Help me (not) sleep under a bridge

[dhampyresa]

I am most likely going to spend about three weeks/a month in Great Britain this August.

It'll be just me.

I have no idea what I'm doing yet. I want to go Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, possibly more places, and will likely spend a couple days in London, if only to get over the massive jetlag of going from a French to British timezone. A whole hour, the horror.

I may also see some people. Both from RL and fandom -- definitely lunik_the_bard for sure.

I'll probably go to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, likely in the first half of the month, as apparently that's when most the shows I want to see are. But nothing's set in stone.

Literally nothing is set in stone.

I don't want to do super touristy stuff for this trip, I'm looking for more unusual stuff like stuff I wouldn't find out about if someone didn't tell me about it. But anything interesting will do. Nothing is too weird! (I will totally sleep under a bridge if that's an option.)

TL;DR: Rec me stuff to see/do in Great Britain. Assume I know nothing.


EDIT: I will not be using a car, I will also be doing England and I will basically take any recs, nevermind how touristy.

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, you could go to Hay-on-Wye! It's a tiny, tiny village in Wales remarkable mostly for being entirely composed of bookstores. There's pretty much nothing to do there other than look at bookstores, though, so I wouldn't recommend spending more than a day there, at most. On the other hand, it's right on the edge of the Brecon Beacons park, so if you're into hiking through terrifyingly isolated moorlands and hills, you could easily get in both on one trip.

Also, this is probably too touristy for you, but I highly recommend the London Walks:
http://www.walks.com/
They do all sorts of walking tours (mostly in London, though there's a few in other parts of the country as well) on different themes: Shakespeare, Harry Potter, ghosts, Jack the Ripper, Victorian era philanthropists, beer and pubs, food, etc. I go on one pretty much whenever I'm in London, and must have been on at least a dozen by now. Every single one I've really enjoyed and learned a lot. And their guides are really knowledgable and nice! Once I even made such good friends with a guide that we ended up grabbing dinner together afterwards, which was cool. They're also only £10 (£8 if you have a student ID), so it might be worth checking one out just to see if you like it.

If you like Indian food at all, you should totally check out Brick Lane in London. You can literally just walk down the street, pick a random restaurant, and it will be the best Indian food outside of South Asia. It's all so delicious, I practically dream about it.

I always have had a secret desire to go see the Orkney Islands, both for King Arthur and because they're such a random, out of the way place to visit. But it turns out, shockingly, that random out of the way places are pretty hard to get to, and so I've never managed it. But if you're going up to Edinburgh you'll already be much closer than I ever have been, so maybe that's an idea?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh! And if you make it up to York, it has a Viking Museum that's supposed to be legitimately amazing.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

THE BOOKSTORE VILLAGE AKA MY DREAM PLACE YES I WILL GO THERE

Thank you for the recs! The Orkneys look cool and I think it'll be nice to go there.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Enjoy it :D

Oh, and since you'll be in Edinburgh, I just heard recently that they have a catacomb-like system of underground tunnels called the "Edinburgh Vaults", and you can go on tours of them!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

That is very RTMI, thank you!