England Off The Beaten Path

  Rushbearing Festival
by suvanki
 
  • Rushbearing Festival
      Rushbearing Festival
    by suvanki
  • Tramway, North Light
      Tramway, North Light
    by maykal
  • Tynemouth Priory from the south
      Tynemouth Priory from the south
    by toonsarah
  •   Off The Beaten Path
    by TheLongTone
  • Portobello Road Market
      Portobello Road Market
    by Britannia2
 

Most Viewed Off The Beaten Path in England

76.

Salford Quays/Lowry/War Museum   Manchester

Salford Quays/Lowry/War Museum, Manchester

 6 Reviews  The Lowry is a brand new arts complex with galleries, a huge theatre and eateries. the visual look of the building is stunning as well. Unfortunately the day i saw it, the sky was gun metal gray and... 

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77.

Castle Howard   York

Castle Howard, York

 8 Reviews  14 miles. By bus including entry £15. Pay the driver board at Bootham Bar, across from the tourist info. This is where the TV series 'Brides-head Revisited' was filmed. The castle grounds are worth... 

 See All 145 Off The Beaten Path in York

78.

Canals   Birmingham

Canals, Birmingham

 5 Reviews  Many locals and tourists don't have the Birmingham Canal Network in mind when having a holiday - obviously I wouldn't suggest in Winter, but it is good to take a sideways trip from the city sights and... 

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79.

Iffley   Oxford

Iffley, Oxford

 3 Reviews  When you have seen the university buildings and are a bit tired of the touristy and noisy city, come to Iffley to enjoy its peace and quiet. Situated on the Thames, it can be reached by boat from the... 

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80.

Cathedral City of Ely   Cambridge

Cathedral City of Ely, Cambridge

 5 Reviews  Ely Cathedral is a wonderful church inside and it has lovely stained glass. Within the Cathedral, there is a Stained Glass Museum which is woth visiting. You need to pay separately to enter the... 

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81.

Libraries   Manchester

Libraries, Manchester

 7 Reviews  Chetham's Library is off the beaten path. I'd never heard of it and neither had my boyfriend who has lived in Manchester all his life. Most visitors to Manchester may see the John Ryland's Library on... 

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82.

Whip ma whop ma gate   York

Whip ma whop ma gate, York

 2 Reviews  What a great name for a street. I wish more streets had great names like Whipmawhopmagate - it's rather more interesting than Castle St. or High St. Only 32 metres long, It's very easy to miss this... 

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83.

Nearby Attractions   Birmingham

Nearby Attractions, Birmingham

 11 Reviews  Birmingham is slap bang in the middle of England. With an excellent public transport system, there are literally hundreds of locations within a hour or so of the CBD by train or bus. Hiring a car... 

 See All 54 Off The Beaten Path in Birmingham

84.

Cowley Road   Oxford

Cowley Road, Oxford

 3 Reviews  If Oxford is a genteel, civilised place, Cowley Road is its uncouthed, yet strangely alluring neighbour. Just 5 minutes walk from the town centre, but a million miles away in terms of atmosphere,... 

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85.

Mill Road area pubs   Cambridge

Mill Road area pubs, Cambridge

 4 Reviews  Mill Road.Seen here in the early morning,but usually busy with people and traffic.The shops,cafes,restaurants and pubs on and around Mill Road are among the best on offer and well worth a wander over... 

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86.

Helmsley   York

Helmsley, York

 5 Reviews  Helmsley lies about 20 miles west of York and is one of England's loveliest market towns. This is really the perfect English town - a large market square with a beautiful church and castle commanding... 

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87.

Museums & Galleries   Birmingham

Museums & Galleries, Birmingham

 3 Reviews  By Car: Take the A38 (Bristol Road), turning onto Edgbaston Park Road. Parking is available in the University's South Car Park, with the Institute situated at the top of the hill opposite King... 

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88.

Port Meadow   Oxford

Port Meadow, Oxford

 4 Reviews  Port Meadow is a large open country public field that stretches as far as the eye can see,there are plenty of footpaths to walk on and you can cross bridges over the River Thames that flows through... 

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89.

Castle Hill   Cambridge

Castle Hill, Cambridge

 3 Reviews  .....is closed off at the moment. I suspect local skateboarders have been using and eroding it. A typical Norman motte, its bailey now hidden by the council buildings, it's still worth a visit.... 

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90.

City - Miscellaneous   York

City - Miscellaneous, York

 18 Reviews  England's most famous highwayman might have been from Essex and have had relations to Derby but he spent so much time in York he actually died here. His grave can be found if you continue down to the... 

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91.

Brindley Place   Birmingham

Brindley Place, Birmingham

 2 Reviews   I always remember coming down to Brindley place when I was younger to go to The National SeaLife Centre which is just next to Brindley Place. Especially in the Summer next to the canal this area of... 

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92.

Jericho   Oxford

Jericho, Oxford

 2 Reviews  Jericho is one of Oxford's most interesting neighbourhoods. Most of the action takes place on Walton Street, where there ar enumerous bars and restaurants, but it's also worthwhile exploring the side... 

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93.

Grantchester   Cambridge

Grantchester, Cambridge

 4 Reviews  This church is just a few steps away from the tea garden " Orchard ". A graveyard is all around it, many of the tombstones are too withered to read who has been buried there. In front of the altar... 

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94.

Fountains Abbey   York

Fountains Abbey, York

 7 Reviews  The monks elected Prior Richard abbot, but by 1133 they were forced to look for outside help in order to survive. They turned, naturally enough, to the source of their inspiration, the Cistercian... 

 See All 145 Off The Beaten Path in York

95.

Parks   Birmingham

Parks, Birmingham

 6 Reviews  Cannon Hill is a reasonably sized park just on the out skirts of the city centre its about 5 to 10 minutes away on the bus ( no 45 or 47 from ouside the palisades shopping centre). it has a large... 

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96.

Botanic Garden   Oxford

Botanic Garden, Oxford

 7 Reviews  Britain's oldest botanic garden with thousands of species of plants from all over the world. A lovely place to sit, or wander down the river. Situated on the site of the old Jewish cemetary. Open:... 

 See All 81 Off The Beaten Path in Oxford

97.

Wittgenstein's Grave   Cambridge

Wittgenstein's Grave, Cambridge

 1 Review  The greatest philosopher of the the 20th century is buried in a small graveyard in Cambridge. In the same cemetry also stands the grave of GE Moore a leading exponent of Logical positivism. In the... 

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98.

Beverley   York

Beverley, York

 3 Reviews  Beverley. It is a small market town approx 35 mile between York and Hull. It has a large Minster which could rival York but is sadly overlooked by most tourists. The town is nice for an hour or two,... 

 See All 145 Off The Beaten Path in York

99.

Jewellery Quarter   Birmingham

Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham

 2 Reviews  The advent of such contraptions as the thing I am using now to scrawl this tip led to the death knell of a once proud Brimingham industry. That and the Bic Biro. There was at one time over 100 firms... 

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100.

Headington Shark   Oxford

Headington Shark, Oxford

 3 Reviews  Somewhat annoyingly, I was looking for this piece of art, but got a bit lost, so I have yet to describe it from the flesh, as it were. The story of the shark and the battle for it's retention against... 

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Reviews from VirtualTourist Members

Dover's Hill

by amandajayne81

Once we had arrived in the Cotswolds we saw a little sign saying Dovers Hill. We drove up and were presented with a great lookout over the local area and paths for walking. Many locals and visitors had their dogs there and were walking them. A great little spot to spend a few hours - for free and always open.I think it is on the Cotswolds Way trail. 1 mile NW of Chipping Campden. I noticed on the website there is wheelchair access to the lookout.

Churchyards

by leics

It wasn't until I was talking to a friend from abroad that I realised churchyards were not always commonplace elsewhere.Every English church (apart from the more modern ones) has its own churchyard, a place surrounding the building where parishioners were buried. Many are full, and have long been so: there are also plenty of cemeteries, especially in towns.It's always worth wandering around an English churchyard. There may be a lych-gate (see tip under 'local customs'), or not. There will almost certainly be a wall of some sort to set out the 'hallowed (holy) ground'. There will be graves, of course. These make fascinating reading. Depending on the type of stone used, and the prevailing climate, some really old ones are still legible. It's not unusual to find graves from the 1600s.Such gravestones give insights into the way people once lived. You'll find ages and personal details and,...

Tip Photo
bath

by rkearns

bath is a beautiful little country cottage-y town with sparse trees, and here's the lowdown, since i don't really know that much about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath,_Somersetbut, i do have some photos!

Tip Photo
Come and see Olney

by marinarena

Another charming English town is Olney, It is near Bedford, in the borough of Milton keyes. Olney is famous for lace-making and its annual Pancake Race (see picture of race sign), celebrated since 1445. Also, the town is the burial place of John Newton, who was the author of the hymn, Amazing Grace. In addition, the Olney Hymns are famous throughout England. The town centre is typcially pleasant with a number of specialty shops and restaurants. I visited the Carey Baptist Church (also pictured), which features artifacts and offers a wealth of history on the life of the baptist leader William Carey, the "father of modern missions".Olney is off the M1 at Junction 14.There are train links here from Milton Keyes Central

Tip Photo
Come see little town charm: Kettering

by marinarena

Kettering is a darling town in the western part of England, in Northamptonshire. Here is where I had my first cream tea and had a very friendly local experience. Kettering, along the river Ise, is a new industry area of interests for Britons, but for a tourist like me, I was more interested in landmarks and, well, the many little discount shops in the centre of town :-)! A main landmakr especially of religious and historical interest, is Fuller Baptist Church, as pictured.

Tip Photo
Stone walls.........

by leics

You'll see these in the upland parts of the UK, where wood has always been scarcer than stone. Why divide your land with wooden fences when stones were lying everywhere waiting to be used?It's a skill and an art to make such a wall, for it must be properly constructed if it is to last. It was a skill which nearly died out with the advent of plastic, barbed wire and electric fencing but, fortunately, it has bveen revived. So the stone walls remain, climbing the hills and following the contours, as they have done for millennia. Such walls were built to divide land even in prehistory, so those you see could well be following a dividing line which has existed for many many centuries.You'll see them in Devon and Cornwall, in Derbyshire, in Yorkshire, the Lake District and Northumberland. And each time you see one, remember that every single stone in it was laid down by a person who was...

Tip Photo
Dover on the Channel

by BruceDunning

WE have taken a brief tour around this area, and it is very nice to see. Maybe not as much as one might expect to do here. Only about 25,000 residents live there. It is named for the white cliffs, comprised of chalk-called albion for the England nickname.People pick up the hydrofoil here to get over the Channel, and/or more so before the tunnel came along. It is an experience of a ride and quite smooth, but rather noisy. It takes about an hour, I recall to port at Calais?

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Hampshire - Jane Austen's House

by TheWanderingCamel

Lovers of the work of Jane Austen know how she treasured village life. A visit to her home in the little Hampshire village of Chawton takes the visitor right into the world of this most beloved of English writers. She moved here with her sister and widowed mother in 1809 and lived the modest red-brick house until she moved to Winchester to be nearer her physician just before her death. These were the years that saw her work published to great acclaim and it was here that she did nearly all her work - revising Sense And Sensibility and then producing Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion.The house is furnished just as it would have been in Jane's days here, with many family and personal possessions - furniture, china, personal mementoes and the like, including a wonderful patchwork quilt she and her mother and sister stitched together. The desk she wrote at still stands...

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The village pump

by leics

Every UK village once had its well, where women would often gather to chat (that's not a sexist remark; it was a woman's job to fetch water). Some of these still remain in villages, although the majority are now covered or built over.When piped water was brought to towns and villages the wells were replaced by pumps. Each street in a town had its own; in a village there might just be one or two. Later, before mains water was piped actually into houses, it was usual for houses to have their own pump in the backyard.Although most of these pumps are long gone (and many more have been sold as antique 'garden features') some still remain where they always have been. I suspect most no longer work (and I certainly would not risk drinking the water if they did) but it is nice to find them tucked away.This one, almost buried in ivy, is in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.

Tip Photo
Phone boxes

by leics

Once, in the olden days, all UK public phone boxes were red and fully enclosed and very obvious.Then things 'moved on', and British Telecom (who run the UK phone service, though no longer as a monopoly) removed almost all of the red phone boxes, replacing them with semi-enclosed transparent perspex things. And everyone got a mobile phone anyway.Many people were very sad to see them go. The red phone boxes seemed quintessentially British (they matched our red postboxes). People bought them to put in their gardens, or their houses if they were rich; some people even used them as shower-rooms.However, some red phone boxes do remain. Somehow, some places managed to keep their boxes because they fitted in so well with a historical scene; the 'quintessentially British' thing, I suppose.So if you do see one (and it's not in someone's garden, or in the grounds of a stately home) then it tells...

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Reviews and photos of England attractions posted by real travelers and locals. The best tips for England sightseeing.

Experience England
Off The Beaten Path: Cities in England
  1. London Off The Beaten Path
  2. Manchester Off The Beaten Path
  3. York Off The Beaten Path
  4. Birmingham Off The Beaten Path
  5. Oxford Off The Beaten Path
  6. Liverpool Off The Beaten Path
  7. Blackpool Off The Beaten Path
  8. Newcastle upon Tyne Off The Beaten Path
  9. Bath Off The Beaten Path
  10. Cambridge Off The Beaten Path
  11. Brighton Off The Beaten Path
  12. Nottingham Off The Beaten Path
  13. Bournemouth Off The Beaten Path
  14. Bristol Off The Beaten Path
  15. Torquay Off The Beaten Path
  16. Chester Off The Beaten Path
  17. Sheffield Off The Beaten Path
  18. Scarborough Off The Beaten Path
  19. Canterbury Off The Beaten Path
  20. Eastbourne Off The Beaten Path
  21. Leeds Off The Beaten Path
  22. Newquay Off The Beaten Path
  23. Whitby Off The Beaten Path
  24. Windsor Off The Beaten Path
  25. Portsmouth Off The Beaten Path
  26. Stratford-upon-Avon Off The Beaten Path
  27. Plymouth Off The Beaten Path
  28. Coventry Off The Beaten Path
  29. Lake District National Park Off The Beaten Path
  30. Reading Off The Beaten Path
  31. Weymouth Off The Beaten Path
  32. Durham Off The Beaten Path
  33. Cheltenham Off The Beaten Path
  34. Salisbury Off The Beaten Path
  35. Southampton Off The Beaten Path
  36. Dover Off The Beaten Path
  37. Richmond Off The Beaten Path
  38. Southend-on-Sea Off The Beaten Path
  39. Exeter Off The Beaten Path
  40. Kingston upon Hull Off The Beaten Path
  41. Lincoln Off The Beaten Path
  42. Folkestone Off The Beaten Path
  43. Halifax Off The Beaten Path
  44. Windermere Off The Beaten Path
  45. Derby Off The Beaten Path
  46. Worcester Off The Beaten Path
  47. Weston-Super-Mare Off The Beaten Path
  48. Warwick Off The Beaten Path
  49. Gloucester Off The Beaten Path
  50. Greenwich Off The Beaten Path
  51. Saint Ives Off The Beaten Path
  52. Kingston upon Thames Off The Beaten Path
  53. Winchester Off The Beaten Path
  54. Bracknell Off The Beaten Path
  55. Norwich Off The Beaten Path
  56. Middlesbrough Off The Beaten Path
  57. St Albans Off The Beaten Path
  58. Keswick Off The Beaten Path
  59. Southport Off The Beaten Path
  60. Peterborough Off The Beaten Path
  61. Bolton Off The Beaten Path
  62. Royal Leamington Spa Off The Beaten Path
  63. Ipswich Off The Beaten Path
  64. Colchester Off The Beaten Path
  65. Hastings Off The Beaten Path
  66. Stonehenge Off The Beaten Path
  67. Barrow in Furness Off The Beaten Path
  68. Rye Off The Beaten Path
  69. Great Yarmouth Off The Beaten Path
  70. Glastonbury Off The Beaten Path
  71. Bradford Off The Beaten Path
  72. Stockport Off The Beaten Path
  73. Wimbledon Off The Beaten Path
  74. Leicester Off The Beaten Path
  75. Southampton Off The Beaten Path
  76. Ely Off The Beaten Path
  77. Clacton-on-Sea Off The Beaten Path
  78. Shrewsbury Off The Beaten Path
  79. High Wycombe Off The Beaten Path
  80. Bognor Regis Off The Beaten Path
  81. Watford Off The Beaten Path
  82. Banbury Off The Beaten Path
  83. Stansted Off The Beaten Path
  84. Guildford Off The Beaten Path
  85. Maidstone Off The Beaten Path
  86. Hereford Off The Beaten Path
  87. Northampton Off The Beaten Path
  88. Broadstairs Off The Beaten Path
  89. Swindon Off The Beaten Path
  90. Berwick-Upon-Tweed Off The Beaten Path

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Questions and Answers

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Q:  Hi! We r planning to go Paris from London on 16th June Saturday by eurostar. We r planning to stay at L'Elysee Val D'Europe hotel... 

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A: Lookin on google maps I notice that the L'Elysee Val d'Europe is basically sitting on top of a railway station. It's not the station where the Eurostar stops, but that is... 

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