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St. Columba's Iona
The tale of Iona — Scotland's holiest island, the resting place of her earliest kings — is also the tale of her founder Columba, the Irish prince and saint. It is a tale of arrogance, of politics, of battle, and of death; and it is a tale of penance, of striving for God, and of peace. It is a tale that may actually be true.

SCO: Argyll & Bute , Inner Hebrides, off Mull, Isle of Iona, Iona Abbey. Entrance to restored 13th C abbey; St Martin's Cross (8th C Celtic Cross) on rt [Ask for #246.645.]

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The Search & Rescue Dogs of the Lake District
In the boulder covered slopes of England's Lake District, a body lies under a giant rock, hiding the body from view and blocking its scent from the rescue dogs looking for it. Suddenly, a slender border collie named Mist dashes past the rock, then pauses; she has caught the scent of a human. Within seconds, the dog is sniffing the body, pawing it gently, probing under its tightly curled arms, and finding — a squeaky toy. The body sits up, and they both play the game of Fetch the Squeaky Toy.

ENG: Cumbria , Lake District N.P., Keswick-Borrowdale Area, Broadstack Gil (NT). Search and Rescue Dogs Assoc. (Lake District) training session. Veteran search dogs Ginnie (front) and Mist (back). [Ask for #259.160.]

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Illuminating Blackpool
Just as Karl Marx published his Law of the Increasing Misery of the Working Classes in the mid-19th century, the Midlands working classes started taking vacations. This was completely new and unexpected; never, in the history of mankind, had the ordinary working people had enough money to knock off for a week and go somewhere else. Because this was an absolutely unique event in history there wasn't any place for them to go — so they had to create a place, a pleasure resort just for themselves. That place was Blackpool.

ENG: Blackpool Borough, Southern Beachfront, Pleasure Beach, Pleasure Beach. The Big Blue Hotel, in front of The Big One roller coaster, at night; ASK FOR DIGITAL VERSION [Ask for #262.069.]

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Dover Castle: The View from Hellfire Corner
At its closest point, England is seventeen miles from France. Today this tiny distance hardly separates two close allies, but for most of the preceding twenty centuries the seventeen miles of the Straits of Dover marked a hostile military frontier. In the last five centuries alone, England's enemies attempted invasions on twelve different occasions and made serious preparations at least nine other times. Dover Castle was England's protector, and its secret military tunnels led (and still lead) to a hidden balcony in the cliffs, known during World War II as "Hellfire Corner."

ENG: South East Region, Kent, The White Cliffs of Dover, Dover Area, Kent Downs AONB, Fox Hill Down (NT), View of Dover Castle, to the south. Country lane in frgd. [Ask for #239.271.]

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Islay: Lords of the Isles
Islay, while only eighty miles from Glasgow as the crow flies, is a hundred miles of bad road and a two and a half hour ferry crossing for humans. But remoteness has its virtues — particularly for the home of some of the greatest whiskies and most historic sites in Scotland.

SCO: Strathclyde Region, Argyll & Bute, Inner Hebrides, Islay, Bowmore, Sunset view from harbor towards the Bowmore Distillery [Ask for #246.507.]

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Dartmoor of the Baskervilles
Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles not just as a novel set in Dartmoor, but one with Dartmoor itself as its main character. He would set its wild, open moors, where the Devil and his black dogs hunt for souls, against Sherlock Holme's cold, rational mind.

ENG: South West Region, Devon, Dartmoor National Park, Dartmoor's Western Edge, Sheepstor, Horses grazing beneath Sheepstor [Ask for #106.042.]

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The Brontës in the Yorkshire Moors
The scenery around West Yorkshire's Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters, is thick with places associated with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

ENG: Yorkshire & Humberside Region, West Yorkshire, Calderdale Borough, Hebden Bridge, Haworth Moors, View over the moors; a farm track runs from hedged farmlands to wild moors, with an isolated Pennine farmstead [Ask for #270.403.]

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Jane Austen's Hampshire
Rural Hampshire was a refuge for Jane Austen; although she lived elsewhere, she wouldn't write elsewhere.

ENG: Hampshire , South Downs National Park, Chawton, Jane Austin's House. The desk upon which Jane Austin wrote or revised all of her novels, and t he window by which she always worked. [Ask for #253.038.]

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Izaak Walton's Peaceful World
The Compleat Angler and its author, Izaak Walton, are forever part of the Peaks District's Dovedale, and all the lovely small rivers of England.

ENG: East Midlands Region, Derbyshire, Peak National Park, The River Dove, Milldale, Sheep graze on the hills above the River Dove, with Lode Mill visible in bkgd [Ask for #246.303.]

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Scotland's Lonely North
Broad views over empty moors and sea cliffs, a few villages, and a main highway that's a single lane wide—it's astonishing that such an empty region could survive in crowded Britain in the 21st century. But there it is.

SCO: Highland Region, Sutherland District, Northern Coast, Kyle of Tongue, Ben Loyal (Ben Laoghal), 2509' peak, View over Kyle of Tongue towards Ben Loyal, bathed in late afternoon sun breaking through storm clouds [Ask for #246.775.]

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Watership Down
A rag-tag band sets out across an alien, hostile landscape, pursued by enemies, their lives threatened at every moment. This could be Allied soldiers behind enemy lines, or hobbits in Middle-Earth. But it’s not—these are bunnies.

ENG: South East Region, Hampshire, North Wessex Downs AONB, Watership Down, RABBIT'S LEVEL VIEW of a patch of grass covered in wildflowers at the top of Watership Down, with a view into the valley below. [Ask for #253.105.]

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Doctor Syn: The Romney Marsh of the Scarecrow!
Russell Thorndyke's 1915 blood-curdling penny dreadful Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh tells of a village vicar who rides as a smuggler disguised as a scarecrow—and was himself a pirate captain in hiding! He also tells of Romney Marsh, one of Kent's most unusual regions. For instance, here's a picture of the pub Dr. Syn favored, the way it looked from his rectory window, and still looks today.

ENG: South East Region, Kent, Romney Marsh, Romney Marsh Beaches, Dymchurch, The Ship Inn viewed across the village chuchyard -- locations associated with the fictional Dr. Syn [Ask for #256.514.]

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Dartmoor
Rough moors topped by strange granite hoodoos, dangerous mires, and village lanes lined by thatched cottages and grand churches—this is Dartmoor, one of England's oddest and most beautiful corners.

ENG: South West Region, Devon, Dartmoor National Park, Dartmoor's Western Edge, Sheepstor, Horse grazing on tor [Ask for #106.036.]

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Whitby
This busy fishing town terraces up Yorkshire's sea cliffs, with a ruinous abbey crowning the clifftop. Its history embraces a Dark Age synod, Viking attacks, Captain Cook, and Victorian jet.

ENG: Yorkshire & Humberside Region, North Yorkshire, North Yorkshire Coast, Whitby, West Pier, Houses bunch beneath cliffs at the mouth of the harbor [Ask for #270.161.]

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The Beers of Burton
For more than two centuries, "Burton" meant "beer" in the United Kingdom the way "Hollywood" means "movies" in the United States. Then, suddenly, it stopped. The surprise was akin to the Hollywood studios being bought out by European television stations and moved to Iowa. It was unimaginable—yet it had happened.

ENG: West Midlands Region, Staffordshire, The Trent Valley, Burton-on-Trent, Town Center, National Brewery Centre. Red delivery wagon from the 19th c. [Ask for #270.041.]

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Lancashire's Panopticons
The Panopticons are a public art project meant to highlight both the grand moors and industrial glory of rural Lancashire. All are impressive, and all give wide views—but over very different terrain.

ENG: The Northwest Region, Lancashire, The Pennines, Rossendale, Haslingden, The Halo Panopticon at sunset [Ask for #270.340.]

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Yorkhire's Sea Cliffs
Over the millennia the North Sea has sliced off the eastern edge of the North York Moors as with a knife, exposing its hard rocky core for all to see—33 miles of continuous pinkish-tan cliffs never less than a hundred feet high and sometimes over six hundred. Villages shoe-horn into niches in the cliffs.

ENG: Yorkshire & Humberside Region, North Yorkshire, North Yorkshire Coast, Sea Cliffs, Ravenscar, Signpoast on The Cleveland Way, a long distance footpath, points to the Ravenscar Tea Rooms, as the path follows cliffs past an isolated farmstead. [Ask for #270.122.]

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Britain's Two Greatest Inventions
These two modest inventions produced factories, powerful engines, electrical power grids, jet airplanes, economic theory, and computers.

ENG: The Northwest Region, Lancashire, The Pennines, Burnley Borough, Briercliffe, Queen Street Mill, Steam engine, named PEACE, which still powers this fully functioning Victorian textile plant [Ask for #270.384.]

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England's Un-Natural Landscape
When we Americans discuss the environment, we tend to talk about natural/clean/good ecosystems v. man-made/polluted/bad ones. When we talk about "restoring" the environment, we are talking about returning a human-influenced landscape to its natural state. So it can be quite a shock to discover that England (along with Wales and nearly all of Scotland) has no natural landscape at all, hasn't had one for many centuries, and maybe never had one.

ENG: The Northwest Region, Cumbria, Lake District National Park, Central Lakes Area, Great Langdale, A narrow lane, flanked by dry laid stone walls, heads towards the cliff-sided peaks of Langdale Pikes [Ask for #262.433.]

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About Jim's Brit

Jim Hargan has written eighty articles based on his extensive travel in Great Britain, most of them published in British Heritage magazine. He is an American with a background as a geographer, and has been a full time freelance travel writer and photographer since 1994. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, about which he has written several books, including The Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains: An Explorer's Guide. He formerly lived on the Oregon Coast and keeps a separate blog about it, blogPacifica.

This website is made up of Jim's articles and photographs. Jim likes to explore why things look the way they do. Britain is good for this. When you travel through Britain you move through a landscape that has been maturing for six thousand years, with every generation adding their bit. Everywhere you go, history is thick on the ground. You are surrounded by ancient and fascinating sights — Stone Age megaliths cheek-by-jowl with Celtic forts, medieval terraces, and 19th century railroads. It's Jim's job to dig this stuff out for you.

OR: South Coast Region, Coos County, Northern Coastal Area, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, Self-portrait of the photographer, Jim Hargan, on a remote dune. [Ask for #274.A88.]
Blog author Jim Hargan, taken on Oregon's coast.
 
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