The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
KATE HUMBLE INSIDE TRAVEL
Great Britain may not be very big, but it does have an enormous amount to offer – that’s why I love exploring my homeland
The beginning of the year in Britain is not a time of year anyone relishes: a time of diets and failed resolutions, of short, dark days and dreary weather. No wonder, then, that many of us are online looking at images of exotic, far-flung places, planning holidays to give us something to look forward to. And many of us, myself included, will feel the urge to head somewhere different, another part of the world where everything is unfamiliar and exciting.
But pause for a moment. What about staying here, in the UK? Because sometimes we forget that what we seek, what we yearn for, might not require us to travel very far or survive the scrum of a peak-season airport. Great Britain might not be very big, but it does have an enormous amount to offer.
Growing up, as I did, in the Seventies and Eighties, almost every family holiday we had was in Britain, and I have happy memories of all of them. The beaches of Skegness and Mablethorpe, where we stayed with family friends and spent every moment rock pooling, building sandcastles and wave jumping. The holiday cottages in Somerset and Cornwall, with donkeys in a field at the end of the lane and the apple tree that was perfect for climbing. Walks up Glastonbury Tor, picnics in fields, the lazy cooing of woodpigeons that to this day is, for me, the sound synonymous with summer holidays.
Then my parents discovered the Channel Islands, where we, as children, could – and did – run feral. We hired bikes, joined other kids and explored every inch of the landscape. We would hang out with the conger eel fishermen, hoping for a glimpse of their terrifying catch. We had our first taste of cider, thrilled at cycling back after dark under a sky bright with stars.
We joined crowds for gloriously eccentric events. Events that are still alive and well across Britain, from cheese rolling in Gloucestershire to bog snorkelling in Mid Wales. There’s even gravy wrestling every August in Lancashire. I have lived in the UK all my life, and there are so many places that I haven’t been to, so many things I haven’t done.
I went to the Isles of Scilly for the first time only a year ago and kicked myself that I hadn’t gone sooner – the white sand beaches and turquoise sea every bit as alluring as the Caribbean. Beautiful walking, delicious food, great hospitality – all the elements that make for a pretty good holiday.
I’ve spent a bit of time on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides – it is wonderful if seeing wildlife is high on your holiday wish list – but I’m ashamed to admit, as a walker, that I am yet to bag a Munro – and there are 282 of them. There are huge swathes of the Peak District that are unfamiliar to me, and great cities, such as Liverpool, Cambridge and Durham, that I’ve merely passed through.
And then there is my home. I moved to Wales 11 years ago and our holiday that year was half a week in a cottage in Pembrokeshire exploring the coast and the other half of the week in a cottage in Snowdonia exploring the mountains. I now know that week gave us little more than an inkling of the wild beauty that Wales has to offer, that there are so many places that for some reason aren’t as well known but are every bit worth a visit. To celebrate 10 years of living in Wales I walked home from Mid Wales, following the Wye from its source. Seeing places on foot, even those that I’d been to before, gave me an entirely new perspective and new appreciation of my home turf.
The world we live in is full of wonders, full of reasons to pack a bag and head for the lure of foreign lands, but it is worth remembering, before we get bewitched by all those glossy images on the internet, that what we seek might be right here, under our noses.
Happy travels!
The world we live in is full of wonders but what we seek might be right here