BRITAIN 2000

Despite being a tiny island no larger than California, Britain is one of the world's major tourist destinations. Having ruled over half the world's population at one point, a journey to the land of tea & biscuits is virtually essential to anyone aspiring to become a "world explorer". The island is simply packed with treats and goodies for tourists of all sorts; medieval castles, cathedrals, historic cities and towns, festivals of all sorts, gorgeous costal regions, national parks, etc. As J.B. Priestley once said of Britain's size, "She pretends to be small". Two weeks is cramming just to see England..... that is, without doing London. A trip to London would easily cost an additional two weeks. Adding Scotland be at least a fortnight, that is assuming you're not there during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In which case, give yourself an additional week. Then there's the outrageously neglected Wales, which would be at least another ten days worth of sight-seeing. One could easily spend a couple of months traveling around the island. What I was about to do was attempt to see it all in two weeks. It is of course, impossible to see everything in such a short period of time however I had a slightly unusual itinerary planned out.

With this being my third trip to England in as many years; I decided to make a slightly different journey this time. Having thoroughly explored London on previous trips as well as north east Yorkshire like Middlesborough, Newcastle and Sunderland, I thought it best to exclude the capital completely and just do the "Britrail thing". I had three main goals; a) with the exception of Northern Ireland, see all three kingdoms of Great Britain; England, Scotland and Wales. b) Meet up with two of my best friends of all time; Damien Murray and Kyle Smith and c) Get myself to one of the UK's celebrated music festivals.

So I bought myself a two week Britrail pass, a special permit unavailable to UK citizens that allows unlimited rail trips, from the Thomas Cook here in Abu Dhabi. I would fly in and out of Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, where Kyle was residing, before traveling down south to Cardiff and then meeting up with Damien in Borough Green, Kent. Then it would be back to the land of Haggis and Loch's via a stopover in Leeds where I was hoping to crash the infamous Carling Weekend Festival featuring Oasis, Gomez, Pulp, Slipknot, Placebo, etc.. Anyway, while there is way too much to see in Britain for one trip, there's definitely way too much to see for one webpage so click on either kingdoms below to see how it all went;

Scotland

Cymru (Wales)

England

Questions or comments? E-mail me @ glennaldo_sf@hotmail.com

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