Landmarks
-
In August 1620 the Mayflower and Speedwell lay at Southampton before setting out for America. A stone column on Western Esplanade, unveiled by the American ambassador in 1913, marks the spot.
-
Southampton’s Bargate has guarded the way into the old town since about 1180. Behind it run the medieval walls, and beneath the streets lie the wine vaults of a great medieval port.
-
No city lost more when Titanic sank than Southampton. Its memorials, to engineers who stayed at their posts and a band that played on, sit a short walk apart.
-
Five thousand years of history in five places. From a Neolithic stone circle to the Roman frontier, these are the British World Heritage Sites that best explain how Britain came to be.
-
The most myth-soaked mountain in Eryri: a giant’s stone chair, a night on the summit said to end in madness or poetry, and a pack of ghostly hounds whose howling was once said to foretell death.
-
A cathedral founded by a 6th-century Welsh saint, nearly destroyed by a wartime landmine, and rebuilt around a controversial 16-foot aluminium Christ — now one of Cardiff’s most popular concert venues too.
-
A castle built right on the seashore in 1274 now looks out over a mile of dunes and open sand — the coastline has actually retreated 1,000 metres since, and the beach that’s grown in its place is one of the most striking in Wales.
-
England’s second-largest inhabited castle, home to the same family for over 700 years, a genuine Wars of the Roses battleground, and — for a certain generation — the unmistakable exterior of Hogwarts itself.
-
A 5-star family campsite a short woodland walk from one of Britain’s most photographed beaches, with a ruined Norman castle on the headland and a genuinely tidal river to cross before you reach the sand.
-
A three-mile sweep of Gower sand regularly ranked among the world’s best beaches, a shipwreck slowly resurfacing from the sand, and a tidal island you can only reach for five hours a day — here’s what to know before you time your visit.