Best General England Travel Guides

Rick Steves Pocket London.

Hike the wild moors of Dartmoor, explore the scenic bays of Cornwall, and dive into history at Hadrian's Wall: with Rick Steves on your side, England can be yours! Since 1973, Rick Steves has spent about four months a year exploring Europe.

Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - covering history, literary London, music, theatre, architecture, art, fashion and film Free, convenient pull-out London map (included in print version), plus over 50 colour maps Covers the West End, the City, the South Bank, Kensington & Hyde Park, the East End and more. Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing. Looking for more extensive coverage? Harper has a degree in modern and classical Chinese from a London university.

Rick Steves Pocket London.

Great Britain remains a perennial favorite with travelers, drawing almost 3 million Americans each year, many of whom will revisit the nation. “Fodor’s is pitched a few notches higher….aimed at a fairly discerning traveler with an appetite for background and the occasional surprise.” – New York Times.

Try Rick Steves Best of Scotland. Rick produces a best-selling guidebook series, a public television series, and a public radio show, and organizes small-group tours that take over 20,000 travelers to Europe annually. Since moving to Seattle and joining Rick Steves' Eruope (where he serves as content manager) in 2000, Cameron has traveled to more than 35 European countries, contributing to guidebooks, tours, radio and television shows, and other media.

Try Rick Steves Best of Scotland. Rick produces a best-selling guidebook series, a public television series, and a public radio show, and organizes small-group tours that take over 20,000 travelers to Europe annually. Since moving to Seattle and joining Rick Steves' Eruope (where he serves as content manager) in 2000, Cameron has traveled to more than 35 European countries, contributing to guidebooks, tours, radio and television shows, and other media.

Lonely Planet Devon & Cornwall is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Eat your way through the region's booming food scene, relax on a secluded beach, or go wild on a windswept moor; all with your trusted travel companion. Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries show you the simplest way to tailor your trip to your own personal needs and interests Insider tips save you time and money, and help you get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - including hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, and prices Honest reviews for all budgets - including eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, and hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer and more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, wildlife and cuisine Over sixty colour maps Useful features - including Walking/Driving/Cycling Tours, Travel with Children, Month by Month (annual festival calendar) Coverage of Exeter, Torquay, Plymouth, Dartmoor, St Ives, Penzance, Newquay, Isles of Scilly, and more. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.

Prepare for total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter. Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, by way of places few travelers ever get to at all, Bryson rediscovers the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly singular country that he both celebrates and, when called for, twits. An Amazon Best Book of January 2016: The Road to Little Dribbling comes twenty years after Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island , in which he first described his love affair with his adopted Great Britain. It opens with Bryson describing (hilariously) the perils of growing older, eventually revealing the author’s successful passing of the Life in Britain Knowledge Test (thus, making him a British citizen). While he tried to avoid places he visited in Notes from a Small Island —he does revisit Dover—those who read the first book will enjoy a welcome sense of the familiar—even if Bryson appears to have grown a little more cynical and angry with age. "...Bryson’s capacity for wonder at the beauty of his adopted homeland seems to have only grown with time.... Britain is still his home four decades later, a period in which he went from lowly scribe at small-town British papers to best-selling travel writer. There are no better views, finer hikes, more glorious castles, or statelier grounds than the ones he finds, and Bryson takes readers on a lark of a walk across this small island with megamagnetism." —Booklist, starred review "Fans should expect to chuckle, snort, snigger, grunt, laugh out loud and shake with recognition…a clotted cream and homemade jam scone of a treat." —Daily Telegraph "We have a tradition in this country of literary teddy bears—John Betjeman and Alan Bennett among them—whose cutting critiques of the absurdities and hypocrisies of the British people are carried out with such wit and good humour that they become national treasures. The fact that this wonderful writer can unerringly catalogue all our faults and is still happy to put up with us should make every British reader’s chest swell with pride." —Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express "The truly great thing about Bryson is that he really cares and is insanely curious... Reading his work is like going on holiday with the members of Monty Python." He’s clever, witty, entertaining, a great companion... his research is on show here, producing insight, wisdom and startling nuggets of information... Bill Bryson and his new book are the dog’s bollocks." He combines the charm and humour of Michael Palin with the cantankerousness of Victor Meldrew and the result is a benign intolerance that makes for a gloriously funny read."

For vacationers who crave meaningful trips and unusual locales, cue National Geographic's Novel Destinations —a guide for bibliophiles to more than 500 literary sites across the United States and Europe. “ Novel Destinations by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon is a journey in itself and a compendium of literary spots for the book lover in all of us. “…This second edition of Novel Destinations helps people like me...people who ache to return to the haunting Gothic South that they've never physically been to, the cathedrals of Paris that only exist in their mind's eye, and the rowdy Burns Night Supper that lingers on their tongue...revisit and relive these experiences even when the cover is closed. Subtitled ‘A Travel Guide to Literary Landmarks From Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West,’ this comprehensive handbook, including 500 literary sites, is a dream come true for traveling bibliophiles” —Books on the Table Blog. “As soon as I got this beautiful book (Look at that cover, its adorable) I started to peruse the places inside and the authors that make you want to go there. The only thing missing from this volume is a passport and luggage.” –Jathan & Heather Blog. “I was glad to see that it had the name of the place, the address, a website and vital information and the blurbs were just the right length - they provided the right amount of information if you were unsure of who the author was you got a little background about the author and why this location was special to them.” –Kritters Ramblings Blog. “From Dickens’ London to Joyce’s Dublin to Lee’s Alabama, I’ve traveled the world through the eyes of different characters. As a book lover who loves to travel and will be moving to Scotland to attend college next year, I love everything about Novel Destinations… The back of the book includes an index by locale, for finding cool sites near a specific travel destination, as well as a general index for hunting down certain sites. Honestly, what more could a bookworm want from a guide book?” – Read Till Dawn Blog. “I love to travel and when I do I am always on the lookout for anything bookish to check out. Personally, I'm excited for the literary lodgings chapter -- I'm a sucker for a book or author themed boutique hotel or B&B!"

Rick's candid, humorous advice will guide you to good-value hotels and restaurants in delightful London neighborhoods. Rick produces a best-selling guidebook series, a public television series, and a public radio show, and organizes small-group tours that take over 20,000 travelers to Europe annually. Specializing in writing walking tours of Europe's cultural sights, Gene has coauthored eight of Rick's books and contributes to Rick's public television series.

Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds is a captivating photographic portrait of the greatest British gardens and the lords, ladies and gardeners who own and manage them, with a focus on the counties of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. 'Victoria and Hugo use their local knowledge and passion to spectacular effect, getting right under the skin of each garden and family who owns it...this enchanting book depicts paradise found'.

All too often, we think of nature as something distinct from ourselves, something to go and see, a place that’s separate from the ordinary modern world in which we live and work. Scrappy, weed-filled, this heart-shaped tangle of land was the very definition of overlooked—a thoroughly in-between place that capitalism no longer had any use for, leaving nature to take its course. Common Ground is a true account of that place and Cowen’s transformative journey through its layers and lives, but it’s much more too. ( Guardian ). "In beautifully written and evocative prose, English nature writer Cowen explores the relationship between humans and nature, making it abundantly clear that nature is where you find it. In discussing the changes the land and its inhabitants have experienced over hundreds of generations, Cowen brings the lives of individuals into sharp and poignant focus. ( Library Journal ). "Thanks to Rob Cowen’s remarkable book Common Ground , I’ve learned that there's a word for my woods: edgelands . A British nature writer, Cowen celebrates not remote slices of paradise but the wild places accessible to all of us: the unregulated land at the edges of human habitation where nature has been left to its own devices. Rob Cowen rakes over a scrap of land with forensic care, leading us into a whole new way of looking at the world." (Alan Bennett London Review of Books ). "One of the most original books in any genre." (Melissa Harrison Times, Books of the Year ). "Touched by genius." (John Lewis-Stempel Sunday Express, Books of the Year ). "Highly poetic.