Travel

Britain’s smallest city has 1,800 residents and anchors this six day Welsh drive

St David’s earns its city status from a 12th century cathedral rather than its size, and it sits roughly halfway along a coastal road trip that runs from the Severn crossing to Anglesey.

Visitors still leave dolls for the ghost of a girl under Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

With Halloween under three weeks away, Auld Reekie offers a headless drummer at the castle, a prison site locals still spit on and a buried street you can only see by tour.

Old Burghley House has 115 rooms and a roof that covers three quarters of an acre

William Cecil’s house holds 115 rooms under three quarters of an acre of roof, and the public circuit alone runs to more than a quarter of a mile.

Christopher Wren studied astronomy and then rebuilt London after it burned down

Christopher Wren, born 394 years ago next Tuesday, had studied science and astronomy rather than architecture when he was handed 51 churches and a cathedral to build.

Drake’s drum hangs in a Devon house and is said to beat when England is in danger

Raleigh’s scaffold pipe, Livingstone’s red shirt and a full size replica of the ship John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland are all sitting somewhere in Britain waiting to be visited.

Rosslyn Chapel was begun 580 years ago and the carvers never finished the job

Five centuries of folklore have gathered around a small unfinished church seven miles south of Edinburgh, and Dan Brown only added to the pile.

Queen Victoria kept Albert’s watch beside her in bed for 40 years and it is still there

The Isle of Wight villa the royal couple built with their own money has been left exactly as it stood on the January morning in 1901 when the Queen died in it.

Ask at this Winchester almshouse and you still get free bread and beer, tourists included

The Wayfarer's Dole has been handed out at the Hospital of St Cross for centuries, and the ale these days is a London Pride donated by Fuller's.

The Mayor of Casterbridge can still be walked scene by scene through modern Dorchester

Michael Henchard's house on South Street is a branch of Barclays now, but the King's Arms still pours and the Maumbury Rings still swallow the noise of the traffic.

Wales still has around 100 male voice choirs and visitors can sit in on rehearsals for free

Born in the chapels and coalfields of the 19th century, the choirs of the Land of Song are now chasing younger recruits while welcoming curious visitors through the door.

Autumn is the season to walk Edinburgh, from Castle Rock down to Holyrood

With the festival crowds gone and Auld Reekie settling into its quieter months, Scotland's capital rewards anyone willing to climb its hills on foot.

Newtonmore's 80-acre folk museum lets you walk into a Highland village from 1700

The Highland Folk Museum recreates three centuries of Scottish rural life on an open air site where every building is either an original or an exact period replica, and admission costs nothing.