Britain's
best 25 - and why you should keep them a secret, by Richard
Morrison
The
world's best 25 - the pyramids fine, but Vegas? Next it will be
Dollywood, says Matthew Parris
Tell
us your favourite travel experience - and win all 25 books in the
Rough Guides series
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They are the undisputed wonders of the world. The Great Wall of China. The Taj
Mahal. The temples of Angkor Wat. The pyramids of. . . Las Vegas. The
world’s most extraordinary monument to the fake and the kitsch has been
included on a new list of the wonders of the world. The 25-strong list does
include the other Pyramids, those at Giza, the only one of the original
seven man-made wonders of the ancient world that survives. But it also
provides some surprises and features nine natural phenomena, such as Uluru
in the Australian Outback, the Himalayas and Victoria Falls.
The list, one of 25 new guides compiled by Rough Guides to celebrate 25
years of publishing, suggests the most jaw-dropping sights to be experienced
by travellers.
Once the divide between travel and tourism was clear. The adventurous rich and
a handful of the truly hardy travelled to far-flung places. The rest of us
were tourists. Only fairly recently has travelling become a mass industry,
serviced by cheap flights and books that suggest how to enjoy a full
experience in a country; from seeing the famous sights or watching a local
football game, to discovering the local music or locating the best fish
market. So there are wonders on this list that cannot simply be snapped from
the steps of a tour bus. These include “drifting down the Amazon” and
exploring the Sahara at the slow pace of a camel train.
Everyone will have their own quibbles with the list – is Las Vegas a greater
experience than New York? Does paddling a canoe through Belize’s Barrier
Reef surpass an exploration of the Great Barrier Reef? The joy of travel is
that we all have our own private lists of what we have done and where we
still yearn to go.
Mark Ellingham wrote his first Rough Guide, to Greece, from a housing
association flat in southeast London after bumming around the Aegean for a
few months. The guide was “rough in every sense”, but 25 years on the
publishing operation is extremely slick. There have been 350 Rough Guides,
including a large number of nontravel reference books, and Ellingham’s
office, with books and papers littered across the floor, is now in the
headquarters of Penguin, which bought the brand after he and his co-founders
sold out. He continues to run Rough Guides with Martin Dunford, who
contributed to the first book and wrote several others.
Ellingham says that he is “horribly aware of the contradictions” of
encouraging people to travel widely at a time of mounting concern about
global warming. But he argues that travel plays a crucial role in the
economies of developing countries and until an aviation fuel is discovered
that doesn’t produce carbon emissions his mission is to encourage people to
travel responsibly. This means taking fewer trips and staying longer and not
indulging in what he calls “binge flights”: last-minute weekend trips
overseas taken on a whim. Rough Guides also promote a “climate
neutral” carbon offset scheme.
Of course the best way to curb your travel emissions is to stay closer to
home, and so a list has been produced of the 25 “ultimate experiences” in
Britain and Ireland, ranging from punting on the Cam to sipping a pint in
Dublin; from trundling along the West Highland Railway to visiting Holkham,
“the best beach in Britain”.
The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is on the list, which is hardly surprising given
that Ellingham stays in the same hotel on that stretch of coast every year
and lists it in his private top-five list of “ultimate travel experiences”
anywhere in the world. The rest of the list: the coast town of Galle in Sri
Lanka, the Mani in the Peloponnese in Greece, Fez in Morocco and Barcelona.
His fellow Rough Guides boss, Martin Dunford, lists his top five as:
New York, Exmoor, Naples, the Ardennes and Studenica in the hills of central
Serbia. How do those tally with your own list of favourite travel memories?
Let the debate begin.
