Literary Landscapes of England and Scotland

The British capital is an overflowing antiques cabinet on the River Thames, the cosmopolitan home of royalty and rascals, red double-deckers and black cabs. Catch a show in Shakespeare’s Globe theater, roam the hallowed aisles of Westminster Abbey or soar above the skyline on the London Eye. Years could be spent idling between museums and markets, parks and pubs here, but even a day’s exploration promises an unforgettable first taste.

Listen carefully enough and you might just hear York groaning beneath the weight of its own history. Romans, Vikings, Tudors: they all crafted this cobbled, medieval tangle of streets and stone gatehouses, laid out in the skirts of the largest gothic church in Northern Europe, York Minster. Squeeze beneath the beams in tucked-away pubs, peer into old shop windows in the Shambles and then catch your breath in Yorkshire’s romantic landscapes, rolling away to the north and west.   

“The loveliest spot that man hath found,” wrote poet William Wordsworth of his beloved Dove Cottage. The same could be written of the landscapes that surround his beloved Grasmere home, for Lakeland is England at its green-and-pleasant best, a land of rolling fells (hills) and ribbons of deep, glassy lakes that has enchanted writers, artists and travellers for centuries. Still now, they come for fellwalking, the timeless scenery and one of the finest gourmet scenes in the country; the region’s famously hardy sheep, meanwhile, remain utterly unfazed.

Where the Firth of Clyde meets the forested hills of Galloway, Ayrshire unfurls with all the hallmarks of a classic Scottish adventure. The flags of iconic golf courses flutter in the sea breeze and baronial manors age magnificently beneath heather-blue skies. But most of all, the county is a place of pilgrimage for devotees of Robert Burns; fans come to trace the life of the Scotland’s National Bard, from his humble first cottage in Alloway to his stately tomb in handsome Dumfries. 

Scotland’s lamplit capital is a wise old sage with a hundred tales to tell, brooding in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. Lose yourself in its handsome streets and discover a tale of two dueling souls: the Old Town, a medieval tangle of cobbled lanes and closes, and the New Town’s grand Georgian terraces, the green furrow of Princes Street Gardens dividing the two halves. Watching over it all is the Castle, home to the Scottish Crown Jewels, sparkling like Hogmanay fireworks.