Holidays and vacations in the UK

Your complete guide on one simple website

Swanage Bay, Dorset coast Prior Park, Bath

Over the last two years, we've carefully hand-compiled a list of over 1000 of the best UK tourism pages, helping you to plan your perfect summer holiday (vacation) or short break in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

It took us ages to put this website together. We did the hard work so you don't have to! And now you've found us, don't lose us! With most web browsers, you can press CTRL and D to bookmark this page (add it to your favourites) for future reference! Or save us with a "social bookmark":

Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon Google Twitter Email it to a friend

A quick guide to Britain for tourists

What makes Britain the perfect holiday destination? Probably that the country is small enough to cover quickly, but large enough to have something that will interest virtually everyone.

The British archipelago

You can see Britain in many different ways. The name suggests a single country, but "Great Britain" and the "United Kingdom" are actually three, four, or five different countries packed into one. On the main island, there are England, Wales, and Scotland. A short hop across the Irish Sea takes you to Northern Ireland (officially part of the United Kingdom) and the Republic of Ireland (also known as Eire), which are actually two different parts of the same island. The situation is complicated slightly further when you consider the various other islands dotted around the main land. There’s the Isle of Wight immediately off the south coast of England, the Isle of Man off the north-west coast, the Scilly Isles off the coast of Cornwall, and the Hebrides, Shetlands, and Orkneys in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. There are countless other smaller islands dotted around here and there – effectively making the British Isles an archipelago.

Counties

Within the countries, the landscape divides into bigger, largely administrative areas known as counties. Just as the boundaries between countries are arguable and contentious, so the divisions between counties are arbitrary too. Like any other country, Britain has its share of big cosmopolitan cities and smaller, more provincial towns. England’s most important cities include London, Birmingham, and Manchester; in Scotland, the bigger cities are Edinburgh (Grand, stately, and historic) and Glasgow (industrial and with after buzzing cultural edge); Wales mixes history and culture in the vibrant capital, Cardiff; and over the sea on Ireland, Belfast in the North and Dublin in the South are the hotspots of urban life. Most towns and cities have things they are proud of: important industries, dramatic landscapes, sporting achievements, or history.

Cathedral cities

Photo: Bath Abbey: A great English cathedral.

Arguably, the jewels in Britain’s crown are its cathedral cities. Many of them are no bigger than towns, but any town with a cathedral automatically gains the status of a city. Cathedral cities tend to be quiet, genteel places with smaller, more intimate shops – and often suit older, more relaxed tourists who appreciate a slower and more thoughtful pace of life. Britain’s greatest cathedral cities include Salisbury, a stone's throw from those famous Stonehenge stones), Winchester, Bath, and Norwich – though there are actually several dozen of them. Some cathedral cities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Exeter, and Durham, are also university cities—which gives them one foot in the future as well as one foot in the past.

Regions

Although Britain is small enough to get around and see quite quickly, tourists often pick a particular region of the country as the focus of their visit. The South West of England, part of which is known as the West Country, is one of the most popular tourist regions. Variously made up of the counties Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, it offers glorious coasts and rolling rural countryside, historic houses and wonderful gardens – though it has relatively little to offer culturally minded tourists compared to more cosmopolitan places like London. Wales offers a similar mix of coastal countryside, but has the advantage of its thriving cultural capital, Cardiff. The same is true of Ireland, where Dublin, steeped in literary heritage, provides the perfect foil for the traveller who somehow tires of all the relentless beauty that Ireland’s rural counties have to offer.

Getting around

Since Britain is an island, you have to come here by air or sea. In England, there are three major airports around London (Heathrow, Gatwick, and the smaller Stansted), major airports in Birmingham and Manchester, and smaller airports around the regions. Scotland's major airport is in Glasgow, while there are also major airports near Belfast and Dublin. In the 1990s, it also became possible to get to the British mainland by train or car through the Channel Tunnel that now connects southeast England to France. If you come by train through the tunnel, you arrive at Waterloo International, part of Waterloo Station in the very centre of London. Great if you have no car. Waterloo Station is only about 10 minutes walk from Big Ben!

Travelling by road

Once you’re in Britain, travelling around is relatively simple, whether you choose to use your car or take public transportation. For drivers, there is a network of roads ranging from the motorways (the biggest roads, equivalent to freeways in the United States and Autobahns in Germany), through A-roads (also known as trunk roads – the major connections between towns and cities), to B-roads (much smaller roads, not really designed for long-distance travelling unless you particularly like enjoying a scenic drive).

Public transportation

Britain’s railway network has finally begun to improve after decades of poor investment and neglect. The railroad track is owned and maintained by a central authority called Network Rail, while the trains on different lines are operated by a range of about 20 different commercial companies, whose National Rail website you can use to plan your journeys. Fortunately, it’s usually possible to travel between any two places without worrying exactly which company will take you there. You simply turn up at any train station and ask for a ticket to your destination—and your ticket will generally be valid for travel on whichever company operates the routes concerned. Largely through accidents of history, some parts of Britain are better served by rail than others. It’s very easy to travel between big cities like London and Birmingham, for example, on a high-speed rail link. But it’s much harder to make journeys from east to west. For example, getting from Oxford to Cambridge involves a journey into London and then back out again because there is no direct west-east link between the two places.

Photo: There are no shortages of famous red buses in London's Strand.

Trains are not the only way of getting around without a car. Coaches, operated by a company called National Express, offer an alternative for long-distance travel around the UK. There are also buses within and between most towns and cities, though they are operated by an often-confusing plethora of different companies. Making a long distance journey by bus in England can be an adventure—and it’s best approached in the same spirit as you’d approach a journey through the Andes on a mule: enjoy the view and don’t be in a hurry to get there. Britain’s national public transport information service, Traveline, is very helpful.

If you prefer the clean, green option, Britain’s National Cycle Network is growing all the time—a credit to the tireless efforts of a charity called Sustrans. There are also many fine walking routes, covering both short and long distances. The South West Coastal Path, for example, is a 1013-km (630-mile) route around the south-west coast that takes you all the way from North Devon to East Dorset.

Read more in our public transportation guide.

The weather

Britain's ever-changing weather is a national obsession. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't rain in Britain all the time. You can find out what the weather's going to be doing for the next few days at the Met Office or BBC Weather websites.

Which just leaves you with one problem. When will you come? Whenever it is, we look forward to seeing you!

What next?

The rest of this website is given over to huge collections of links covering the major tourist regions: South West England (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset), Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Scotland, and London. We also have guides to some of the main tourist towns and cities in England and information about activity holidays.

Guides to tourist towns and cities

We now have detailed articles about the following towns and cities, with lots more to follow soon:

Activity holidays

We also have detailed articles on the following holiday activites:

Financing a holiday

Do you have trouble affording your vacations? Join the club! You can find lots of handy tips for managing your money on our companion websites about financial advice and credit.