What Shall We Do In London? Why, Leave It, of Course! (Part one)

When you are planning to visit the UK, you don’t have to stick to London all the time. England is not that large (50,301 sq. miles), about the same size as the state of Louisiana (52,378 sq. miles). When looking at a map of England, remember the overall size and take that into consideration. Jake once read an amazing statistic that every citizen of England lives within 70 miles of the sea! Bottom line: England is not a huge place.

If you are staying in London, consider taking day trips to locations outside the city. There are bus tours to Highclere Castle (of Downton Abbey fame) on the days that the castle is open to the public. Train travel  can get you to Dover in about 1 hour 15 minutes, where you can visit the Dover castle, or the tunnels in the cliffs that were first dug to defend against Napoleon and then expanded to defend against Germany in World War II. The Dunkirk evacuation was managed and led from within the Dover tunnels. From a lookout near the tunnels you can see some of the famous white cliffs of Dover, too!

Or you can take a train to Winchester and visit the cathedral which is the final resting place of Jane Austen, who lived in Winchester just before her death. The cathedral is also famous for being used as a stable by the forces of Cromwell at the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642. To amuse themselves the troops threw rocks through the large stained-glass windows on the west side of the cathedral. Legend has it that that citizens would retrieve the pieces of glass each day. After the war ended the window was reassembled. But nobody remembered exactly how it looked, so the window is now a collage of all sorts of pieces in random locations. Visitors can see fragments of an image here and there that the soldiers failed to break. Winchester also holds a Christmas market on the grounds of the Cathedral from late November into December, so a day trip can include both the cathedral and the market.

Cambridge is only an hour and a half by train as well. You can visit the colleges in the University, go “punting” (boating) on the  River Cam, visit the American cemetery (the only cemetery for US Forces in the UK, established during WW II), and see the Eagle pub where Watson and Crick announced their discovery of the structure of DNA and which was a favorite watering hole for American airmen assigned nearby in WW II. Check out the ceiling of the pub, where the airmen wrote names and dates to be remembered.

The Eagle Pub ceiling

Similarly, Oxford is about the same distance and you can see the Bodlean Library, the University of Oxford colleges, the church where John Wesley preached and the sites where the two British crime shows “Morse” and “Lewis” were based.

There are plenty of other spots within easy travel of London. Do some research, check the train schedules and get out of London for a day. You won’t regret it!