![]() Britain was once a great power. Are we now best known for oil spills, airline strikes and Simon Cowell? The Independent's foreign correspondents reveal how the rest of the world really sees us. Introduction The following text is taken from a presentation given by Peter Hart, then Managing Director of Formpave Ltd., at the Bristol SUDS Conference in February 2005, in which he described how he came to be involved in. Little Britain Comedy show duo Matt Lucas and David Walliams take you on a hilarious journey around Britain and the lives of the 'normal', everyday people that inhabit that sceptered isle. Everyone has their favourite places they think are known only to them and a few others – passed, perhaps, down through their family like some arcane trade secret. Rarely, however, do you find them in "what to do in the holidays" guides – so often the recyclers of the terrifyingly obvious. So, we thought it might be useful to have a stab at assembling a list of Britain's best- kept summer secrets – the usually unheralded places that might form the basis of an agreeable day out, or even a weekend trip. We approached a huge variety of organisations that care for our countryside and heritage and asked them: what are your hidden gems? The National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Visit. Britain, National Piers Society, Woodland Trust, English Heritage, heritage bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and several others, like Roger Borrell, editor of Lancashire Life magazine, and Paul Jones of the Press Association, all responded keenly. The result, plus a few of our own selections we could not resist including, follows, this week and next. Each issue we will present 5. We start with Coast, Woodlands, and Gardens; next Sunday, we will have Wildlife, Heritage, and Scenery (a category for places that didn't fit neatly into any of the above). We have done our best to make sure every region is represented. A few of the places may seem familiar, but they have been included because of some little- known aspect. Ventnor Botanic Gardens on the Isle of Wight, for instance, is one of the island's more visited gardens, but few know of its reputation as the most haunted piece of horticulture in Britain. We want to hear your suggestions, too. Send them via the. Io. S message board (see link below), or by letter to the editor. We will then, the Sunday after next, share them with everyone. That way, we will, together, have produced a good look at Britain's best- kept secrets. To have your say on this or any other issue visitwww. Io. Sblogs. Secret Britain: Coast. Britain has thousands of kilometres of coast, and only a fraction is industrialised, urbanised or candy- flossed. The rest – virtually all accessible on foot – awaits your discovery. Here are 2. 0 less obvious gems. For guidance to thousands more, see below. ![]() Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland. Sitting six miles off the coast, and L- shaped, this is the Province's only island inhabited by humans. Seabirds live here in rather greater quantities, with puffins, kittiwakes, and razorbills much the most conspicuous and noisy locals. There are also seals, and, inland, meadows with the parasitic plant yellow rattle, and butterflies like the grayling and dark green fritillary. Little Britain Subtitles Season 3
The treacherous rocks have caused more than 4. There is also the cave where Robert the Bruce saw his spider, which indicates just how near Rathlin is to Scotland. The Mull of Kintyre is about a dozen miles away. Isle of Eigg, Scotland. A Hebridean island 1. It is five miles by three, and has a wide range of landscapes. The coast has otters, seals, dolphins and whales (minke are the most usual). There are meadows and woodland, with the rare corncrake (the bird whose call sounds like a credit card being dragged along a comb), the pigmy shrew, butterflies such as the green hairstreak, dark green and small pearl- bordered fritillary, painted lady and orange tip, and 1. There are also moors and towering crags where ravens and eagles dare, plus woods. Silecroft, Cumbria. Few Lakeland visitors ever get as far as Cumbria's little- known, but stunning coast. This is one of the region's very best beaches – five miles of sand and shingle, where there is always room, and less than an hour's drive from Ambleside. It has won an EU water quality award eight years running, and there is a pleasant village with all the usual amenities. Watersports, fishing, canoeing and waterskiing are available. And, from the summit of nearby Black Coombe it is claimed that, on a clear day, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and 1. England can be seen. Arnside, Cumbria. The perfect place from which to view the innermost part of Morecambe Bay and its treacherous incoming tide. Sitting on a wall with a drink in your hand watching it rip past is one of the experiences of seaside Britain. Roger Borrell, editor of 'Lancashire Life', commends it for being: "A great village, ignored by tourists heading lemming- like to the Lakes. Historic bakers making wonderful bread, and meat and potato pies, and you can go for long walks along the coast." Nearby is an area of outstanding natural beauty – and we don't mean the Lake District. Llandudno Pier, Conwy. A mews house inside the US Embassy's security perimeter in Mayfair is being billed as 'Britain's most protected house' by its estate agent. Sub-Roman Britain is a term derived from an archaeological label for the material culture of Great Britain in Late Antiquity, the transition period between the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century around 235 A.D. (and. ‘I don’t want to go back with nothing’: the Brexit threat to Spain’s little Britain. Little Britain Subtitles Season 2A wonderful Victorian confection reaching 2,2. One of Britain's most unusual, as well as longest piers, it is said to be the thing after which Piers Morgan's mother named her son. Opened in 1. 87. 7, it is unique in having two entrances, and also has a 4. Its kiosks make it look, according to one description "rather like a Maharajah's palace floating on a lake", with "brackets of iron lacework, an outstandingly pretty balustrade like an enlarged fish net, and ogee roofs curling away to the sky". Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire. One of the best places to view sea birds in Britain. A flattish island of 7. ![]() They include 6,0. Pembrokeshire Parrot" locally), the world's largest colony of Manx shearwater (1. There are also peregrines, and short- eared owls. There are usually about 2. The island is one of three marine nature reserves in the country. Puffin Shuttle, Pembrokeshire. This is a bus service, and probably the most scenic one in all Britain. Its route hugs the spectacular Pembrokeshire coast between St David's and Milford Haven. It takes in Solva, with its pastel- shaded cottages and woollen mill; the cliffs and sands of Druidston Haven; St Brides, with its 1. Marloes, which has a beach regarded as one of the finest in the country. Other services, jointly run by the Pembrokeshire County Council and the national park, are the Poppit Rocket, Strumble Shuttle, Celtic Coaster and Coastal Coaster, all of which offer their own delights. Clevedon Pier, Somerset. Britain's only intact Grade I listed pier. It was built in 1. Isambard Kingdom Brunel's less sensible railway schemes. When it failed to be completed, the iron was shipped over the Severn Estuary to Clevedon. These materials, and the astonishing 4. The result is the most graceful seaside structure in Britain. Threatened with demolition more than once, a band of enthusiasts, and Lottery money, have saved it for the nation. Watchet, Somerset. Not beautiful, but a quaint and fascinating small, working port. It has narrow streets, good bric- a- brac shops, a harbour, and is served by the wonderful West Somerset Railway. To the immediate east is the little- known Hellwell Bay, reached by steep steps, which is a beachcombers' and geologists' delight, and from which steam trains can be seen tooting along the cliffs. To the west is a slipway to one of the best beaches in Britain for collecting sea glass, and, a little further on, are beaches strewn with quartz- filled rocks. For sandy beaches head south to Blue Anchor and Dunster beach). Wembury, Devon. Probably the best site in the UK for rock- pooling (best undertaken an hour before low tide to an hour after it). Four miles of seashore, including reefs, not far from Plymouth, its waters hold some rare species. They include the bloody- eyed swimming crab, the blenny (a strange fish that can live out of water), plus creatures such as pipe fish, sea scorpion, starfish, Cornish sucker fish and anemones. Just offshore is the Mewstone, a conical island which was once a prison and is now a bird sanctuary. Pednevounder Beach, Cornwall. Sheltered cove near Treen, on the south coast, where you park, and then take a somewhat treacherous track whose final descent on to the beach is a testing one for small children. Once there, the water is crystal blue, the sand is white with broken shells, and the beach is backed by granite cliffs carpeted by purple Cornish heather and ferns. Almost completely submerged at high tide, the beach has a wide shallow area at low tide, and the water is often warm. Good views of rocks, happy bird- watching and sometimes dolphins and seals. Nudists, who favour this beach, complete the local wildlife. Brownsea Island, Dorset. This is a wildlife and arcadian delight, a small egg- shaped island reached via a ferry. Most visitors go for the tea- rooms, (where red squirrels can be seen lurking for tid- bits), but head instead for the nature reserve, from whose hides can be seen waders, cormorants drying their wings, little egrets, the residents of Britain's second- biggest heronry, and spoonbill. Its best- kept secrets are in the interior, where there are pine woods, steep wooded slopes, pools alive with dragonflies, and a greater chance of seeing the redsquirrels. St Nectan's Glen, Cornwall. A deep hidden valley in Arthurian country that includes a spectacular waterfall 6. The waters are said to have magical healing properties, and a team from the Paranormal Research Organisation reported: "St Nectan's Glen may well have several sentient spirits present in its wondrous confines.. The earth energy is very strong there due to the ley lines crossing the house and the waterfall. No wonder it is such a spiritual venue." If you're a sceptic, there is still the picturesque valley, which continues down to the secluded Bossiney Cove. Pagham Harbour, West Sussex. Six hundred acres of tidal mudflats and saltings, plus set- aside farmland, gorse thickets, reedbeds, hedgerows, shingle banks, and sluggish rifes (the local name for little rivers). These habitats make this one of the best, least- known, wildlife havens in southern England. In the harbour there are shelducks, little egrets, herons, curlews, turnstones, lapwings, redshanks etc, and a great variety of ducks and waders such as black- tailed godwits in the pools. Best place to start is the very limited parking at the end of Church Lane, from which a footpath leads past the old salthouse and across the sea wall. How the rest of the world sees us. How the French see us. By John Lichfield, in Paris. We spend a lot of time staring over the Channel at our neighbours. The French much less so. They have other irritating, fascinating neighbours to the north, east and south. All the same, our compulsive prejudices, and anxieties, about the French are mirrored by compulsive French prejudices, and anxieties, about the British. The French look down on us because, they assume, we are badly dressed/under America's thumb/uninterested in food/awkward about sex. They are also a little unnerved by us because, they fear, we are more enterprising than they are, more innovative and less hung- up by tradition. The French are ambivalent about their public services. They are convinced, however, that the Thatcher/Blair experiment with the dismantling of the British state has been a calamity. To some French people, especially on the Left, it is axiomatic that in Britain one train in two crashes and that "outre- manche" (across the Channel) there's a two- year hospital waiting list to have a baby. On the French Right, Britain was grudgingly admired, until just a couple of years ago, for having embraced a more open, entrepreneurial and global economy. Now, even part of the French Right, even President Nicolas Sarkozy, declares that the British have taken a disastrous turning away from enterprise and manufacture towards internet gambling on a heroic scale. The French political classes, both Left and Right, believe that Britain is foolish to tie itself so closely to America. They wish Britain would become less ideologically europhobic and more distrustfully European, like France. Then Paris would have an alternative to its uneasy alliance with Berlin. In both countries, lazy, old preconceptions overlap with lazy, new preconceptions. We still see them as dishonest, histrionic and arrogant; they still see us as devious, phlegmatic and arrogant. But the French now also view us as a schizophrenic nation. Seen from across the Channel, we are either frigidly conventional or wildly eccentric; emotionally retarded or callously violent. The typical British man, according to French stereotypes, either wears a bowler hat or has purple hair; he either carries an umbrella or carries knuckle- dusters. While the typical British woman either wears a dull sensible skirt, or has green hair and ripped jeans and gets drunk before breakfast. In a recent French movie called LOL (2. London. It never stops raining. The streets are populated by middle- aged women in dowdy, floral dresses carrying garish umbrellas. For dinner, the French teenagers are served white bread, marmalade and pasta – on the same plate. Why, then, one might ask, are there 3. French people living in Britain, mostly in the London area? This is the biggest south- to- north, cross- Channel invasion since the Huguenots in the 1. All those young French people are in Britain because jobs are easier to find; small companies are easier to set up; and promotion under 4. They also find London more lively socially than Paris. The vast majority of them are determined, all the same, to return one day to France. How the Russians see us. By Shaun Walker, in Moscow. Russians have a complex relationship with Britain, or as they insist on calling our country, "Foggy Albion". London, they will assure me, is frequently so foggy that life comes to a standstill, and no amount of persuasion that, unless you live in a tent on Exmoor, Britain is no foggier than the average Moscow autumn day, will suffice. Along with the fog comes the standard roll- call of stereotypes – endless tea drinking, stiff- upper- lippery, and emotional retardation. While most Russians actually knock back far more tea than any Brit I've ever met, anyone who has seen the inscription on a Russian birthday card, or heard a Russian give a toast at a drinking session, would agree that compared to them, we do tend to keep our emotions under wraps.)Alongside the inevitable national stereotypes comes a huge amount of genuine knowledge. With America considered Enemy Number One, much of Soviet schooling, when it touched on the English- speaking world, revolved around British culture and literature. There's hardly a Russian alive who isn't a fan of "Sherlok Kholms", and they also love to get stuck into weightier classics. I was once chatting up a girl at a bar, and it was all going swimmingly until she started pontificating about The Forsyte Saga. Well, it's about four million pages long and pretty dull; I never got very far with it," I admitted. She looked at me as if I was an illiterate peasant. In the methodical rote- learning that Russian schooling provides, there also seems to be a great deal of focus on London and its sights. A 1. 2- year- old who'd never been abroad once revealed to me the top 1. British Museum, in ascending order. During the Soviet times, only a handful of lucky diplomats or KGB spooks could see London for themselves, but for wealthier Russians today, much of this knowledge comes first hand. Around a dozen flights a day between Moscow and London are packed with businessmen and tourists en route to Britain. Relations between the two countries at a top political level have never recovered from the Litvinenko murder, wrangling over TNK- BP, and various other scandals, but while politically Russian leaders feel they can ignore the human rights carping of the British elite as insignificant, economically, London remains one of the most important destinations on the planet for Russian companies. For the super- rich, of course, there's a special affinity with London. Any minigarch worth his salt has to have a pad in the heart of the Foggy Albion (Kensington, preferably), and those even further up the ladder might also pick up a football club. Many oligarchs educated their children in Britain, a trend that is now trickling down to the wealthier segments of the new middle- class, too. One friend of mine makes a small fortune training the brattish offspring of the well- heeled to pass entrance exams for top English boarding schools. Often when I talk to Russians about their "invasion" of London over the past decade, there are mixed feelings. Russians are troubled patriots, and while there's a proud swagger at the fact that "We came, we saw, we conquered," there's also a grudging admission that they love London because it offers them so much that Moscow can't. How the Germans see us. By Tony Paterson, in Berlin. Germany versus England in the World Cup: an opportunity for German soccer fans to show how well- behaved and decent they are compared to Britain's notoriously unruly football yobs? Not a bit of it, if the huge German crowd on Berlin's fan mile earlier this summer was anything to go by. Images of the England team on the mile's public viewing screens instantly produced a mass demonstration of the so- called "Stinkefinger" – the German equivalent of Britain's V sign. That evening, as Germany systematically thrashed England 4- 1, the crowd sang in unison, "Who's fucking England?". It was only the Germans exacting a bit of revenge for seeing their teams portrayed for decades by the Second World War- obsessed British tabloids as strutting, jackbooted Nazis. Such "German- baiting" used to upset German ambassadors to Britain and once caused a German Foreign Minister to issue a complaint. Now Anglo- German soccer relations appear to have normalised, and mercifully the Germans have become as good at laughing at the Brits as the Brits are at laughing at the Germans. German- British relations as a whole, it could be argued, have never had it so good. That said, the Germans haven't forgiven Margaret Thatcher for her vehement opposition to German reunification. Nor did they much like Tony Blair's unequivocal backing for the US invasion of Iraq. But Britain's new Conservative- Liberal coalition Government has earnt unprecedented praise in Germany, a country which has relied on coalitions since the Second World War. It works" trumpeted Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung earlier this month. Britain has what Germany lacks – a harmonious and functioning coalition government," it added. One of the most popular criticisms of the British heard in Germany is that they are a nation of "Inselaffen" (Island monkeys), meaning a species ridiculously paranoid about Europe, the European Union and the euro. But speaking German with an English accent or speaking no German at all is hardly a problem in big cities such as Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, where English is heard all of the time. Most Germans speak fluent English anyway. Yet German perceptions of Britain can be absurdly romantic. One hugely popular TV series is comprised almost entirely of television versions of Rosamunde Pilcher novels. German actors cast as upper- class Englishmen and women dress immaculately in waxed jackets and Burberry scarves and play out dramas about jilted lovers in the country houses of Devon, Cornwall and Wiltshire. The coastal scenery is magnificent and there is never a council house in sight. What's more, everyone drives a large and expensive- looking German car. Such programmes feed popular German fantasies about Britain and help to explain the country's obsession with English "country" labels such as Laura Ashley and Barbour, and Hamburg tailors that offer bespoke Harris Tweed jackets. It's an image of Britain crassly at odds with the reality of what more than a few German children experience on exchange visits to Britain. One German 1. 2- year- old who went to spend a term at a school in Wales didn't understand what was happening when he was introduced to classmates who thrust their arms into the Nazi salute and greeted him with the words: "Heil Hitler!". But that was more than a decade ago. The former schoolboy is now grown up and his story about Welsh "Heil Hitlers" is his favourite party piece. How the Americans see us. By David Usborne, in New York.
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