Coffee to your car
PASSENGERS travelling on Eurotunnel can now have drinks and essentials delivered to their cars. Customers can pre-order everything from Starbucks to lastminute grocery essentials and simply pick them up from the car park at the Folkestone terminal. Items available for delivery include bread, eggs and hand sanitiser. For further details, see eurotunnel.com.
The largest water-carrying bridge in Britain, Pontcysyllte, pronounced pont-kuh-sull-tuh, supports the Llangollen canal across the valley of the Dee. This “stream in the sky” was built between 1795 and 1808 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, using a mix of oxen blood and lime in its 19 masonry arches.
It rears up 126ft above the ground at the central point, and the iron trough containing the water is wide enough for one boat at a time. There is also a towpath alongside for pedestrians with a head for heights.
SEEING IT: It is an easy, if slightly dizzying, walk. Boat trips depart regularly from Trevor Basin on the aqueduct’s eastern end. See pontcysyllte-aqueduct.co.uk.
Moon pools Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, Yorkshire
Thanks to Henry VIII, this nation is not short of dissolved monasteries, but Fountains Abbey, in Studley Royal Park, is something extra.
The stately vaulted remains are the largest medieval ruins in the UK. In the 18th century, they were incorporated by aristocrat John Aislabie into a magical water garden of canals, cascades and tranquil moon ponds.
The combination of lawns and waterways, buildings and landscapes makes a romantic, harmonious whole.
SEEING IT: Studley is best visited on a misty autumn morning, just as the leaves are turning. The property near Ripon is run by the National Trust, see nationaltrust.org.uk.
Frontier quest Antonine Wall, Scotland
Everyone knows about Hadrian’s Wall, but another emperor, Antoninus Pius, ordered the construction of an outer limit of the Roman Empire even further north. Built in AD122, the Antonine Wall crossed Scotland’s neck from Glasgow to Edinburgh, from Clyde to Forth. It was a mix of ramparts, steep ditches and forts, a barrier against foreign raiders.
The remnants of the wall are not nearly as complete as in Hadrian’s, which means that finding them, and following the route, is something of a quest.
SEEING IT: To get an impression of the land the wall crosses, head to the battlements of Stirling Castle, and look east and west. The Antonine website has a top ten list of most accessible wall features, including elements now in museums. See antoninewall.org.
Heavy metal Forth Bridge, Scotland
The rusty-red Forth Bridge carries the East Coast Main Line across the Firth of Forth, linking Edinburgh with points north.
On its creation back in 1890, the bridge was the world’s first significant steel structure – and a triumph of Scottish engineering.
It looks like a parade of metal dinosaur skeletons marching northwards, and so much steel was involved in its construction that the expression “like painting the Forth Bridge” became shorthand for an impossible task. One so big that by the time you get to the end you have to start at the beginning again. Happily, advances in paint technology changed that. SEEING IT: The bridge is used to carrying 200 trains every day. It, along with its neighbours the Queensferry Crossing and the Forth Road Bridge, are best seen from viewpoints and footpaths on the Firth’s southern shore. See theforthbridges.org.
Model town New Lanark, Scotland
Thanks to the principles of one man, a cotton mill powered by the Clyde became a model for how society could improve the health, education and wellbeing of its workers.
In 1799 Robert Owen, a mill manager from Manchester, married into the family that had started the business at Lanark, and transformed it into the world’s largest