News

Free Manchester Tour (November 17, 2010)
Since its inception - the Internet or World Wide Web has allowed people to disseminate ideas, information and content freely...

Walk Wednesday the Story so Far (November 3, 2010)
Back in April, I picked up the telephone and rang Mike Law from Walking-Books.com. We talked about how we might better promote our own walking businesses. We hit upon #WalkWednesday...

Parliament: Gunpowder, Treason  & Plot (November 1, 2010)
Which is more important Halloween or Bonfire Night?  Until recently, children could recite the nursery rhyme: "Remember remember the fifth of November..."

Bollington Walking Festival - 4 Days Left! (October 27, 2010)
Nestling in the foothills of the Cheshire Peak District, the town of Bollington is an ideal place from which to explore the beautiful, surrounding countryside.  Former Heartbeat star, Tricia Penrose, opened the Festival...

Freedom to be and freedom to go (October 21, 2010)
The late Norman Rockwell is perhaps best known for a series of oil paintings known as the "Four Freedoms". The American illustrator based his painting upon the "Four Freedoms" outlined by President Franklin Roosevelt...

Roary roars on Bollington Walking Festival (October 13, 2010)
When he's not cheering on the Silkmen, Roary the Lion, likes nothing better than roaming round Cheshire’s Peak District.  There will be plenty for Roary to sink his teeth into, away from the Moss Rose Stadium...

What is Tourism's Gold Standard (October 5, 2010)
The actress, writer and comedienne, Maureen Lipman once quipped that: "Awards are like piles. Sooner or later, every bum gets one."

Reduce your carbon footprint on #WalkWednesday (September 29, 2010)
The South Wales Echo reported on September 28 that "Figures from the Energy Saving Trust show 48 per cent of people use a car to make short journeys at least once a week, when they could walk or cycle instead, and at least a quarter of all car journeys cover two miles or less in distance."

Help Name Our Ale (September 24, 2010)
The Bollington Brewing Co. has a long pedigree in producing fine ales. The Brewery has brewed a special ale to celebrate the first Bollington Walking Festival which begins on October 15. Lee Wainwright, the landlord of the Vale and owner of the Bollington Brewery needs your help...

Bowled over by Big Ben (September 20, 2010)
The Pittsburgh Steelers NFL side have their very own Big Ben in the shape of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. This year's Rugby League Challenge Cup winners, Warrington Wolves, have their own Big Ben in the form of forward Ben Westwood.  The most famous Big Ben of them all is...

Coping with showers in Edinburgh (September 13, 2010)
Rain nourishes the soil, but soaks the skin. Unpredictable weather requires visitors to be flexible in a bid to beat the showers. Before the introduction of running water, inhabitants of Edinburgh's Old Town...

Chester Ghost Tour: Heavy on History, but a bit shorter on Shivers (September 8, 2010)
A party of approximately twenty-five people assembled in front of Chester Town Hall at 7.30pm. Many participants had purchased their tickets from the nearby Shropshire Arms pub...

Shepherd Walks by Jon Monks #WalkWednesday Guest Post (September 1, 2010)
Former shepherd Jon Monks explains how he now earns his living from guiding groups of walkers round Northumberland and the Scottish Borders, as opposed to herding sheep...

Bank Holidays do fewer mean more? (August 30, 2010)
There are several days each year which are designated as Bank Holidays, that is days when banks and other public institutions - and many private sector organisations - do not open...

See Naked Talent in Edinburgh (August 25, 2010)
The most famous student ever to appear at Edinburgh College of Art was Sean Connery. The actor, who went onto to find fame and fortune playing James Bond...

Da Vinci the Genius - Well Worth a Visit (August 17, 2010)
Some exhibitions go in for 'information overload' where the desire to find out more about a particular subject or period is replaced by a desire to ‘get out quick’...

Full of beans in York (August 11, 2010)
York’s Coffee Emporium is not a café. Visitors to the Emporium on York’s historic High Petergate, who are hoping to pull up a chair, enjoy afternoon tea and waitress service will be disappointed...

York Mystery Plays Explained (July 13, 2010)
In York and other cities the Mystery Plays, or Miracle Plays as they were sometimes called, were performed by members of the powerful city guilds. The plays were staged as a way of illustrating Biblical scenes from man's fall through to his redemption...

Cultural London (July 6, 2010)
The 1.6 mile tour begins outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, before guiding listeners to Leicester Square via the National Portrait Gallery. Listeners will hear about the world's longest running theatre production, London's famous Covent Garden...

Edinburgh's Photo Hotspots mapped out (July 4, 2010)
Eric Fischer has created a map showing where people take photographs in Edinburgh... Unsurprisingly, the city's Royal Mile is one of the most photographed areas in Edinburgh...

Manchester's new VIC takes centre stage (June 30, 2010)
Manchester’s new Visitor Information Centre in Piccadilly Plaza has brought the city’s offer right into the Twenty-First Century...

Dee It Yourself Chester (June 23, 2010)
On hot summer days, people head to the waterfront to cool off with an ice cream or enjoy a trip along the river. The 70 mile (110 km) long River Dee has its source in Snowdonia and flows into the sea via an estuary between the Wirral Peninsula and Wales...

Follow Flecky Bennett (June 16, 2010)
On the stroke of 7pm, Flecky Bennett began his Manchester Ghost Walk, on the Peter’s Square side of the Town Hall. After a brief introduction, he barked out 'Follow Me'...

Top Arrows for Edinburgh (June 9, 2010)
Edinburgh tops UK polls of the best places to visit and best places to stay on a regular basis. Readers of The Guardian voted the Scottish capital their favourite city in the UK last year, for the tenth year in a row...

Guest Post - My Favourite Pub Walks (June 9, 2010)
This Walk Wednesday, Leigh Salkeld, the brainchild behind myfavouritepubwalks.com, the first website in the UK dedicated to pub walks, explains his passion for pub walks, the inspiration for myfavouritepubwalks and his vision for the site’s future...

Chester beyond the Romans (June 3, 2010)
Once on the Western edge of the Roman Empire, England is fortunate enough to have several towns and cities which can trace their origins back to the Roman Era; Colchester (Camulodunum) is believed to have been the first place to be settled (in what is modern day Britain) by the Romans...

Step up for Bollington Walking Festival (May 26, 2010)
Bollington is a town of about 6,500 inhabitants nestling in the Western foothills of the Peak District. Civic pride is evident in the town...

Isle of Anglesey set for Walking Festival (May 19, 2010)
Anglesey has much to be proud of, as visitors to the 2010 Anglesey Walking Festival (May 29 – June 13) will discover. Many of the walks incorporate a section on the Anglesey Coastal Path...

New greener Routemaster set sights on 2012 (May 18, 2010)
Icons come and icons go, but some iconic buildings, people and machines never truly leave us. In 2005 London's famous red double-decker Routemaster buses drove off into retirement - save for two Heritage Routes (9 and 15)...

Manchester set for Night to Remember (May 12, 2010)
The idea of walking through a city in the dead of night would not normally be something most of us would relish - at least not if we were alone. But, July 2, 2010 promises to be a 'Night to Remember'...

New London iPhone App Launched by Walk Talk Tours - Review Inside (May 10, 2010)                     I’m a huge fan of Walk Talk Tours and I’ve written about them before. Basically they create audio tours of major cities in Britain that you can download and put on your MP3 player or iPod.

REVIEW: 101 London Travel Tips (May 10, 2010)
The guide compiled by Jonathan and Jackie Thomas, the founders of Anglotopia.net, provides lots of useful advice for anyone contemplating a trip to the British capital; from planning your trip, to advising which of London's multitude of attractions are worth paying to see and which are best avoided altogether...

Hanging around in Chester & London (May 4, 2010)
It is said that on May 5, 1760 the spectators who had gathered at Tyburn in London, witnessed a gruseome innovation in execution. For it was on this day, that Laurence Shirley, Fourth Earl Ferrers became the first prisoner to be executed by way of a 'new improved method of hanging'...

FREE Ride & Stride, London walking app now in App Store (April 28, 2010)
The English version of the Ride & Stride, London walking tour will be FREE for listeners to download from the App Store as of today until May 31, 2010...

Walk Wednesday hits the trail (April 28, 2010)
It's Wednesday, and that can only mean one thing for Twitter users, who are involved in walking and hiking it is #WalkWednesday or #WW (People involved in the Travel Industry often refer to Tuesday as #TravelTuesday or #TT for short)...

St George's Day and a thing called Pride (April 23, 2010)
Sometimes it takes an 'outsider' with the inside track to tell us where we're going wrong. The current Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, hails from Uganda...

Imagine a London without... (April 19, 2010)
The ongoing disruption to air travel over Northern Europe caused by the molten ash spewing from a volcano in Iceland has got me thinking. If a natural occurrence can bring air travel to a standstill, grounding thousands of passengers and costing airlines millions of pounds a day, what else could we one day have to do without?

One Stop Walking Book Shop (April 15, 2010)
Mike Law, the owner of walking-books.com, has been involved in various forms of the book-trade since leaving school over 30 years ago. He began as a library supplier before leaving to manage a branch of a family bookselling business...

NEW London walking tour iPhone app (April 13, 2010)
Our most popular London walking tour, The Palace Trail, is now available in the Apple App Store. We have teamed up with Sploro, an international multi-media tour provider, to bring you the Palace Trail, initially in English...

Edinburgh New Town has the look (April 7, 2010)
There are many places in the world where town planning seems to have been an afterthought. Take Kuta in Bali, Indonesia. The narrow streets teem with traffic. The plush premises of ubiquitous multinational companies sit on narrow streets with inadequate drainage...

Edinburgh value added (March 29, 2010)
It started with a bang but has ended in acrimony. The Gathering (the Gathering of Clans), was designed to attract people from across the Scottish diaspora to their ancestors' homeland during Homecoming Scotland 2009, ended with debts in excess of £430,000...

Get a kick out of Fleet Street (March 21, 2010)
On the eve of the FA Cup Final, on March 22, 1888, representatives from twelve football clubs met at a hotel on Fleet Street and founded the Football League. The meeting was held to 'chew over' the proposal to create a structured season...

Walk this way on Mother's Day (March 12, 2010)
Mother's Day is this Sunday, March 14 in the UK. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA Mothering Sunday will be celebrated on Sunday, May 9...

Get a Hooke on London (March 3, 2010)
London is associated with many inspirational and famous people. March 3 marks the death of Robert Hooke, a famous physicist who passed away in 1703.

Black Day for the City of Chester (and football) (February 26, 2010)
Friday, February 26, 2010 will go down in history as a Black Day for the City of Chester after the city's professional soccer team, Chester City, was expelled from the Football Conference, the fifth tier of professional football in England, with immediate effect...

Burke and Hare: Edinburgh Thriller (February 23, 2010)
London has its fair share of figures synonymous with murder like Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd. North of the Border, there seems to be renewed interest in William Burke and William Hare - two equally notorious characters...

Carbon Fast no mean feat (February 17, 2010)
Lent is upon us. Are you going to give anything up? And if you are, what difference will it make in the greater scheme of things?

Anglophile Reviews: London Walks Audio Tours from Walk Talk Tours – Coupon Inside! (February 16, 2010)
London can be a dizzying place to explore – especially for the first time. And generally, you’re alone on that first trip. You don’t know any Brits yet or have friends who can show you around. Well, never fear, I’ve discovered a friend you can carry around on your iPod or iPhone that will show you around town instead – and educate you all at the same time...

Endangered Tiger apt sign for tough times (February 14, 2010)
Today is the first day of the year of the Tiger. The Tiger occupies the third spot on the Chinese Zodiac behind the Rat and the Ox...

York well placed in Britain's best streets' awards (February 9, 2010)
The Shambles, arguably Europe's best preserved medieval street, has been shortlisted for a prestigious Google Street Award in the Most Picturesque Street category...

London's early law enforcers remembered (February 5, 2010)
On this day in 1788 Robert Peel was born. Peel would become Prime Minister and for fans/students of nineteenth century British history, he is perhaps best known for repealing the Corn Laws in 1846...

REVIEW: TUNE ON, TUNE IN AND WALK ABOUT (Rainycitytales: February 3, 2010)
Think you know Manchester? Think again?

Memories of Urbis (February 1, 2010)
On Wednesday last week, I headed along to Urbis to have a look round the museum of city life's final exhibition: 'Urbis has left the building: six years of the best exhibitions in pop culture'...

Will Smarter mean better Value (January 27, 2010)
VisitBritain, Britain's official tourism board, will continue to utilise social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to try and persuade people to come to the UK for London 2012...

East Coast journey times set to fall (January 22, 2010)
The current Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, plans to introduce a service which will link London and Edinburgh by rail in less than four hours...

Chocs Away (January 19, 2010)
The historic city of York has a long association with the confectionery industry. Two names stand out in that history: Rowntree and Terry's...

Manchester and Edinburgh head to head (January 15, 2010)
The director of the Manchester International Festival, Alex Poots, has spoken of his desire for next year's celebration of the Arts in the city to challenge established festivals...

Beefeaters accused of making a mint (January 11, 2010)
The Tower of London is one of the English capital's most famous and visited landmarks. The Tower's Yeoman Warders are arguably as famous as the Tower itself...

Edinburgh forced to grit and bear it (January 7, 2010)
The cold snap which is enveloping the UK continues to be keenly felt in the Scottish capital. Edinburgh Zoo remains closed...

Minster prices get a fiery welcome (January 4, 2010)
It is a building that dominates the skyline for miles around, which has impressed visitors for centuries; but the decision to increase the admission charges to York Minster have provoked a storm of criticism...

Put Your Best Foot Forward (January 2, 2010)
Early January is a time full of promise and expectation. It can be uncomfortable time when individuals recognise that they have spent and perhaps eaten too much...

More to Edinburgh Hogmanay than meets the eye (December 28, 2009)
I spent my Christmas up in Edinburgh this year. On Boxing Day, my family and I enjoyed a walk through part of East Princes Street Gardens. The views from the Edinburgh Wheel were really good...

An alternative Christmas Survival Guide (December 23, 2009)
I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.  Please take extra care if you decide to go walk about over the festive period...
 
Grassmarket Glistens while Edinburgh shivers (December 19, 2009)
Edinburgh's Grassmarket does not often enjoy much time in the limelight in a city which seems to be constantly celebrating or promoting something, from Films to Books to the Arts...

Alternative Clothing finds home in ancient York (December 15, 2009)
York has been home to a whole manner of different people from Romans to Saxon, Vikings, Normans and more. Now, two female entrepreneurs have brought alternative clothing to York...

Manchester: Red, Blue & Green all over (December 11, 2009)
Manchester is a city which is synonymous with the Blue of City and the Red of United, but now Manchester is set to be Greener, too. For Manchester is to be a designated low-carbon economic area (LCEA)...

Green Makeover for London's City Hall (December 8, 2009)
The charismatic Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has spoken of his desire to "make London the greenest city on earth." Mr Johnson signed up City Hall to the 10:10 campaign...

Historic York street gets 'Glamorous, Sexy and Beautiful' look (December 4, 2009)
These adjectives are imprinted on the wall of the Elizabeth Wells lingerie boutique on the historic Shambles, in York. The boutique is the brainchild of Sarah Wells. Elizabeth is Sarah’s middle name...

Six Female Firsts: The Houses of Parliament (December 2, 2009)
Women in New Zealand were the first to be given the right to vote in a national election back in 1893. The struggle for female emancipation was a long and bitter one in Britain.

Vinyl still Alive and Kicking in York (November 27, 2009)
Yesterday, the annual four day St Nicholas Fayre began in York. Amid all the festive fun, visitors should look beyond the market stalls and check out some great independent stores, offering great friendly and knowledgeable service in the historic city all year round...

Chester set for herd of Rhinos (November 25, 2009)
Natives of Manchester may have fond memories of the Cow Parade that adorned the city's streets in the summer of 2004. Well, the historic city of Chester is set to have its own four legged invasion - with as many as 70 fibreglass rhinos set to be installed in a line from the city out to Chester Zoo next summer, from early July to mid September...

Book Festival outgrows Gardens, but is bigger better (November 21, 2009)
The Edinburgh International Book Festival, which celebrated its 26th birthday this year, is looking to expand beyond its home in Charlotte Square in Edinburgh’s New Town. The Festival attracts more than 200,000 visitors a year and The Scotsman reports that more than 80 per cent of tickets for its recitals have sold out in the last two years...

REVIEW - Walk Talk Tours, Edinburgh #2 of 2 (November 19, 2009)
This tour covers the Old Town and the New Town tour.  I discovered Walk Talk Tours through their twitter page.  Each tour is £5.95 but a discount is available if you download both of the Edinburgh tours available for sale at the same time...

York set fayre for St Nicholas (November 16, 2009)
Christmas is nearly upon us. Many UK cities stage Christmas Markets in a bid to lure in shoppers with the promise of something a bit different. One of the best known seasonal markets in the North of England takes place in the picturesque city of York...

REVIEW - Walk Talk Tours of Edinburgh #1 of 2 (November 12, 2009)
This review covers the tour called ‘The Royal Mile and more’ by the company Walk Talk Tours.  I first discovered Walk Talk Tours through their twitter page.  Each tour is £5.95 but a discount is available if you download both of the Edinburgh tours available at the same time...

They buried him among the Kings - Britain's Unknown Warrior (November 11, 2009)
November 11 is Armistice Day, a day when at 11 o'clock, on 11 November 1918 the guns of World War One finally fell silent. World War One saw killing on an industrial, hitherto unimagined scale...

St Andrew's Day 'Do' a welcome distraction? (November 8, 2009)
The Scottish capital will play host to an array of activities over the weekend of November 28 - 29. And then again on St Andrew's Day itself, Monday, November 30...