Sorry, this is yet another variation on the "where have I been?" post.
At the front of my diary is a black and white map of Great Britain showing major roads, motorways and principal towns and cities. Every time I visit one of these towns or cities I highlight it to build up an annual map of where I've been. If the town's not on the map I can't colour it in, so trips to places like Bedford, Grantham and Bradford go unrecorded. Also the cartographers over-prioritised coastal towns because their names are easier to slot in, so for example Felixstowe makes the cut but Colchester is omitted.
I mention this because Scarborough was one of the few English towns on the map I'd never visited, and now I have, which means I've only got two more English towns to go. I might even have subconsciously chosen to go to Scarborough just so that I could tick it off, because I am a bit of a geographical completist like that.
Here's a list of all 53 English towns and cities on my diary map and the decade in which I first visited them.
I can't remember where I was taken in the 1960s, other than London, because I was under 5. I'm quite impressed by how far I travelled with family and friends in the 1970s and 1980s during my trajectory from school to first job. By contrast the 1990s and 2000s were somewhat underwhelming travelwise, but blogging inspired me to explore more widely in the 2010s. Ticking off another three in the pandemic-blasted 2020s feels like a win. And this leaves only Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness unvisited, both of which are a long way from home so not necessarily easily done in a day.
My diary map's snapshot of Wales is all coastal (yes to Caernarfon, Aberystwyth, Swansea and Cardiff, no to Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke). As for Scotland many of its 19 mapped towns are quite remote (seriously, Uig?) and I've only been to Glasgow and Edinburgh. I don't feel tempted to tick off the whole of Ryman's Scotland, but I'm quite pleased at completing 96% of England.
Notably, many of the visits I've made in the last 10 years have been because a rail operator made a special offer on tickets. Last week's trip to Scarborough, for example, only happened because LNER offered autumn tickets to York for £10 (which is also why I've been to Peterborough, Grantham and Newark recently). Ditto Grimsby relied on a £7 ticket to Lincoln, Swindon was a GWR offer for a fiver, Exeter set me back only £15 and Middlesbrough was because I could get to Darlington for £10. Rail operators occasionally do these flat fare offers to shift seats, but not very often and invariably at non-touristy times of year when the weather can be a proper lottery.
So what I now need is a West Coast special offer which allows me to get to Lancashire or Cumbria for next to nothing. The normal minimum for a return fare booked two months in advance is more like £80, and could be a washout, so I'm more than happy to wait. It'll be lovely to have visited everywhere on my diary map but there's no need to rush.
