It's 2025 Travel Planning Time!

Even Hygge enjoys the views

Well it’s that time again and we are busy getting prepared and planning our trips in Hygge for this year. Hygge has had its Habitation Check, MOT and service and is going in for some TLC namely bushes and tyres.  We  have also gone a little mad and had a bike rack fitted just to make life a little easier, now we are getting on a bit. Less said the better!

It wouldn't be the same now without the bikes

This year we are planning to explore the last long stretch of the British Coast we haven’t travelled yet; the East Coast of Scotland from Edinburgh to Fraserburgh. (Yes that is another of our long list of ‘things to achieve during retirement’ the full length of the British Mainland Coastline).

Love this book

On that ' things to achieve during retirement list', its a long list if you hadn't already gathered, we also wanted to explore all the Unesco World Heritage Sites on the UK mainland. Having already crossed off quite a few,  we have now discovered that there is more to UNESCO sites in the UK than we at first realised.

Happy Whimsical Flowers

The UK National Commission for UNESCO on UNESCO.org.uk divides its sites into 6 individual headings not just World Heritage Sites:-

Biosphere Reserves of which there are - 7

Creative Cities - 12

Global Geoparks - 7

World Heritage Sites - 29

Learning Cities - 8

Memory of the World - documentary heritage

(Not including Northern Ireland)

So it looks as though there may be some additions to our list of must visit.

So far, our explorations have concentrated on the 29 World Heritage Sites and if I was asked to recommend our favourites it would be a difficult choice to make.

We have already visited quite a few:-

Blenham Palace

Jurassic Coast

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal

Cromford Mill - Derwent Valley Mills

Straddling the Prime Meridian - Greenwich

Stonehenge

Hadrians Wall and our beloved Sycamore Gap

English Lakes

Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey

also:-

Edinburgh Old and New Town

Bath

Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape - see below

Ironbridge Gorge - see below

Some of the Slate Landscape of North West Wales and Harlech Castle

Amazing views from Harlech Castle

Garry’s favourite at this point (and between you a me will probably remain so because he does love his Cornwall) is the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape

‘Shaped during a period of intense industrial activity, the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site is testimony to one of the greatest periods of economic, technological and social development Britain has ever known. Today, it is a series of distinctive and dramatic landscapes with great stories to tell. The inscription encompasses 10 unique Areas stretching from Tavistock in the east to St Just in the west. Each Area has its combination of features that together make up the landscape.’

According to UNESCO.org.uk

Our experiences along this atmospheric stretch of coast have left long lasting memories of spectacular sunsets, bracing walks, romantic ruins and full on experiences on the history of the life and work of the miners. As you may remember Garry’s ancestors were some of those Miners. His experiences exploring here have brought him a little closer to the reality of life for his gt gt grandfathers and put flesh onto their bones, they are no longer simply names on a page.

I have absolutely no doubt we will be visiting these areas again and again because I would have to agree with Garry once seen never forgotten and when you leave you know you want to go back for more.

For me if I am honest I struggle to pick just one favourite. Like Garry I love the Cornwall Mining coast it is so uniquely and beautifully Cornish.

Stonehenge and Avebury stick out for me:-

This World Heritage Site is universally important for its unique and dense concentration of outstanding prehistoric monuments and sites which together form a landscape without parallel. Stonehenge is the most sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, while Avebury is the largest. Together, alongside many more remarkable monuments, they represent the achievements of communities 5,000 years ago and demonstrate the skilful ability of prehistoric peoples to construct immense structures.

Unesco.org.uk

Avebury - Feeling the Millenia

I am drawn to Stonehenge and Avebury because they connect me to a people who were our ancestors. They root me to Britain, a Country I love. The magical atmosphere of these sites is as powerful as the feel of the huge stones beneath my hand, as is the lingering presence of our ancestors who built them. 2000 years have past and still I feel their presence.

Ironbridge

Ironbridge Gorge

The cradle of the Industrial Revolution. Nowhere else has had more influence on our modern world. Ironbridge Gorge is bursting with coal, clay, iron ore and limestone – the essential ingredients needed to produce objects on an industrial scale. When Abraham Derby acquired a furnace at the site in 1709, little did he know his discovery would help lead to some of the most far-reaching changes in human history. Get to grips with the processes that shaped our modern world at the Silicon Valley of its time.

Unesco.org.uk

Here nature has once again triumphed over man’s industrial ambitions. Where you can be horrified when you learn of the hardships of people past toiling in horrendous working conditions and marvel at their resilience and at the same time still be impressed by the advances and creations of the industrialists and inventors of the time. And yet there you are, walking in a beautiful verdant steep sided gorge with the River Severn at its heart.

Nik Schmidt

Having re-read this I will now have to hold up my hands and admit I am a silly romantic old fool, but I am too old to change now. ;-).

SO WHAT NOW? Frank McKenna Unsplash

So where to this year?

HH History in HD

Well for something a little different Jodrell Bank Observatory looks fascinating and promises ‘revolutionary scientific discoveries, amazing feats of engineering and the dawn of the space age’. Definitely one for Garry.

SALTAIRE - Oliver Sherwin Unsplash

Saltaire West Yorkshire which ‘is a complete and well preserved village of the second half of the 19th century’ - does it for me.

And if we have time New Lanark, South of Glasgow, a cotton mill founded in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright.

Fingers crossed we will make our East Coast Scotland trip via the above UNESCO Sites and be able to share it with you. We can’t wait to get going. Hope you stick with us and enjoy the ride.

Bye for now

Garry and Caroline x