Frommer's 2009 Guidebook to England and Wales
Travel Guide Covers London, Stonehenge, Cotswolds, Other Top Spots
Jun 7, 2009
It's always interesting to see a guidebook about a country that's written by people who don't live there. It's not that non-residents can't get under the skin of a place if they are frequent visitors, but the depth that a local writer can give is sometimes missing. It's one thing to write a guide to a city, but quite another to try to keep up-to-date with an entire country – or in this case, two countries: England and Wales. Have the authors of the Frommer's 2009 guide managed it?
Frommer's 2009 Guide to England and Wales: London
The new Frommer's guide is almost 800 pages, and includes a free pull-out map of London. Not surprisingly the capital gets thorough coverage, with two chapters on the city itself (Settling into London and Exploring London), and another on the Thames Valley and Chiltern Hills, which includes nearby places such as Windsor, Oxford, Woburn Abbey, and St Albans.
Even though there is a separate Frommer's Guide to London written by the same two authors, visitors to England and Wales will find that they don't need to buy the separate London guide unless they have no intention of moving outside the city. Anyone spending some time in London then doing some touring will find the London section of the England and Wales guide perfectly adequate.
Frommer's 2009 Guide to England and Wales: Beyond London
Popular tourist areas such as The Cotswolds and sites like Stonehenge get full coverage here, as do places like the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales. It's the gaps in-between the tourist hotspots that are sometimes missing, however.
Frommer's 2009 Guide to England and Wales: the Omissions
Blackpool on the Lancashire coast is included but not Southport, whose Lord Street may well have been the inspiration for the wide boulevards of Paris (Napoleon Bonaparte lived in Southport for two years before transforming the streets of Paris). Missing too is the lovely scenery of the Forest of Bowland and the Ribble Valley inland from here, an area whose beauty has been praised to the skies by a frequent visitor – HM Queen Elizabeth II, no less.
Further north, in the Lake District, the town of Penrith is covered but not the city of Carlisle – just as beautiful, and historically important with award-winning museums and Carlisle Castle, which is almost a thousand years old. Penrith isn't in the Lake District National Park but it gets included, yet Carlisle just a bit further away is omitted.
Across in north east England Durham is included but not one of the region's biggest attractions, the Beamish Open Air Museum, nor its main cities, Newcastle upon Tyne and neighbouring Gateshead. So, no Millennium Bridge, no Sage Gateshead, no BALTIC, no Angel of the North, and none of Newcastle's several excellent museums. And further north there's no mention of one of the most attractive towns in England, Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Frommer's 2009 Guide to England and Wales: for the First-Time Visitor
There's no doubt that in the areas it covers – and it does cover most places most visitors will want to see – the Frommer's guide is good, up-to-date and thorough. It seems to be aimed more at American and other visitors who will want to come to England and Wales, see London and a few of the other big attractions, and that's all. For the first-time visitor it's a very good book. It does not, however, offer the almost complete coverage given by both the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guides to England. which are both the same price.
Where to Buy Frommer's 2009 Guide to England and Wales
The Frommer's Guide costs $24.99 in the USA, $26.99 in Canada, and £15.99 in the UK. It can be bought in bookstores, at Amazon and other online bookstores, and at Frommer's own online bookstore.
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