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Destination Great Britain
What is it that makes this damp little island moored off the northwest coast of Europe such a fascinating place to explore? For starters, Britain is a land for all seasons. Summer or winter, spring or autumn, there's always something to engage your imagination, be it the summer solstice at Stonehenge or the New Year street parties in Edinburgh.
There are over 5000 years of history to engage with, from the Stone Age village of Skara Brae to the space-age domes of the Eden Project, and from the stark simplicity of a Welsh chapel to the pomp and cir-cumstance of Buckingham Palace. There are castles and cathedrals by the score, medieval monasteries and aristocratic mansions, and a roll-call of picturesque places with endearingly odd names, such as Lydiard Tregoze and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Britain has given the world Shakespeare and soccer, the Beatles, James Bond, Monty Python and the programmable computer, not forgetting traffic lights, milky tea and the world's least scary police. These cultural contributions are celebrated in a collection of fascinating museums and art galleries that rangé from world-class institutions like the Tate Britain and the Victoria & Albert Museum, to delightfully dotty local curiosi-ties - where else but Britain would you find the Pencil Museum and a dog-collar museum?
Then there's a geography textbook's worth of scenic landscapes, such as the rolling hop fieíds of Kent with their conical oast houses; the honeyed stone cottages and hedgerow-lined country lanes of the Cotswold hills; the soaring, silver-grey sea cliffs of Pembrokeshire, scabbed with yellow lichen; and the jagged, rock-girt peaks of the Isle of Skye.
Whatever the weather, there's a diverse menu of adventure activities to choose from, including somé of Europe's best surfing, scuba-diving, sailing and hiking; plus less-strenuous pastimes such as trainspotting at York's National Railway Museum and whale-watching off Scotland's west coast.
As you travel around the region, what are the issues of the day that you'll hear Britons chatting about in the pub, at the bus stop and on the train? The national obsession with the weather has always seemed baffling to outsiders, who have often found it difficult to discern any difference between the mild winters and soggy summers. But in recent years the normally benign British weather has turnéd savage. Is it dimate change in action? People are talking about an increase in summer storms and torrential downpours, and how 2007 saw the wettest summer, and 2008 the dullest August, since records began. There have been tornadoes in London and Birmingham, and many parts of the country, notably Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire and south Wales, have suffered devastating flooding. Instead of looking forward to the summer sun, many now fear the summer floods.
Napoleon famously described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers, but today it has become a nation of homeowners. In the 1950s less than 40% of Britons owned their own homes; today the figure is more than 70%, and it's the ambition of many to get a foot on the property ladder as soon as they can afford it. Wherever two or more Brits are gathered together, the conversation will soon turn to the subject of house prices. Encouraged by the belief that prices can only go up, by banks offering loans for 125%
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