Explore the real Britain with The Real Britain Company

If you spend enough time on British roads, you realise the best bits of a trip rarely happen at the destination. They happen when you pull off “just for fuel and a wee” and somehow lose an hour talking to a bloke who collects vintage lorry brochures. British roadside stops are their own little universe, […]

If multi city train travel UK makes you picture frantic platform dashes and living off meal deals, I get it. I used to see long rail trips as something to be endured between “proper” holidays. Then a few years back I stitched together a week by rail from Penzance to Edinburgh, zigzagging through Bristol, Manchester […]

I didn’t set out to invent a “Birmingham heavy metal walking tour” the first time I went to Brum. I was 19, I’d come down from Newcastle on a Megabus, and my priorities were, in order: see where Black Sabbath came from, eat something fried, and find a pint that didn’t taste like it had […]

I came late to early medieval England. At school, 1066 was treated like the franchise reboot: everything before it a muddle of “Angles and Saxons and maybe some Vikings”. It wasn’t until I started doing Norman Conquest history travel for work — tramping round churches and earthworks for museum projects — that I realised something […]

London has a reputation for hoovering money straight out of your wallet. And yes, if you let it, it will. But if you’re willing to ignore the big ticket attractions and lean into the awkwardness of proper budget London travel, you can have a surprisingly good day out for about a fiver – and sometimes […]

If you’re looking for a Rye East Sussex travel guide that actually talks about wet socks, steep cobbles and the smell of frying fish instead of “fairytale vibes”, pull up a chair. Rye is one of those places that gets photographed to death – Mermaid Street, timber-framed houses, all very pretty – but what makes […]

I always trace my obsession with Amy Winehouse back to a scratched supermarket CD copy of Frank I bought in late 2004, chucked in one of those two-for-£10 deals between Keane and The Killers. I was 19, back home in Newcastle for Christmas from a rubbish first term at uni, working breakfast shifts in a […]

If your feed looks anything like mine, the Isle of Skye appears to be made up entirely of three things: the Old Man of Storr, the Fairy Pools, and people in bright jackets standing on cliffs that would give your mother palpitations. That’s the glossy version. This is an attempt at something a bit different: […]