Latest Rough Guide to England Out
One of the Most Comprehensive and Detailed English Travel Guidebooks
The latest Rough Guide to England is the 8th edition, published May 2008, and at over 1000 pages covers everywhere from the Lake District to London in full detail.
The latest edition of the Rough Guide to England always stirs up some controversy, and this 8th edition published May 2008 (June in the USA) is no exception. This time the editors claim that the English are "overweight, sex-and-celebrity-obsessed TV addicts". This gets newspaper headlines, which is the main point of it, but most readers are probably more concerned that the guide lists all the cathedrals and museums and gets their opening hours right.
London
London gets 92 pages, nowhere near as much as a dedicated London guide (the Rough Guide to London weighs in at 640 pages!) but easily enough detail to get you through if you're spending a few days in London and then moving on. This is an important factor. The guide is over 1.25" thick, and a bulky item to be carrying around unless you're visiting several places it covers.
Northwest England
As the Northwest of England is my home turf, naturally I gave it close attention. Top marks for covering Preston, the Forest of Bowland, Clitheroe, and Morecambe, but where's Southport? And is the Isle of Man really in the Northwest? And how about my home town of St Helens, venue for the 2008 Tourism Society Annual Conference? Maybe the Tourism Society knows something the Rough Guide doesn't. Minor quibbles, maybe, but this is such a comprehensive guidebook to England that it's important to keep the publishers on their toes.
Blackpool
Of Blackpool the Rough Guide to England claims that it has 'gone from strength to strength', as far as tourism is concerned, painting it as an ongoing success story. Yet this simply isn't accurate, as visitor figures have dropped by about 40% in the last 15 years, and visitors to Blackpool Pleasure Beach are also drastically down. But at least the guide covers Blackpool in some detail, and describes it as it is without sneering at it, and includes its Number One boutique hotel.
Peterborough
The Rough Guide says that Peterborough, up the road from where I live now, has one unmissable attraction, which is the hugely impressive Peterborough Cathedral. But actually it has another – Flag Fen, one of the most important Bronze Age sites in all of Europe. The Rough Guide has missed it.
Summing Up
By and large, though, the Rough Guide to England does an excellent and thorough job and covers the ground in great detail. Every major tourist attraction, town and city is listed, from Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, with plenty of accommodation and eating recommendations for each of them. If you plan to travel through England and only have room for one travel guide, then you won't go far wrong with the Rough Guide to England.
The Rough Guide to England is published at $25.99 in the USA, $28.50 in Canada, and £15.99 in the UK. More details from the Rough Guide website.
