Far from the Sodding Crowd: More Uncommonly British Days Out

by Jason A. Hazeley

Britons work longer hours than almost any other nation in Europe, taking fewer public holidays, laboring from Monday to Friday on the promise of a blissful weekend of fun. But how do we spend our precious days off? Slouching in vast herds beneath the neon canopy of some indistinguishable out-of-town shopping center, peering up horizonless aisles of self assembly wardrobes, and queuing for the vomitcoaster at a soulless theme park in a line that smells of teenagers and sugar. What the hell are we doing with our leisure time? When asked what you did at the weekend, will you mutter something about shelves and how hard it was to park? Or will you regale them with a mighty tale of your trip to the Somerset Shoe Museum?

Genres: Travel

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 26, 2007

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Description: YOU'VE BEEN WORKING HARD ALL WEEK. It's your day off. Why waste hours of it standing up to your ankles in candyfloss and sick in some endless park queue? After all, there's a little brown sign hidden in the hedgerows and it points to somewhere far less obvious, far more rewarding. Somewhere far from the sodding crowd.



First up is Margate Shell Grotto - I had no idea of this, yet it is wondrous and surely deserves a visit. Apparently it has been open for over 200 years and was mentioned by the novelist Marie Corelli





Then we head WNW to...

Cuckooland in Cheshire

now across to Notts and Papplewick Pumping Station, a handsomely, restored Victorian centre



The Witch Museum at Boscastle, Cornwall looks a whole load of fun if you like that sort of thing:



Scrying tools

What fun!

St Peter's Seminary. I have no burning urge to visit this. NEXT, which sends us on a Pork Pie Pilgrimage in Melton Mowbray Leicestershire



Devon

A quick scan through Beside the Seaside in Bridlington then down to East Sussex and...





Clown Gallery, London E8

Beaumaris Castle, Angelsey

Onto dotKarendot, with love xx

[Karen·]

Look what plopped into my postbox this morning!

Many thanks, dear Bettie Yin and Yang. I think this might also provide some mileage for conversation classes. The man had a look inside: "The pictures are a bit small, aren't they? A lot of text to read."

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting and insightful follow up to bollocks to Alton towers and its funny where the authors head off to all corners of the island to the weird and wonderful places

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally spat tea out of my nostrils; the writing was soooo funny. Rather nostalgic too. I still don't want to visit the clown museum though...

[Katie Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The UK travel book I wish I wrote. What a great attitude toward travel: go for the smaller, quirkier attractions and arm yourself with your own sense of curiosity. What a world it is!

[Mark Farley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just like its brilliant predecessor, Bollocks to Alton Towers, the boys are back out in our towns, discovering more alternative days out in our fabulously green and pleasant land and highlighting what a lovely and fucking weird bunch we English certainly are.

I’m not a beach holiday kinda guy. I’m not an all-night raver. I prefer cities and culture and when I can, I can do all of these things because I don’t have kids either. One thing I do like is dark tourism. The opposite of beaches, shagging and throwing up in a gutter, basically. That’s right, give me an abandoned asylum, a haunted house/pub for the night and a trip to the Pencil Museum (Keswick, in the Lake District, I urge you all to go!) and I’m a happy Mark.

So this book is full of lots of lots of shit like that. Regale and be fascinated about how a town was flooded destroying a Christian bookshop, while the Witchcraft doings next door escaped unscathed; find out exactly where in Britain actually WAS occupied by the Nazis and how one man’s obsession with trash led him to opening a West London museum. Oh, and there’s clowns too. And Dad’s Army. So I think you will agree, something for everyone and thus, fun for all the family…

Fuck the bucket and spade, screw Ibiza, go and see there derelict printing works in Leicester instead, I say!

[Polly Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love an eccentric day out more than pretty much anything, and as they conclude, many of these places are already gone, all the more important that we support those left!