Innholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2023 i Discover Britain

EDITORIAL This issue, our travel special encompasses several regions – Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and the Isle of Man – where Celtic culture (at least in the way we define it today) is woven into the landscape and people through music, folklore, and traditions that have been passed down through generations. Having grown up in a family where storytelling and song were considered as vital to my education as maths and science homework, I’m delighted that this issue we bring you some great stories inspired by the natural landscapes across our Celtic nations. Daniel Stables’ trek along the Golden Road through Wales’s Preseli Hills (p38) is set against a backdrop of Arthurian legend, while Lizzie Enfield reveals some of the myths of the Mourne Mountains (p18) on her walk there.…

It feels as though I’m standing on top of a supertanker hewn from ancient rock. Far below, the flatlands of the Tywi Valley fan out around the serpentine, eponymous river. My berth is Garn Goch, the larger of two conjoined Iron Age hillforts atop an escarpment to the southeast of Llandeilo. Ravens croak, twittering skylarks lurch upwards, red kites tilt their fiery tails this way and that. Clumps of boulders, massing five metres in height, lend Garn Goch a staggering stature. Underneath these Iron Age remnants, Garn Goch is believed to go back deep into prehistoric times. I’m exploring the fort with Chris Smith, who offers guided pilgrimage walks. Before we start, she hands me a piece of local quartz, a talisman she says. Later, she gives a blessing and…

PROPERTY All your Austen dreams come true A house on the site of Jane Austen’s birthplace, in Hampshire, where she wrote some of her most famous novels, is on the market and inviting offers in the region of £8.5m. Steventon House, which is being marketed by Savills and Knight Frank, was built by Jane Austen’s brother on the site of the novelist’s birthplace and former family home, where she lived from 1775 to 1801 while her father was rector at the nearby 13th-century church, which still stands. During her time at Steventon, Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility. In 1826, Austen’s brother, Edward, who had inherited the estate, demolished the original house and built this 19th-century home in its place. Ed Sugden, director of Savills…

On foot Lizzie Enfield takes a walking tour of the ‘Great Wall of Ireland’: the Mourne Wall Rising steeply above the southeast coast of County Down, the Mourne Mountains are the highest peaks in Northern Ireland. They form an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – a brooding, mist-swirling, peat bog type of beauty. From the summit of Slieve Donard (Northern Ireland’s highest mountain) we can see a scree-covered gulley running almost sheer between two towering walls. This is the Devil’s Coach Road, a precarious scramble for hardy hikers and the path through which Satan is said to drive his coach at Halloween, looking for lost souls. As elsewhere in Ireland, the landscape here is shot through with stories. The Fairy Bridge, which crosses the Shimna River in the Tollymore Forest…

Before Stonehenge, there was the Golden Road. This ancient ridgeway, which traces the spine of the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, was once part of a thriving Neolithic trade route connecting England with the goldmines of Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains. But for all the gold that was ferried along this bustling merchants’ road, it is another, humbler mineral for which the region is best known today. The dolerite bluestones that make up Stonehenge in southwest England, are believed to have been mined here in the Preseli Hills, some 150 miles west of where they ended up. Exactly why the builders of Stonehenge went to such a gargantuan effort, hauling tonnes of rock along these mountain passes, remains a mystery. It’s likely the motivation was religious, and that certainly chimes with…

More on Marazion Thank you for a wonderful issue about Britain’s southwest coast in the June 2023 edition (Issue 233, April/May 2023), however, more attention might have been devoted to Marazion. We stayed at the Marazion Hotel during pre-Covid times and had a lovely view of St Michael’s Mount from our room. The hotel also boasts a good restaurant and staff. With a few shops and other restaurants, we thought the town was a good base for exploring Cornwall, and IMHO (in my humble opinion) it is less crowded than some other parts. We also loved our stay at Bovey Castle on the same trip and highly recommend it.Jan Owens, Mount Pleasant, WI, USA This winner hopes to take it all I am writing to you to express my strong…

There must be something in the Belfast sea air. This city built the most famous ship in maritime history, inspired works by literary greats such as C.S. Lewis, was the setting for iconic scenes in the wildly popular TV series Game of Thrones, and, in 2021, was awarded the prestigious UNESCO City of Music title. Northern Ireland’s capital has certainly earned its salt in accolades. The history of Belfast as a settlement can be traced back as far as the Bronze Age, but the modern city we know today has firm 17th-century roots. Belfast – an Anglicisation of the Irish Béal Feirste, roughly translating to ‘the mouth of the sandy ford’ – was established with the building of a castle commissioned by town baron Sir Arthur Chichester in 1611, which…

Cardiff Castle, Cardiff, Wales The characteristically shrewd Romans noted this site’s easy access to the sea and, from the mid-1st century onward, Cardiff Castle was home to a succession of Roman forts. The Normans were next to move in, building the original motte and bailey castle, reputedly commissioned by William the Conqueror himself, with the new fortifications including the magnificent keep, which still stands today. Over the ensuing centuries, it was owned by a succession of aristocratic families, including the medieval Lords of Glamorgan but, during the Wars of the Roses, its fortunes were chequered, falling into various hands before, in the 15th century, coming under the ownership of its most famous incumbent yet: Henry Tudor, the future King Henry VII, who brought the Wars of the Roses to an…

Crossword no 234 Solutions in next issue Across 6 A game played on a lawn, in which wooden balls are driven through a series of hoops (7)8 An ancient market town on the River Nene in Northamptonshire (6)9 River near Snape Maltings in Suffolk (4)10 A popular seaside holiday resort in Devon (10)11 Humphry _______, one of the great English landscape gardeners of the 18th century (6)12 City in central Scotland on the River Forth (8)14 Pertaining to the period in British history from 1811 to 1820 (7)16 Arnold _______, novelist who wrote The Old Wives’ Tale (7)19 Centre of a target (5-3)21 Formerly, a parish officer with the power of punishing minor offenders (6) 22 A tapering deposit of calcite hanging down like an icicle from the roof of…