Essex, East Sussex and Eberkshire all done! Wait...

That's right, I've done another three places on the tour, taking the overall count to 34. That still leaves me with just under a third of the island to explore - which sounds a bit daunting on its own - but if I can manage twenty-six in a month like I just did, then sixteen in two months should be doable.

Already confirmed are:

1. Norfolk: that's tomorrow. Visiting Norwich, and possibly either Cromer or Great Yarmouth, depending on the weather.
2. West Sussex: maybe on Sunday, but probably Monday. Visiting the Bluebell Railway and East Grinstead, so looking forward to that.
3. Gloucestershire: kinda have to do this one, as it's where I usually live during the holidays! Will be "visiting" my home town of Stroud, and hopefully doing some other places as well. Back there on Tuesday, whoop!
4. Herefordshire: going to watch Hereford United vs. Cheltenham Town in just over two weeks' time, and hopefully will get to see a bit of Hereford as well. The Tommies gang are helping me out with that one, hurrah!
5. Lincolnshire: visiting Lincoln two weeks on Wednesday, and hopefully meeting up with Josh Harris.
6. East Yorkshire: Travelling solo, on the same day I'm visiting Lincoln, to watch Hull City vs. Tottenham Hotspur. Once I've booked my ticket, that is...

That still leaves me with ten to go, of course. They are...

1. Cambridgeshire
2. City of London
3. Dorset
4. Northamptonshire
5. Shropshire
6. Wales
7. West Midlands
8. Warwickshire
9. Worcestershire

I'm hoping to combine some of those together into one big trip (West Midlands, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire for example), but I need to get back home and discuss things with the folks: am running low on funds atm and need to boost the bank account before I can go gallivanting off to all those places!

Thanks to Abi Brady, Rose, Cassie and Larissa by the way; Abi was my tour guide for Essex, while Rose, Cassie and Larissa accompanied me to Brighton and Windsor yesterday. Steve came along to Windsor too, and got stung by a wasp for his troubles. Fortunately, he killed the brute. Steve 1, Wasp 0!

Thanks for reading, and with any luck I'll be 70% of the way through after tomorrow. Yay, that means I'll get a 1st in Travel Writing! If only it was a degree...

Chris

Rochester? Lovely. Chatham? Hmmmmmmm...

Hello everyone! I'm back from er, Rockin' Rochester. Not exactly a place that would seem to have a thriving nightlife, but who cares? I still found it awesome: very friendly people who were willing to help out, a pretty cool Cathedral, and more Dickens references than you could shake a Claypole at. And judging from our lunch at Simply Italian, the cuisine's not half bad either!

Chatham, however: well, I blame whoever decided to lob massive chunks of concrete at it in the 60's, because this poor old port is in serious need of regeneration (which has recently begun by the way). Dickens World, which is nearby, is definitely worth a look - especially as Dickens spent a great deal of his life in the Medway area - but compared to Rochester, Chatham seemed very unwelcoming. Though like I say, at least work is being done to rectify that, which is promising for the town.

Coming up this week...

• Epping, Essex
• Brighton, East Sussex
• Windsor, Berkshire
• Norwich, Norfolk
• East Grinstead, West Sussex

After that last one: well, who knows? With a few things to sort out when I get back, nothing's quite certain at the moment. But who knows what's coming up next? When I do, I'll let you know!

Chris

St Albans done! And some mild turmoil

Yay for frequent blogging! Though I doubt I'll be able to get up to more than a blog every other day by the end of the month: I left some pretty big gaps this month it's fair to say.

First, the good news: I'm 60% of the way there! WHOOP! This is a pretty good milestone in my opinion: granted I've still got Kent, Essex, East Sussex... ah, let's not even go there. The point is I've come a fair way already and not done too badly, which is encouraging stuff. St Albans is one of my favourites on the tour so far: friendly people, plenty of pubs, good market, and one of the best parks in the country if you ask me! But then, the weather was fantastic today, so perhaps my account of it might have been different if it had been chucking it down with rain.

And whilst we're on the subject of Hertfordshire: er, Watford didn't look too welcoming. I did think about checking it out, and it doesn't look as horrendous as people were describing it from a distance, but Watford Junction definitely needs smartening up: there's something not quite right about that station.

To be honest, the tour is in danger of getting sidetracked by some stuff I'm going through. It's more a confidence thing than anything else: bizarrely I find trekking round huge swathes of this island of ours a LOT easier than a task that most other people manage without batting an eyelid. Hopefully by Tuesday I'll have enough confidence and determination to tackle this problem of mine head on: we'll have to wait and see. Don't worry about me or the tour though, I'm not going to quit after coming this far! In fact, I'll be heading off in 8 hours' time to do my feature on Kent, so look out for a mini-blog on that soon!

Cheers for the support guys, and thanks for reading,
Chris

Recuperation

Hello again!

First, some rather good news: I have discovered that my Gran's house has wireless internet, so the updates should be pretty frequent from now on!

After the pain and stress I put my poor old body through earlier, I think it's fair to say that the past few days have been of recuperating. Admittedly I did complete another stage of the tour yesterday, but my visit to Ipswich was deliberately leisurely, and I feel considerably healthier as a result.

It is a bit weird to think I'm over half-way through, because it still feels as if there's a long way to go: and indeed there is, as I still have seven places to take on before heading back, and even then that still leaves me with 14 places to go: fortunately, most of them are close together, but East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire will be a considerable trek!

If you are ever in Ipswich, by the way, make sure you go and visit Ipswich Museum, which is just to the north-west of the town centre: the wooly mammoth alone is worth the visit, and the museum itself is completely free! Have to say I liked Ipswich, even if bits of it do need cleaning up: there were enough positives to convince me that it's going places. Good artwork too :)

Thanks for reading guys! Doing St Albans and Rochester over the weekend for Hertfordshire and Kent: might also have a poke around Watford and Chatham too if I get time. You haven't lived until you've survived Watford, according to some...

Chris

The intense part is over, but there's still a way to go!

Hey guys! I think I can feel my arms again :)

It's been an intense few days to say the least, but I can now safely say I have been to:

• Edinburgh
• Berwick-upon-Tweed
• Carlisle
• Lancaster
• Manchester
• Liverpool
• Chester
• Leeds
• Sheffield
• Derby
• Nottingham
• Oakham
• Leicester

So as you can probably tell, I am loving this day off! But not loving the fact that the wireless kept cutting out when I wanted to update this on my travels. Oh well...

Annoyingly I can't upload photos just yet, but I will definitely be telling you all about these places and more in the next few weeks. What's that? He's doing more, you cry? Indeed I am. Tomorrow is Ipswich, and then it's St Albans, Rochester, Epping, Brighton, Windsor, Norwich and East Grinstead.

Here's to trying to do too much at once! But at least those places will be spread out over the next er... 11 days. Hey, at least 8 places in 11 days won't be as insane as 13 in 6. And none of them will involve the madness of Edinburgh... hehehe, looking forward to telling you guys all about that. Two pub crawls in two nights isn't even HALF the story. This should be one cracker of a book when I'm done!

Thanks to everyone who helped out over the six days, especially Sam-Wise, Hannah Gregson, John Darnborough, Harry Ullman, Dan Scholes and Libby Galvin. You guys were a massive help! And to be honest, the only reason I'm still going is because of the support of all you guys, so thanks for that :)

Take care guys!

Chris S

Tiring touring!

Hey guys,
I may have bitten off more than I can chew, lol!
I'm in Manchester now having done Scotland, Northumberland, Cumbria and Lancashire (all of which were awesome in different ways), but suffice it to say that I'm WAY too tired to tell you all about what I've been up to so far. But to briefly summarise, I...

• Have been on two pub crawls in two nights
• Gone up the highest peak in Edinburgh at 8am
• Survived the swirling vortex of Berwick

And that's just a taster!

More after the long sleep I'm going to have quite soon. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

Chris S

Hi, I'm on the train!

I'll talk to you later: nah, just kidding. My train's just stopped in Newcastle on its way up towards Edinburgh, which is where I'll be for a couple of days. A lot's happened since I last blogged and, to be fair, even more is going to be happening after this one! Between last Friday and today I've been to Amersham and Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire; accidentally ended up in Slough; seen a circus in Alton, Hampshire; been to Greenwich not once but twice; and blazed a tourist trail through both Dorking and Guildford in Surrey.


Has there been a favourite place so far? Well to be honest, I've liked almost all the places I've visited: admittedly Buckinghamshire didn't have a great deal to offer in attractions, but fortunately it was full of Light Entertainers, and thus was far from being a disappointment. Wiltshire was definitely awesome, and I really enjoyed Guildford on Tuesday: though in terms of free attractions, it may be hard to beat Greenwich, as I got into both the Maritime Museum and the Observatory for scot free. Kudos, Greenwich: kudos.


But now, onto Scotland and Edinburgh! And then Berwick, Carlisle, Lancaster, Manchester... well, you get the idea. It's going to be a long trip!


Take care people,
Chris S

Even more updating!

Hello again! It's been a while, but then, I've been a bit busy.

First and foremost, I'm 24% of the way through the tour: Bedford and Bedfordshire have now been visited, courtesy of Mr Edgar Duncan. Cheers Ed! And if you're in Bedford at any point, be sure to check out the awesome musical keyboard on the high street; it provides hours of fun.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Amersham and Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire: should be seeing a fair few thespians from Oxford and Cambridge Light Entertainment Societies (OULES and CULES) whilst I'm there, so I'm looking forward to it!

Next week is rather busy: we've got Surrey coming up on Tuesday, then it's Greater London on Wednesday, and of course my trip to Scotland and Northern England begins on Thursday. Add to all that travelling a trip to Suffolk, and in two weeks' time I'll have gone from completing 24% of the tour to completing 56%: or rather, I'll have visited 16 places in two weeks. Busy times!

Unfortunately it'll be a while before the photos and some of the reports are up, but I'll do my best to keep you posted.

Oh, and before I forget, I've booked a hostel for two nights in York next month, in order to do a proper visit to Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire. Should be a good little trip, that one.

Thanks for reading!
Chris S

9/50: Salisbury, Wiltshire

Take a peaceful village in Wiltshire. Move it two miles south after realising the original location is far too windy. Then place a Cathedral south of the high street, and allow a large amount of half-timbered houses to spring up. The result? Salisbury, a cathedral city that manages to remain busy and peaceful at the same time, which is in itself a significant achievement.

It does have to be said that the Cathedral dominates the landscape: hardly surprising, as it has the tallest spire in Great Britain, and thus can be seen for miles around. You therefore have to be quite distracted to miss your stop when travelling to Salisbury by train, as the spire looms into view a minute or so before the station; Salisbury station is reasonably large, with the four main directions of service being to Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and London Waterloo.

Judging from the experience of my tour guides Emma Preuss and Rachael Wheeler, who arrived by car, Salisbury's rail network is much more navigable than its road network, which threatens to boggle the mind. In particular, we failed to understand the logic of putting numerous box junctions on a roundabout, though we managed in the end. Buses did occasionally make themselves known as well, but as Emma and Rachael were to explain, they are a relatively rare species in Wiltshire.

As well signposted as Bristol and Exeter were, Salisbury is relatively easy to get around, and is a major shopping centre: car parks and rows of shops are dotted around the city, with the odd amusing sight in between. Among these we found a dragon, a goat and a lion, so clearly Salisbury has a thing for animals, be they mythical or mundane.

We spent a great deal of time looking around the Cathedral, so I shall mainly describe that, though the rest of the city is worth a look round too. However, if you want to relax by the airy and spacious cloisters, see some fantastic stain-glassed windows, or have a peek at the Magna Carta, and all for a mere donation, then you'll probably spend most of your time in the Cathedral. The range of stain-glassed windows is very interesting, the Vault is almost as impressive as Exeter's, and the Cloisters are fantastic for just lounging about in, but be warned: the Magna Carta is in its original Latin, so whilst it is certainly historic, you probably won't understand a word of it! Also worth a look are the numerous tombs, one of which has some rather warped pillars.

In terms of shops, there is plenty to buy here: aside from the usual suspects, there is a rather large music store on Catherine Street (east of the High Street) that really does seem to have everything a budding musician would want, including not one but two electric ukeleles. So if you like wandering around historic buildings and picking up interesting purchases, Salisbury seems to be the place to do it: and with a fair few parks dotted around, it's a lot nicer than the other big settlement in Wiltshire, the notoriously run-down Swindon.

More on Hampshire and the Isle of Wight when I get the photos up!
Chris

Update! Sorry for the delay...

Hey guys! Sorry I've been away, been recuperating this past week as you know. The tour's back on now and I had a good weekend lounging about in SE14 of London watching some great tennis... what a final that was.

I'm now in Burbage, Wiltshire, and should be blogging about this fine county in due course: we saw Salisbury Cathedral and Avebury's Stone Circle, so I think I can cross the ninth of fifty areas off my list! Hampshire and the Isle of Wight tomorrow and Bedford on Thursday before Bucks on Saturday, so busy times lie ahead.

Shall be blogging about those soon. Take care!
Chris S