Geography

I wonder where all the Brits have gone? I was writing a piece for a talk and realised I had stated that the region I live in was my inspiration. Just for fun I thought I'd ask if the Brits thought any particular region was inspirational. Wordsworth and the Lakes comes to mind, and Cornwall for atmosphere. Any more?

Perhaps we're all inclined to pick our own home areas but I do find Devon inspriing, especially Dartmoor and the old Barbican area of Plymouth. As well as the area where I live I'm always inspired by London, Bath, the Lakes and Yorkshire, though possibly because of my own connections rather than for any other reason. Moors in general are full of atmosphere and mystery and are somewhere I love to go to be alone with nature and my own imagination: drop me in the middle of the Yorkshire moors, Dartmoor or Bodmin Moor and I'll be perfectly happy all day. And I'm clearly not alone in that - just think of the literary connections with moors in general - Wuthering Heights, Jamaica Inn, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Lorna Doone, Jane Eyre etc, etc, etc.

Like Booksloth I may be biased but I don't think anyone could fail to be inspired by the scenery in North Wales, it is after all the land of poetry and song :)

I like the West End of London. It's also my home "village" as I was born near the Strand.

Most of us are multi-dimensional in outlook and in our personal make-up, and I'm sure where we've lived or visited (even if only in books) has the potential to be inspirational. Mountains I like (so that includes the Preselis where I live now, the Lakes, Snowdonia, the Peak in Hongkong, the Alps) and so they're all inspirational in different ways. Culture I love too, so that's Italian cities, London, Oxford... Hard to limit it all, really.

I don't think anyone could fail to be inspired by the scenery in North Wales

Is that when you can see the heaps of slate, or only when the fog is hiding them? Or did you mean the scenic massed caravans and chalets of the coast near Prestatyn? :-)

I find Oxford and parts of London fairly inspiring, as well as the Cumbrian Lake District and the Western Isles of Scotland. But I enjoyed recently reading a book inspired by a part of the country that I know hardly at all: I believe that A Stranger at Green Knowe is set in Huntingdonshire.

#7 MyopicBookworm: You obviously havn't travelled much in Wales.

>7 MyopicBookworm:
I couldn't think of a witticism involving myopia, so I desisted! Seriously, not all North Wales is slate and fog and self-replicating caravans, but collectively they do distract from the rest of the landscape.

>8 KayEluned:

I have and I'll take southwest Wales any day! ;)

Tenby looks like a great place to live but I'm not so sure about Swansea. LLandudno was a bit stuffy when we went there but our lad loves the hills and the waterfalls inland and has climbed Snowdon for charity. I left my oldest character in Wales when I finished my trilogy because it seemed the most peaceful and beautiful place for her to end her days - but then my mother was a Parry so perhaps it is in the blood.

>11 oldstick:
Tenby has its charms, though it can get very hectic in season (tourist, that is, not the Austen sense).
Swansea has improved over the last few years, though it still feels like a down-market Cardiff to me.
On my couple of visits to Llandudno it did indeed feel stuffy (certainly compared to Tenby) and very Victorian still.
Snowdonia is beyond words.
Wales certainly has variety, and I wouldn't be living here if it didn't have charms. And scenery. And history. And music-making.

Tenby is very touristy in season, but the little seaside villages around it are absolute heaven.

Obviously noone has read The Dark Philosophers by Gywn Thomas :)

>8 KayEluned:/9: It was a joke, guys! I've nothing against a nice hike around the Snowdon Horseshoe or up Cader Idris, or even a stroll up the Great Orme (as long I can't see Prestatyn from the top).

If I might wax eponymous for a moment, can I blow the trumpet for Dorset? Not just Thomas Hardy, William Barnes, John Fowles, John Cowper Powys, Christopher Priest and others, but the wonderful scenery, climate and atmosphere.

And much of it is more than an hour's drive from the nearest motorway! Bliss!

#16 - Never been to Dorset, but the desire to see it has been growing on me lately.

I'd like to explore Thomas Hardy country, of course, but I'd like to visit the Jurassic Coast and Lyme Regis seems to crop up in every other book one reads so that I've got a real curiosity to see the place and walk in - is it The Underhill? I think it's in Northanger Abbey but I may be misremembering. There seems to quite a lot packed into a small area.

Now you've got me thinking about a holiday cottage.

Oh, and I used to be a big fan of the Yetis Yetties years ago.

Edited - Yetties.

If you go, don't miss Corfe Castle.

... and aim to get your first sight of the ruin from the heritage line steam railway that runs down to Swanage.

Durdle Door (?spelling) is worth a look, and Weymouth, and Portland Bill, with great views of Chesil Beach, and the lagoons behind, and the Cerne Abbas giant...

I meant to mention the Cerne Abbas giant.

Like I said, so much packed into a small area.

>21 alaudacorax:
I can't imagine what you're talking about.

Thanks to all those who've reminded me why I like the place! Even being a Northerner by birth!

22: Me neither.... :-)

Is Dorset actually one of England's erogenous zones?

I have not been to Dorset yet, but it is high up on my list of British holidays to come, can't wait : )

The Scottish high lands, especially Skye. Such a beautiful place!

>24 MyopicBookworm:

Even the fact that you ask this question suggests that you haven't sampled the local delicacy known as 'Dorset Knobs':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_Knob

>27 CliffordDorset:
Anything to do with the Cerne Abbas giant?

I know one place that rarely inspires authors and that's Bristol :) maybe surrounded by evocative countryside and with London just up the road they just keep moving!

#29

I have a book of SF short stories called Future Bristol.

Junk! is set in Bristol isn't it?

Falling More Slowly is a crime novel set in Bristol. The Last Llanelli Train is also a crime novel set in Bristol (but the protagonist is living rough in Swansea by the time book 2 of the series starts)

#27 - Oh ye gods! I must have a very juvenile sense of humour as I just collapsed into hysterical laughter at the sentence, "The festival also includes such events as a knob and spoon race, knob darts, knob painting and guess the weight of the knob".

I didnt like the The Last Llanelli train much and there isn't a great sense of place! Haven't heard of the other one, might check it out. Cheers

>29 clfisha:, 30
Treasure Island and one part of Gulliver's Travels have sea journeys setting off from Bristol; I recently reviewed a rather average novel set in 1810 Bristol, The Devil's Mask; and there was a bodice ripper about the slave trade and Bristol in the mid-20th century whose title escapes me. But apart from Junk nothing more modern springs readily to mind. I shall have to galvanise the old grey cells a bit.

Hmm drug addicts, murder, slaves and pirates :) Thanks for the recommendations

>34 clfisha:
Yeah, a city of ne'er-do-wells... And the pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, was born in Bristol too.

Right, the popular novel about the slave-trade I was thinking about was Marguerite Steen's The Sun Is My Undoing (1941) and was a best-seller in Britain and the US, though I never read it. More recently, A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory (1995) revisits the same subject.

More respectably, Blaise Castle and its folly castle in the Bristol hamlet of Henbury were described as "the finest place in England" in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey; Blaise is now a folk museum and the three-cornered folly still stands though wasn't accessible to visitors when I last visited. Earlier, Evelina (or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World) by Frances Burney is regarded as a pre-Austen commentary on social manners; again, I haven't got round to reading it.

Other novels set in Bristol (which I mostly retrieved from http://www.bristolreads.com/downloads/readers_guide/bristol_writing.pdf) include
Children of the Wave: A Historical Novel Set in 18th Century Bristol by John Godwin.
E H Young The Misses Mallett (1922), the first of seven novels based in Upper Radstowe, a "thinly disguised version of Clifton", the Bristol suburb where the author once lived.
Lucy English Selfish People (1998) is a contemporary novel set in inner-city Bristol.
Lillian Bouzane In the Hands of the Living God (1999) set in fifteenth century Bristol when Cabot set sail from Bristol to first discover North America in 1497.
Eugene Byrne Things Unborn (2001). "Partly set in Bristol, this fantasy takes place in a parallel universe in 2008. Its hero is Scipio Africanus", an 18th-century black slave who was buried in Henbury churchyard.
Jeannie Johnson A Penny for Tomorrow (2003) about post-war life in 1950s Bristol.
Daniel Mayhew Life and How to Live it (2004) "about struggling musicians in Bristol".
Ed Trewavas Shawnie (2006) written in Bristol dialect and set on a notorious Bristol housing estate.
Caroline Carver Gone Without Trace (2007): a thriller about the human trafficking of young Eastern Europeans.

Is that enough to be starting with?

How could I forget Eugene Byrne he is quite brilliant. And yes plenty to be getting on with, I stand gratefully corrected :) thank you!

I know the thread is about books but I hope you Bristol devotees are also enjoying the latest series of Bristol-based Skins.

You know I don't watch Skins (hnmm maybe I should start), although I am still smarting from Being Human moving to Cardiff :)

>37 Booksloth:
Only saw some of the very first series Skins way back when--brilliant but a bit strong for my delicate constitution! Seemed to always just miss Being Human but do know it was highly rated. Casualty's also moved to Cardiff, a bit of a hike now for my Bristol-based son who often works as grip in the studio and on location for it.

I was very sad when Being Human moved from Bristol as well, I think they are living on Barry Island now aren't they? : (

Is this thread supposed to be about Wales? There are many beautiful areas in the UK.
Last time I visited Wales, I asked for directions in a garage, I was told 'It's too hard, you had better go home'! In a broad Welsh accent! (I had travelled several hundred miles to come on holiday!)
Not welcoming, not kind, not deserving of our tourist money!
I live in S Scotland, extraordinarily beautiful, beaches, hills, forests, dark skies......., easy driving and parking, unstressed medical services, no employment!
Rabbie Burns!

>41 lizstansbridge:
Hope you don't base your impressions of a Welsh welcome on one experience! And are you sure it wasn't said with a twinkle in the eye and an upward twist in the corner of the mouth?
The Borders are equally lovely, I'm sure, though my limited experience of Scotland is Glasgow before its acquisition of City of Culture title.

I was warned that different parts of Wales greeted the other Brits differently. I think it must depend on whether they consider tourists a boon or a nuisance. We have been welcomed in Tenby and Mumbles, had no problems in Aberystwyth and Abersoch but found some people resented us when we had a holiday on the northern coast. However, many of our family have moved to Wales to live, which prompted me to make a character in my last book do the same.
How about the North East no longer calling itself Catherine Cookson Country?

#43 - I was warned that different parts of Wales greeted the other Brits differently. Which is why the English conquered us - we disagreed with each other as much as we disagreed with the English!

#41 - liztansbridge, did you know that south-west Scotland used to be Welsh? Myrddin, who was supposedly the Welsh original of the Merlin of the King Arthur tales, was from your neck of the woods, somewhere.

Can we have it back, please? I google-mapped your part of the world and discovered the Galloway Forest Park and now I'm really envious of you!

>44 alaudacorax:
Nikolai Tolstoy's The Quest for Merlin puts the case for this part of Scotland, mostly convincingly but overstates his case, I think. A much better case than claiming Carmarthen is named after Myrddin (it's not; Carmarthen derives from 'caer' plus the Roman name Maridunum or Moridunum, the town (dun) by the sea (well it was until the river silted up the link).

>44 alaudacorax: -alaudacorax - No I didn't know that SW Scotland used to be Welsh, anyway I am an ex geordie who lived in Hampshire for 30 years with Irish and Scottish grandfathers. There are masses of English living here, I hardly know any Scots!
We are a mongrel nation, pointless pinning national labels on anything.....Roman, Viking, French,Spanish,Saxon,Celt,Indian,Chinese!
The best reflection of our tolerance for each other is the way we incorporate different cuisines into our culture!
Indeed the Galloway Forest Park is wonderful. There is a viewpoint called Bruce's Stone overlooking a deep loch, utterly, utterly beautiful.

I seem to recall that the Sun newspaper used to have a regular page dedicated to Bristols ...

(Now there's one to baffle non-Brits who've strayed into this group )

> 47
Reminds me of the cartoon of the hitchhiker (or was it a still from a Carry On film?) who carried a board saying Bristol or Bust! (or similar; I'm not very good at punch lines).

Sounds like a seaside postcard of the Donald McGill school.

OMGoodness dtw42 I have a few of his cards somewhere. I can still see my nan with tears of laughter running down her cheeks as she stood browsing the post card stands in Barry Island back in 'nineteen once upon a time'.

#17 - Never been to Dorset, but the desire to see it has been growing on me lately ... Now you've got me thinking about a holiday cottage.

Finally made it - spent last week in Lyme Regis. I was absolutely captivated by the place.

I was entranced by the Undercliffs (not 'Underhill', as I had it) - so much so that I did the walk twice, once each away. I've never seen anything quite like it - must be the nearest Britain comes to jungle.

Perhaps I'm a very boring person, but I spent hours upon hours staring at fossils in Lyme's two museums - I found them quite fascinating (well, it did rain a bit).

Disorganised as usual, I didn't get to explore Hardy country or Portland Bill - I seriously overestimated what I could do in five or six days. That doesn't matter, though, because I'm definitely going back!

>51 alaudacorax:
Yes, Lyme is somewhere special, isn't it? Though it's hard to quite put your finger on why. Probably the combination of picturesque, fossils, history, literary associations, ozone (yes I know that's a Victorian fallacy, but you know what I mean) and family-friendly seaside holidays.

#51 Perhaps I'm a very boring person, but I spent hours upon hours staring at fossils in Lyme's two museums

I don't think that makes you a bit boring - in fact it makes you potentially a very interesting person to have around. I'd rather chat about fossils any day that about some of the things I've overheard at dinner parties. Lyme is a wonderful place and if you miss out on the fossils you miss out on the heart of its wonderful-ness.

#52 - Yes, Lyme is somewhere special, isn't it? Though it's hard to quite put your finger on why.

For me, there was a comfortable, old-fashioned, and very 'English' feel to the place. I'd taken a few, 'current reading' books for the evenings, but, when it came to it, none seemed to fit, somehow, and I ended up re-reading Agatha Christie's 'Miss Marple' books, which I'd actually read quite recently, on my kindle. They just seemed to somehow go with the place.

Quite spurious, of course, as I'm probably thinking of an idea of comfortable, small-town and village England that never existed outside detective stories; but that's the way it struck me.

Also, and this is really difficult to pin down, it reminded me of seaside towns of childhood holidays, way back in the 'fifties. You could hardly say the place is not commercialised, but it's not a brash, twenty-first century commercialism.

I noticed that it was literally a quiet place. Even on the weekend when it was really crowded, it didn't seem to have the noise level most towns have.

As I said, I'm definitely re-visiting sometime.

I too love Lyme. I honeymooned there a few years ago, and we visit several times each year, although I have to admit that we live only about 45 minutes drive away. Great place, as indeed are a whole host of nearby places.

We liked Beer - but, then, who doesn't? I caught a fish while we were there.

Most of the UK is inspiring, apart from Milton Keynes and Birmingham. East Anglia is rich in historic sites, and apparently was once the opium capitol on the country in Victorian times.

I've just finished re-reading The Wake of the Dragon which is partly set in the fens.

I thought Milton Keynes rather pleasant; I was less enchanted by Swindon.

My first visit to Milton Keynes was with work, we were being relocated. It was a comedy of errors style trip. The next day my boss asked about and sat there in increasing horror as I ranted for ~ 15 minutes. My parting shot "Even the concrete cows were disappointing!". The place did grow on me and while I'll never claim to love it, it does have a certain practical charm about it.

I have a general loathing for Liverpool that I can't put my finger on a cause of.

I'm tempted to suggest that the best thing about Liverpool is the ferry to Birkenhead!

At least Liverpool has a certain musical history. Last Halloween the MK concrete cows got less boring due to a creative graffiti artist. Back to normal now though.

There is Tate Liverpool too - currently showing a Chagall exhibition. A proud maritime history, Bill Shankly and Anfield, a Giles Gilbert Scott cathedral - surely one of England's greater cities?

>62 abbottthomas:
And wasn't Liverpool the European Capital of Culture not so long ago? 2008, in fact.

As has Glasgow - I suspect that argument can be played either way.

From the places selected, I've come to think of their definition of 'culture' as being something akin to yogurt.

Just come back from Scotland on a coach trip and we stopped at Stamford. I couldn't think why until we got there. Fascinating place - loved the atmosphere and it seemed to have a good cultural feel to it. Never been to Lincolnshire before but it might be worth a return visit!

#66

I live pretty close to Stamford and it is a nice town. Apart from all the Georgian architecture in the town (and loads of pubs) there is Burghley House which you can visit (either avoid or seek out the Horse Trials depending on how horsey you are). Some second hand bookshops too - including St Mary's which also does taxidermy.

As Stamford is on the extreme south-west corner of Lincolnshire you are within easy reach of Rutland Water (for a nice bimble) and Oakham too.

#67 'Bimble'?

I'm guessing Andyl's a runner. I used to "bimble" too - it's a sort of nice, gentle, looking at the world around you sort of run. I really ought to get bimbling again, but it requires getting my arse off the sofa and my nose out of a book...

#69 Aah, exercise - another world.

#69 the answer is unabridged audiobooks on your i-pod. I will literally turn around and go home if my I-pod dies on the way to the gym. I cannot exercise without books :P