LMG Book Club: The Quirky Side of British Travel

In this post for the LMG Book Club I’m providing you with a selection of books that will inspire you to look out for and enjoy the quirky side of British travel. 

Bollocks to Alton Towers: Uncommonly British Days Out

The British Lawnmower Museum, Keith Harding’s World of Mechanical Music and Mad Jack’s Sugar Loaf. In a world of theme parks, interactive exhibits, over-priced merchandise and queues, don’t worry, these are names to stir the soul. Reassuring evidence that there’s still somewhere to turn in search of the small, fascinating, unique and, dammit, British.

In a stumbling journey across the country in search of the best we have to offer our intrepid heroes discovered dinosaurs in South London, a cold war castle in Essex, grown men pretending to be warships in Scarborough, unexplained tunnels under Liverpool and a terraced house in Bedford being kept warm for Jesus’s return. And along the way they met the people behind them all: enthusiasts, eccentrics and, you know, those who just sort of fell into looking after a vast collection of gnomes…

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A Brit Different: A Guide to the Eccentric Events and Curious Contests of Britain

A Brit Different celebrates everything that makes Britain great. A dazzling array of comic competitions including cheese rolling, black pudding throwing, nettle eating and gravy wrestling are brought to life in this beautifully illustrated collection of the most quaint, quirky and downright ridiculous contests on the British sporting calendar. With full details and humorous reports from 50 eccentric events taking place across the country, in all four seasons, this is the most comprehensive illustrated guide to the weird and wonderful side of Britain.

Explore the hidden depths of bog snorkelling, get up close and personal at the shin-kicking contest or try your hand at wife carrying races. Watch sheep racing, hen racing and snail racing. Play Pooh Sticks, charm worms, shoot peas, and race lawnmowers, prams and tin baths. Whatever floats your competitive boat, A Brit Different will arm you with all the practical information you ll need to watch or participate in these incredible events.

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Ben le Vay’s Eccentric Britain

A Tesco on every corner, Boden catalogues piled through the letterbox, and Center Parcs holidays – Britain has been overrun by all-pervasive corporate sameness. Or has it? Ben le Vay – expert on all things eccentric – reveals the quirky gems hidden near your home: hotter than the spice girls everywhere, Norfolk’s fascinating Mustard Museum; Devon’s Gnome Reserve, home to over 1,000 of Britain’s beloved garden characters; or the fourth Earl of Dunmore’s eccentric home, The Pineapple.

Encompassing eccentric pastimes, aristocrats and bizarre last wishes, Ben le Vay’s Eccentric Britain is both a humorous and entertaining read, as well as practical guide to some of Britain’s most peculiar and unexpected monuments, gardens and museums. Benedict le Vay is a features editor on a leading British newspaper. He spends his spare time researching zany facts about the British and their way of life. He is also the author of Bradt’s Eccentric London and Britain from the Rails.

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I Never Knew That About England

This is the ultimate journey around England. Christopher Winn takes us to each county, to see where history happened, where people and ideas were born, where dreams took flight and where men and women now rest from their labours. To tread in their footsteps, to touch and experience some of what inspired and moved them is to capture some of the flavour of their lives and make their stories alive and real.

Crammed with facts and information, I Never Knew That About England celebrates the places and people that make the country unique and includes history, legends, firsts, supremes, unusuals, inventions, birthplaces and gossip. You’ll be able to visit the bridge where Pooh and Piglet played Poohsticks and see where Alfred burnt the cakes. In a small village in Bedfordshire you can visit the graveyard where Long John Silver and Wendy rest. These stories will bring any place that you visit to life (keep one copy in the car and one in the house!) and enable you to discover England’s rich and surprising history.

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London By Tube: Over 80 intriguing short walks minutes away from London’s tube stops

London is a city of surprises and variety, over 600 square miles packed full of character. And to really know London you must look beyond the obvious; there are broad vistas and quiet corners, iconic sights and grand boulevards, quaint villages, verdant parks, cobbled alleyways, museums, monuments, markets, theatres, and ancient churches.

This book unearths and explores a stupendous range of interesting places, some well known, some less well known, some almost unknown, all of within an easy walk of a Tube station. If you want a day out and you want to do something different then London is your town, the Tube is your means and London by Tube is your guide.

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Cream Teas, Traffic Jams and Sunburn: The Great British Holiday

The British on holiday: how can four simple words evoke so many vivid images, images of raw sunburn and relentless rain, of John Bull’s Pub (in Lanzarote) and Antonio’s Tapas Bar (in Torquay), of endless queues to get through security at Manchester Airport, or Gatwick, or Glasgow, or Luton, and endless tailbacks on the M5, or M6, or M25, but also images of carefree sploshing in Portuguese swimming-pools and lazy lunches in the Provencal sun?

In this funny, acutely observed and engaging social history, Brian Viner celebrates the holidaying British, with their quirks and their quinine tablets, and their blithe assumption that the elderly man selling oranges at the roadside in Corfu, so photogenic with his walnut face and three teeth, must surely understand just a few, uncomplicated English sentences. He examines the fortnight-long cruise at one end of the holiday spectrum, and a day’s rambling in the Lake District at the other. He looks at how the holidaying British evolved into the big-spending, many-headed beast we know today, by recalling not only the holidays that we took as children, but the holidays our grandparents, and their grandparents, took.

It is a story that connects Blackpool with Barcelona, Mauritius with Margate. It is a story, indeed, that connects us all.

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Have you visited any of the attractions featured in this book?

Where is the weirdest place you’ve visited in the UK?

Let me know in the comments.