to my complaint and no vouchers or anything. I wouldn't have used them anyway, because I've never gone back.

>>468469
The homeless don't deserve food anyway. They'll only use the energy walking to their drug dealer.

Bradford is weird. It's like a sink estate, but on a citywide level.

>>468636
I liked it when I went. The centre is nice, and every road I walked down inexplicably led me back to the exact same place, so I got to see the wonderful city centre eight or nine times. I only went once but I can probably draw the Alhambra theatre from memory.

I went to Bolton today. I wanted to go to Lancaster, but that train was cancelled and I never really care where I explore, so I picked somewhere much, much closer to Manchester. And I must say, it's too close to Manchester. It has no identity of its own; I didn't even hear anyone with that ghastly accent that Paddy McGuinness and Philomena Cunk have. Things pick up a little bit once you get lost and find some interesting buildings, but Bolton really suffers from not having either a park or a river in the centre. There are meant to be parks further out, but for some reason I got lost every single time I went down any street at all, so I was reluctant to walk too far. Considering my above comments about Bradford, perhaps my sense of direction is worse than I always assumed. Today was an overcast day in January, too, of course, so I couldn't use the sun for directions. Bolton was also suspiciously polared; I expected it to be a lot busier than it was. Bolton Wanderers were playing at home today (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c77r468j80lt?page=3), but only 19,946 people went and they didn't even win. In the end, I was wanting to go home before it even got dark. And again, it's January, so it got dark around 16:30.

So there you have it. Bolton = shit. It is the first place I have been to where I would actually encourage future visitors not to bother. Rochdale pisses all over Bolton, plus you can get there on the tram.

>>468469

I think you're telling porkies. I would have assumed that the restaurant has to sign up to be listed on these apps.

>>468641
My main issue with Bradford other than all the Joe's is how tired and run down it is. I know that white flight hasn't helped, but there's no excuse for littering down your own street.

Today I've been to Stockport. I was pleasantly surprised because I was expecting it to be a shithole but it was alright, especially the old town. It might have been because it was a Sunday but it was fairly quiet, although I don't think there is too much to do there. There were also far more crusty middle class people than I was expecting.

The Stockport pyramid is weird as fuck.

>>469026
I went to Stockport yesterday, to the massive Decathlon. I live in Wythenshawe so it was just a standard bike ride away. My experience was much less positive, but it's astonishing how nice all the places in between our two shitholes are. Gatley's nice, and the three or four different Cheadles are all fabulous. I think Stockport gets nicer the further uphill you go; the very centre is like the bottom of a well, but if you need to go up steps to get somewhere, it's often perfectly classy.

>>469029
I think a big part of the reason it made a positive impression on me was because I was expecting it to be on the same level as Bury or Rochdale.

Not very interestingly enough, I went to Decathlon last weekend (albeit the one in York) to pick up a new pair of walking boots.

>>469026

When I was seeing a lass in Manchester she seemed to think Altrincham was the best place on earth and we would get the tram down there fairly regularly just to wander around the shops and sit in Costa for a bit. It was nice enough. Seemed just like any other not-shit suburb of an average British city to me, but maybe one to try in future.

>>468636>>468651
I left in 93, still have fond memories of what it was.
Recent visit to see family have revealed the city centre is essentially dead outside of the shopping centre, and that there are huge roads now that spew off everywhere you don't want to go.

Shipley Glen is still nice.

Is there anywhere nice in Lincolnshire (other than Lincoln) for a weekend away?

>>468641
>I went to Bolton today. I wanted to go to Lancaster
Guess where I went today? Lancaster is lovely. The architecture is noticeably different from Manchester, the people are good-looking, there's plenty of tourist stuff, and a whole undercurrent of niche weirdness for the art hippies among us you me. I had lunch in an independent local Chinese restaurant, it was delicious, and then I went into Lancaster City Museum, which is free and full of cool stuff about Lancaster. I found the cathedral and took a picture of it, I walked up some distressingly steep hills (like the one when you get off the train and follow the signs to "City centre" and wind up outside the castle), and even the river is huge and impressive.

This took about two hours, at which point I noticed that in addition to all the sights of Lancaster, you can also walk to Morecambe with a bit of effort, and get a free trip to the seaside alongside your beautiful architecture and museums. The distance from Lancaster to Morecambe is three and a half miles, and there's a path that starts off following the river, but then they split up and you're just walking down a country lane for nearly an hour. You can tell when you've passed the halfway point, because in addition to the plentiful signage on the path, Morecambe is fucking shit. It's vile. It is a complete dump, but then, it is a British seaside town and those are all complete hellholes. By seaside-town standards, it's actually somewhere in the middle, on a par with Blackpool but with less to do. The beach is scenic, the sea is nice, the wind is invigorating and there are many dozens of little signs for tourists to read. There's even a statue of Eric Morecambe, which you are pretty much obligated to go and find even if you aren't particularly obsessed with Morecambe and Wise. Really, the beach and sea parts are very nice - it's only the parts of Morecambe that are on land which utterly sap the soul.

All in all, Lancaster is a hilly, hipster Chester, and that's an amazing thing to be. Morecambe would arguably be worth it too if you weren't walking, and certainly if you weren't travelling from enchanting and beautiful Lancaster. This has definitely been a superior day trip.

>>469614
I have heard tell of what a lovely place Lancaster is. I actually wanted to visit it when the weather first turned pleasant, but found that a train ticket is more expensive than one to London, despite being half the time. It's two times and four times as expensive as Liverpool and Manchester respectively, which are basically the same journey times. I'm forced to assume they're trying to keep riff-raff like me out.

>>469615
Perhaps a ticket to Morecambe would be cheaper from wherever you are? Then you could get a second train for £4.20, or walk the way I went but in reverse. Seeing Lancaster gradually loom into view like a gleaming citadel as you stride away from the concrete hovels and tin beach huts would be an enviable experience indeed, like a real-life version of any of those old Dungeons & Dragons RPGs that I used to play.

>>469616
I'm afraid it's just very expensive going into Lancashire from where I live. Strange stuff.

>>469614
i spent most of my holidays as a child in Morecambe, up til the mid 90's. It "was" a fine place, but over the years they shut down practically everything seasidey about it. The Frontierland theme park went, and has been left a huge wasteland right on the seafront since. The concert venue gone, the water park, gone. Most of the Arcades are gone, Megazone famously burned down. They essentially shuttered the west end of town.

Heysham however, just down the road, is still lovely.
Went back for the first time in 19 years last year and nothing much had changed in comparision.

There should be more travel vlogs of people going round the country looking for trouble with the local scrotes.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBUheCUHqyE

So, I did go to Southport today, even though I knew the Lawnmower Museum would be closed. It just sounded so appealing. Ignore whatever you see on train websites, though; it is a bastard to get to from Manchester and you will question your decision to go there as you wait in Bolton for 40 minutes for your connecting train.

Once you get there, though, it's basically classy Blackpool. The buildings are nice, the people are friendly, there are far fewer scrotes, and it just has a much nicer vibe. Like Chester, in a way. But I would like to complain about how many thing seemed to be closed on a Saturday in early July for a so-called tourist destination: not only does the Lawnmower Museum close at 1pm on Saturdays, like I moaned about yesterday and I wasn't willing to travel earlier because I don't actually give a shit about the history of lawnmowers and I only ever wanted to go there ironically, but Southport's big long pier was also closed, and even the main gates to the big park I found (Victoria Park) were inexplicably padlocked, even though other entrances were still open.

It's also worth noting that when you walk away from the main seafront areas, in search of novelty museums for boring objects, you rapidly find yourself in grim and shitty parts of Southport which are nowhere near as nice.

I also went out on the beach, because Southport's beach is notorious for not actually having any sea. The tide is out, but it's not just out; it's gone. I spent an hour wandering around the beach, and it felt like a polar. I never saw the sea, and at one point I noticed an RNLI-branded pickup truck following me at a distance, so I must have gone quite a way out. But as an experience, it's downright unique and I recommend it to anyone - you can close your eyes and just walk around with your eyes shut, and when you open them again it's like you haven't moved because everywhere looks the same. You can't hear anything because of the wind, there's nobody around, there are no landmarks, and it's some proper Lawrence of Arabia shit if you let your mind wander while you're out there. I doubt Lawrence of Arabia was surrounded by an infinite expanse of razor shells, however, and his sand will definitely have been drier.

I have a friend who's from Southport, and I asked her for some tips on what to do while I was there. Rather than venture out on a spiritual quest on Southport's beach, she recommended I should go to Formby, which has impressive sand dunes and can be reached via local Merseyrail train. Formby as a place is, frankly, fucking dull. You get off the train and you have to walk past some admittedly palatial homes for a good half an hour until you even reach sand. My advice, personally, is not to bother, but the sand dunes are very nice once you get there. They're a real pain to walk up, but that adds to the experience, and the seaside beyond the dunes even has the actual sea in it. So that's where it went. There's also a place in the woods where red squirrels apparently still live, but by this point I just wanted to go home again.

My phone battery was going to go flat while I was out as well, so I switched it off and that ruined my step-count for the day. But I was up to 27,000, so there's definitely plenty of walking to be done if that's what you're into. Oh, and I saw an adorable baby deer out of the train window on the way home, somewhere near Wigan.

But they have an actual national lawnmower museum, and they fucking closed it when it should be at its busiest. And the fish and chips I had for lunch were pretty horrible too. Nevertheless, Southport still gets a thumbs-up from me overall.

I also forgot to mention that Southport is a suspiciously fantastic place to buy a second-hand Rolex watch. I probably saw 5-10 shops selling them. Even the Cash Converters had a couple in the window.

>>471150
I enjoyed your write up. Did you go into any arcades?

>>471169
I didn't; I very nearly did but I saw on the door that it was "Families Only", and I was on my own, so I decided not to have people think I was a paedo and I just walked round the streets some more.

Also, who are this Silcock family that own everything? The entire seafront seemingly belongs to Silcock's. Silcock's Arcade, Silcock's Fish & Chips, Silcock's everything. It's a very niche monopoly to own all the tourist buildings on a couple of streets in Southport and be totally unknown otherwise.

>>471150

I once went to southport with mental slav ex. It was on one of the hottest days of the year back in '22 or '23, I think. The walk down the pier was so exhausting (and her blood alcohol level was getting dangerously low for a czech) so we had to stop half way for a beer. That beach when the tide is out really is bewildering, it's like fucking Tatooine.

In hindsight it's very thoughtful of them to put a little cafe at exactly that spot. They must make a killing the two or three days a year it's warm enough to tempt anyone to venture there. On the whole I thought it was a shithole, like most of our coastal towns, but one with an even more of a tragic resignation about it, that it used to be something a lot more dignified. I felt the ghost of a town like Harrogate by the sea, once upon a time.

I'm guessing you might have also watched this.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWH6lM30kkc

>>471176
>Limmy Talks retirement
>Hasn't streamed in 12 days
:')

Yesterday was my first visit to the Lake District, well the edge of it. I did proper touristy shit, like getting the steam train from Haverthwaite to Lakeside and then a boat trip along Lake Windermere to Bowness, followed by exploring a few other places in the area.

Unsurprisingly, Bowness was a massive tourist trap. It was filled with boomers who aren't aware of the concept of walking single file when there's people coming in the opposite direction, and very ugly Chinese tourists. The other places I went to were alright, but the person showing me around was expecting me to get blown away by the Lake District but it didn't seem anything special; we did Pendle Hill the day before and I much preferred that.

If I went again I'd go rambling rather than visiting the attractions around the lakes, but I don't see any compelling reason to go there over the likes of the Yorkshire Dales or Peak District.

Wells, Somerset, is absolutely incredible. It's like Bath, but older, posher, and nicer. And the water from the eponymous wells means that the sides of the high street have two special gutters with water permanently flowing down them, which is quite the unique selling point in the height of summer when the rest of the country has yellow grass and drought warnings.