What to see in the UK

1. Tower of London




The top spot goes to the Tower of London, one of the world’s most famous fortresses and home to the priceless Crown Jewels. Built as a royal residence and prison nearly 1,000 years ago, there are some fascinating stories within its walls.

Visitors today can take a guided tour from the famous Beefeaters, witness the centuries-old Ceremony of the Keys, which takes place daily, and learn about the Tower’s more unusual ex-inhabitants - including a polar bear…

2. Westminster Abbey




Second on the list is one of London’s most picturesque sightseeing spots, Westminster Abbey – the venue of the most famous wedding of 2011!

Trace the final footsteps of Kate Middleton before she became the Duchess of Cambridge, admire the renowned Gothic architecture, and marvel at the Abbey’s beautiful memorials to history’s great kings and queens.

Did you know? Charles Dickens, Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are among the 3,000 famous figures buried at Westminster Abbey.

3. Kew Gardens




Kew Gardens is one of the world’s most renowned botanical gardens, and it’s easy to see why. The huge World Heritage site is a wonderland, home to millions of exotic and rare plants.

Visitors can explore a treetop walkway, discover carnivorous plants and see trees like no other, such as the captivating Madagascan baobab. It’s also possible to visit Kew Palace, where you can walk around a royal kitchen and a nature reserve adored by the British royal family.

4. St Paul’s Cathedral




The iconic cathedral has witnessed many significant events in Britain’s history, including the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill and the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

A visit to St Paul’s Cathedral offers 1,200 years of history as well as the chance to climb the 237 steps to the top of the spectacular Dome. On your way up, you can witness the Whispering Gallery, where a whisper can be heard from 100 feet away, before admiring stunning views of London’s skyline.

5. Chester Zoo




Chester Zoo houses the largest Orangutan exhibit in Europe and the most extensive zoo-based butterfly house in the UK.

Not only is it home to 11,000 animals - including some of the world’s most endangered species - there are also 110 acres of award-winning gardens to explore. Visit a Himalayan rock garden, play some mini golf, or get your face painted like your favourite animal.

6. Windermere Boat Cruises, Bowness




Set within the outstanding beauty of the Lake District National Park, Lake Windermere is the most popular tourist destination in Cumbria.

Peaceful, wild and surrounded by misty mountains, Windermere is Britain’s largest natural lake. Its surface is dotted with boats all year round - what better way to take in the exceptional scenery than with a tranquil cruise?

7. Flamingo Land Theme Park and Zoo, Yorkshire




With rides, a zoo, live entertainment and a variety of restaurants and bars, Flamingo Land is suitable for just about everyone!

Over 140 species live at the zoo, including red pandas and penguins, while the theme park has rides for the whole family; a perfect two-in-one day out.

Why is it called Flamingo Land? The graceful pink birds were some of the park’s first inhabitants, and today it champions a successful conservation programme for them.


8. Stonehenge




Part of an UNESCO World Heritage Site, Stonehenge is one of Britain’s most famous sightseeing spots.

Believed to date from as far back as 3000BC, historians are still baffled by how the huge slabs of Stonehenge were transported. Weighing up to 50 tons each, it would’ve taken 600 men to move just one.

But what is it?! No one has managed to answer that question with 100% certainty, and the mystery of the stones can certainly draw a crowd.

9. London Zoo




Over 12,000 animals live at London Zoo, including tigers, lions, gorillas and over 100 penguins. The zoo borders London’s leafy Regents Park and is known for its enigmatic lion enclosure, but there’s plenty more to do and see.

You can attend daily feeding sessions of tigers, penguins and llamas, to name a few, and get up close and personal with rare wildlife and beautiful butterflies in the butterfly house.

10. Drayton Manor Theme Park




This 280 acre theme park is home to 5 rollercoasters, 7 themed lands, water rides, thrill rides and plenty more for all the family. It’s the park’s reputation as the perfect family theme park that has earned it a spot on the top ten.

The park is located on the outskirts of Birmingham. Be sure to pay a visit if you’re looking for a good old-fashioned theme park day out!

All About UK

United Kingdom, island country located off the northwestern coast of mainland Europe. The United Kingdom comprises the whole of the island of Great Britain—which contains England, Wales, and Scotland—as well as the northern portion of the island of Ireland. The name Britain is sometimes used to refer to the United Kingdom as a whole. 

The capital is London, which is among the world’s leading commercial, financial, and cultural centres. Other major cities include Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester in England, Belfast and Londonderry in Northern Ireland, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and Swansea and Cardiff in Wales.

The origins of the United Kingdom can be traced to the time of the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan, who in the early 10th century CE secured the allegiance of neighbouring Celtic kingdoms and became “the first to rule what previously many kings shared between them,” in the words of a contemporary chronicle. 

Through subsequent conquest over the following centuries, kingdoms lying farther afield came under English dominion. Wales, a congeries of Celtic kingdoms lying in Great Britain’s southwest, was formally united with England by the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542. Scotland, ruled from London since 1603, formally was joined with England and Wales in 1707 to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain. (The adjective “British” came into use at this time to refer to all the kingdom’s peoples.) 

Ireland came under English control during the 1600s and was formally united with Great Britain through the Act of Union of 1800. The republic of Ireland gained its independence in 1922, but six of Ulster’s nine counties remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. Relations between these constituent states and England have been marked by controversy and, at times, open rebellion and even warfare. 

These tensions relaxed somewhat during the late 20th century, when devolved assemblies were introduced in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Nonetheless, even with the establishment of a power-sharing assembly after referenda in both Northern Ireland and the Irish republic, relations between Northern Ireland’s unionists (who favour continued British sovereignty over Northern Ireland) and nationalists (who favour unification with the republic of Ireland) remained tense into the 21st century.  READ MORE...

Better in Britain

Yes, the roads are confusing, the food portions unambitious, the peanut butter not so good, but for this American, life in the U.K. has its compensations.   By Yasmeen Serhan

This September marks my fifth year of living in Britain, a milestone that comes with its own special reward: a test. 

Specifically, the “Life in the U.K. Test,” an examination that anyone seeking to obtain permanent residency rights in the country and ultimately British citizenship must take. 

The test covers all sorts of questions on Britain’s history—including such seeming trivia as the specific ways Henry VIII got rid of each of his six wives—its laws, its values, and its traditions.

“Comedy and satire, the ability to laugh at ourselves, are an important part of the U.K. character,” reads one passage from the official study handbook. In another, pubs are described as “an important part of U.K. social culture.

”Self-deprecating humor and pub culture are just some of the survival skills you naturally pick up if you live here long enough. But as I prepare for this exam, I can’t help but think about all the practical things about British life that the test-prep materials leave out. 

Contrary to what Sir Elton John would have you believe, sorry really doesn’t seem to be the hardest word for Brits (even if they aren’t always using it sincerely). Talking about the weather really is a perfectly acceptable conversation starter. 

“You all right?” really is a simple greeting rather than an expression of genuine concern.  READ MORE...

History of Independence Day

When the initial battles in the Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, few colonists desired complete independence from Great Britain, and those who did were considered radical.

By the middle of the following year, however, many more colonists had come to favor independence, thanks to growing hostility against Britain and the spread of revolutionary sentiments such as those expressed in the bestselling pamphlet “Common Sense,” published by Thomas Paine in early 1776.

On June 7, when the Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies’ independence.

Amid heated debate, Congress postponed the vote on Lee’s resolution, but appointed a five-man committee—including Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York—to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain.

Did you know? 

John Adams believed that July 2nd was the correct date on which to celebrate the birth of American independence, and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest. Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826—the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of Lee’s resolution for independence in a near-unanimous vote (the New York delegation abstained, but later voted affirmatively). On that day, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2 “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” and that the celebration should include “Pomp and Parade…Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”  READ MORE...

New Genetics Research

A photograph of the skeleton of one of the four individuals who we have sequenced who we think is likely to have participated in the migration we detect into southern Britain and to have displaced half the ancestry of the local population. This skeleton was excavated from the site of Cliffs End Farm in Kent. Credit: Wessex Archaeology

Two new studies highlight technological advances in large-scale genomics and open windows into the lives of ancient people.

New research reveals a major migration to the island of Great Britain 3,000 years ago and offers fresh insights into the languages spoken at the time, the ancestry of present-day England and Wales, and even ancient habits of dairy consumption.

The findings are described in Nature by a team of more than 200 international researchers led by Harvard geneticists David Reich and Nick Patterson. Michael Isakov, a Harvard undergraduate who discovered the existence of the migration, is one of the co-first authors.


This image is of bronze age tools from the National Museums of Scotland, which could give readers a sense of the material culture associated with people who lived at the time of the migration. Credit: Bronze Age tools curated the National Museums of Scotland

The analysis is one of two Reich-led studies of DNA data from ancient Britain that Nature published on Tuesday. Both highlight technological advances in large-scale genomics and open new windows into the lives of ancient people.

“This shows the power of large-scale genetic data in concert with archaeological and other data to get rich information about our past from a time before writing,” said Reich, a professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. “The studies are not only important for Great Britain, where we now have far more ancient DNA data than in any other region, but also because of what they show about the promise of similar studies elsewhere in the world.”

The researchers analyzed the DNA of 793 newly reported individuals in the largest genome-wide study involving ancient humans. Their findings reveal a large-scale migration likely from somewhere in France to the southern part of Great Britain, or modern-day England and Wales, that eventually replaced about 50 percent of the ancestry of the island during the Late Bronze Age (1200 to 800 B.C.).

The study supports a recent theory that early Celtic languages came to Great Britain from France during the Late Bronze Age. It challenges two prominent theories: that the languages arrived hundreds of years later, in the Iron Age, or 1,500 years earlier at the dawn of the Bronze Age.  READ MORE...

Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian’s Wall once marked the extent of the Roman empire in Britannia. Now it’s a pitstop on the way to Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, or the country’s largest city, Glasgow. Things have changed over the past two thousand years.

But the 73-mile-long chain of walls, ditches, towers, and forts—which stretches across Great Britain, linking the North Sea and the Irish Sea—continues to fascinate. This year, 1,900 years after construction began, soldiers clad in Roman armor will once again patrol its length and the sounds of ancient instruments will float over its ramparts.


Writer Joe Sills and archaeologist Raven Todd DaSilva traverse a tricky section of the wall, just east of Sewingshields Crags. To the right lies Northumberland National Park—home of England’s cleanest rivers and darkest skies.PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUEST


These celebrations make now a great time to visit, and an even better time to hike its length. The wall’s most popular attraction, the sprawling hillside complex of Housesteads Roman Fort, sees some 100,000 visitors per year. But only 7,000 people hike the full length of the wall annually.


The reign of Roman emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) coincided with the pinnacle of Roman power. An expansive emperor—Roman territory reached its widest extent when his reign began—he was known as a builder of monuments, from his opulent villa at Tivoli, near Rome, to the defensive fortifications marking the frontiers of his empire; both are UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Built under Hadrian starting in A.D. 122, the wall stretches through the counties of Northumbria, Cumbria and Tyne, and Wear. For hikers, this landmark near the Scottish border makes the perfect trail for those looking for a straightforward route that barely necessitates a map. Guided by stonework and hedgerows, its path blazes by sidewalks, meadows, woodlands, and crags in a line that has been beaten since ancient times.  READ MORE...

LIVID

 According to the internet, 

livid 

means Furiously angry...

I have been vacationing at Myrtle Beach, SC all week and have been listening to FOX NEWS in the mornings before going out to my lounge chair and umbrella on the beach...  and, each day I get angrier and angrier at PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN and his INCOMPETENT LEADERSHIP as it pertains to withdrawing Americans and our Allies and our Friends out of Afghanistan...  It appears this fools did every ASS BACKWARDS...

First - he withdrawals the military and gives up the military airport and then decides to remove the Americans...  and, realizes he needs to send the military back in to get the Americans out.  In the meantime, the TALIBAN seize millions and millions of dollars worth of US military assets some of which are highly classified like the BLACKHAWK helicopters...

And, if this isn't bad enough, he bows down to the TALIBAN and lets them tell US what the hell we are going to do or not going to do...  NOBODY in the history of this country has ever order our PRESIDENT around like the Taliban are ordering Biden.

Second...  mainstream media is not bothered at all by his incompetence even after the British PARLIMENT refused to support any future military actions by the USA as long as Biden was our President...  AND...  that has never happened before either...  not with one of our CLOSEST ALLIES...

Third. our illustrious President REFUSES to take questions by the press after making public statements...  Who the hell is he trying to hide from...

WAKE UP AMERICA...