It's not so grim up north

Anyone that holds the view that it is all grim up north clearly hasn’t done very much travelling. This ridiculous prejudice that many people have is completely unfounded when you consider what’s on show in great cities like Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool. You’ve got beautiful countryside like the Lake District, the Peak District and the North York Moors. Perhaps those in the south making sweeping generalisations are just jealous.

I’ve just got back from spending a few days in the ultra cool city of Manchester. It’s a place that is full to the brim with chic bars, top live music venues, classy hotels and interesting museums. Even on a week night the streets are lined late into the evening with people out enjoying themselves. You can get a bird’s eye view of the illuminated skyline on the giant big wheel (slightly smaller than the London eye) that has a permanent fixture in the centre.

Manchester was completely transformed by the Industrial Revolution. It grew from little more than a village in 1750 to be a thriving manufacturing city at the centre of the world’s cotton trade. The profits were invested in transforming the city’s civic architecture. Towering Victorian Gothic buildings still dominate the today. Take the town hall; it’s unlike anything you see elsewhere around Britain.

But just because Victorian buildings dominate doesn’t mean that Manchester is stuck in the past. Far from it; from the 1950s the city’s economy was in decline and buildings were left abandoned. It was an IRA bomb in the centre of Manchester in 1996 that proved to be the engine of change. Planners started on an ambitious scheme to totally transform the centre and Manchester hasn’t looked back.

This theme of a glorious past, present and upbeat future of the north is captured in a new book called True North: In Praise of England’s Better Half by Martin Wainwright, the Guardian’s northern editor. It’s a wonderful account that celebrates all that north has to celebrate.

Wainwright gives a crisp overview of the north’s manufacturing past; he talks about the immigrants that helped economy’s thrive; he meets the students that wouldn’t want to study anywhere else. Of course, not everywhere in the north has been as successful as Manchester, Liverpool and the like. Wainwright has reported on riots and the like in some very deprived areas. But there are still plenty of places to enjoy in the north which the book captures so well.

True North has a strong emphasis on celebrating the northern countryside: “the sweep of the Pennine moors, the beetling cliffs at St Bees and Flamborough and the majestic summits of Lakeland.” Wainwright loves his patch so the book comes across as almost like a love story. As he writes on Twitter, True North is “full of Northern joy and also urges fellow Northerners to be cheerful, optimistic, innovative etc.”

Perhaps one day people will realise that it is not all grim up north.

Compensation culture must not shut off Britain's heritage

In a society increasingly motivated by winning compensation for ‘accidents that weren’t your fault’, people will sue for anything in Britain these days. From slipping on rogue tomatoes on supermarket floors to sliding on militant leaves on park pathways, we love public and private bodies paying out for ‘damages’.

Some argue that people are only getting the compensation that is deserved. This, to some extent may be true, especially when serious accidents result in loss of earnings through having to take time off from work. To take a hypothetical example: being involved in a large industrial accident resulting in multiple burns deserves compensation.

But a minor accident that requires patching up with nothing more than a pathetic sized sticking plaster is something completely different. It’s just a fact of life that fruit falls onto the floor of a supermarket, leaves fall from trees and grass can sometimes get wet (especially when it’s been raining). It’s bad enough having signs warning that surfaces can be ‘slippery when wet’. However, wasting public money on expensive legal compensation cases is even worse.

This growing compensation culture could threaten access to Britain’s rich heritage, according to Rodney Legg, a long-serving council member of the National Trust. He worries whole swathes of the charity’s estates will be closed off to the public as a result.

Mr Legg is right when, in an interview with The Times today, he says that the National Trust must “heighten its risk profile by inviting people to step on to our land, fall into lakes and get clobbered by wind-born debris from our 6 to 12 million trees.”

As I’ve said before on these pages, Britain’s heritage is for all to enjoy. That right shouldn’t be threatened by greedy people making money out of compensation. Every pound bodies like the National Trust pay out in damages mean a pound less for preserving our nation’s history.

Visitors to National Trust properties need to show some common sense. They need to realise that you can fall into a pond if you go near it or you could get hit by a big falling tree if it is very windy.

It gets me so annoyed when a large area of a public building is closed off by a tiny drip of water leaking through a roof. Or when a section of pavement is cordoned off by a minor crack. That’s city life in the 21st century for you.

The great thing about walking in the countryside is that no-one closes footpaths when it is raining. I love the freedom of being able to decide whether it’s safe to walk along a certain route. I like the responsibility of choosing sensible footwear when it’s icy or snowing.

But that freedom is under threat. Could bodies like the National Trust decide it’s cheaper to employ people to close off routes on their land when it starts to speck with rain; than face lawsuits? There is no suggestion that it is about to happen soon, but it’s something to be wary of.

Keep Britain’s heritage open to all. Let the great (and intelligent) British public and visitors think for themselves.

This is a story for more than just train spotters

YOU might think a museum filled with buses, trains and trams would be a haven for middle aged men with woolly hats, notepads and flasks of tea. But the London Transport Museum tells a story which appeals to a much wider audience. It is not just about one model of bus or train being replaced by a more a superior one. Rather, the story of public transport is in fact about London and explains its exponential growth in the 1800s and 1900s.
It is a success story that continues to this day. Today, the London Underground alone carries more than three million people everyday and further growth is expected. Others travel on buses and modern trains that glide through the skyline to the docklands on the east of the city.
Yet the intriguing thing is that the complex network of services now overseen by Transport for London began with a single horse-drawn omnibus in 1829. It made the journey from Paddington to Islington several times each day. Within three years there were more than 4,000 such vehicles on the streets of London.
Travelling on the omnibus was not cheap but was more affordable than booking private carriages. Lower priced tickets would come with horse drawn trams in the late 1800s (they could pull a heavier weight because the vehicle was on wheels), buses and then the Underground.
In time, the innovations would make travelling on public transport something that all Londoners could participate in. Transport allowed the working classes to reach workplaces on the other side of the capital.
In the early 1800s things were very different; you could walk around London quite easily and countryside wasn’t that far away. But then, very quickly, the city boundaries were pushed out aggressively as London boasted the busiest port in the world.
Of course, the mainline railways helped to bring people to London from all corners of the country. But they only came to the edge of the capital, to places like Paddington, Euston and King’s Cross so the streets became jam packed. By now London had been too large to walk around easily. Something needed to be built underground to solve the congestion. The process of transforming the capital began by building the Metropolitan railway in 1850. It was the start of the London Underground. The Circle Line came from 1863-8 and the building of new lines really intensified in the early 1900s.
The key point about the Underground was, and is, that it’s classless – unlike the mainline services everyone sat in the same compartments. But special cheap early morning services were run for workmen.
Mainline services were initially designed for intercity travel, but from the 1860s they also played an important role in helping to move people between London and its suburbs. Today, many commute to work by train.
But there was a cost to the railway building in and around London; 100,000 poor Londoners lost their homes to make way for new tracks. They were fobbed off with cheap services early in the morning.

THE fascinating story of the growth of the suburbs is told through a new exhibition called Suburbia at the London Transport Museum (see http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/). In the 1800s most lived within walking distance, by the 1900s most lived outside it. Early railway suburbs started in the 1860s and further expansion followed in the 1900s. The peak of suburban growth came in the 1920s.
Eye-catching posters customers survive from that era. They encourage people to live in the clean air of the suburbs, surrounded by countryside. You get messages like: “Live in Kent and be content.”
It was important time for property, with people owning their own homes for the first time (the Victorian norm was to rent property) and many building societies were setup.
The train company also strove to drive business by encouraging those living in the centre of London to enjoy day trips to the countryside. Colourful advertisements suggested activities like rambling and fishing.
Now it’s trendy to live in the city, many also live down at the rejuvenated Docklands. But the suburbs aren’t waning; they have their own identities and thrive with busy high streets. Some former villages, like Paddington, feel fully part of the capital. Others, like Hampstead, feel a million miles from the busy shops of Oxford Street.
There have been some notable changes with transport in London over the years; in 1900 the majority of vehicles were pulled by horse, by 1915 this had switched. In the 1920s trams were overtaken by buses (trams were indeed phased out from the 1930s because they were unprofitable).
Expansion looks set to continue in the years to come; by 2025 there are forecast to be an extra four million journeys into the city everyday. With so much expansion it’s hard to think that public transport began less than 200 years ago with just one omnibus on one route.

The fight to save the East End

THE EAST END of London was once a smelly, dirty and noisy place. Large families were squashed into cramped houses, sanitation was poor and cholera was rife. Living conditions were exacerbated by housing built next to polluting industry. Many lived in poverty.
This was Jack the Ripper territory; an area with rowdy pubs, crime and loads of prostitutes. It was quite simply an unpleasant place to live.

Now parts of the East End are rejuvenated; slums that weren’t destroyed in World War Two have been pulled down and some neighbourhoods have become quite trendy. One end is a stone’s throw from the city of London so house prices have shot up.
It’s still a noisy place. But rather than the sound of industry you hear the middle classes enjoying themselves in fashionable bars, restaurants and cafes.
The wonderful Victorian architecture of the old Spitalfields market remains but the wholesalers have moved out; they’ve moved to a new facility further out to the east of London. Today the high canopies keep diners at chains like La Tasca, Giraffe and Las Iguanas dry.

Nearby Brick Lane was once the centre of the rag trade. Now its home to more than 60 curry houses, most fully geared to Westerners. The street, with the highest concentration of such establishments in the country, has become some what of a tourist attraction.
For some the transformations, and the influx of the middle classes, call for celebrations. After all, here many neighbourhoods were rundown in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, in the streets nearest the city of London, live wealthy sorts in their stylish loft apartments.
But at the same time the modernisation is a threat to our cultural heritage in Britain. Some feel that the East End is losing (or has lost) its identity as London’s early working class suburb.
It was in the streets to the east of the square mile that dirty industry like tanneries was located, away from the commerce. Nearby new docks developed as the central wharfs became jammed. And as trade grew working class communities expanded. Over time the area became very densely populated and living conditions worsened.

Communties to the east of the Tower of London grew very quickly in the 1600 and 1700s (until the 1550s urban London extended little beyond the Tower).

Parts of the old East End tell the story of immigrant London. Many migrants have arrived here and settled, before being replaced by other groups. Buildings that illustrate and symbolise this history must be retained.

In the late 1600s it was the Protestant Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in Catholic France. Many made their fortunes in the rag trade. They spent their earnings building lovely Georgian terraces. The properties, near Spitalfields market, fetch millions of pounds as they are so close to the city.

But it wasn’t that long ago that these buildings were threatened by the bulldozer. Action groups were set up in the 1970s to stop the developers moving into destroying perfectly good homes in Spitalfields.

Over time the Huguenots became assimilated into the community. Then in the late 1800s an influx of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe arrived in the East End. A thriving Jewish community with synagogues, shops, schools and places of entertainment sprung up.

This was frontline London, an area that the authorities often felt they had little control over. Stalin is said to have visited and you can still trace the spots were radical protests formed.

By the 1970s the Bengalis, that had fled their homeland after India was divided into two, dominated in the East End. The make up of shops changed and bigger mosques were needed. In 1974 the first curry house opened on Brick Lane; today the street is filled with them.

The big influx of Bengalis came after the 1960s, but many had arrived in the 1800s as well; they often crewed boats from India to Britain. Sometimes boats were held up returning and so they were laid off. So many never returned. Whole families and friends also often came over so it was often like transporting neighbourhoods virtually intact across to the other side of the world.

The Jamme Masjid mosque dominates in Brick Lane, it is indeed one of the largest in the country. The building stands as a symbol of the social history of the East End. It started out as Protestant church in 1743, then in 1743 it became a Methodist church, in 1898 it became a synagogue and then in the 1970s it became a mosque. Who knows what it will become next.

For some the invasion by the middle classes is just another phase in the area’s long history. The site where the Jamme Masjid mosque stands can only be used as a place of worship so perhaps one day it will be a church again. Many Bengalis are already moving to other parts of London, the poorer people have been pushed onto the Tower Hamlets estate.

But for others the East End is under threat. Some conservationists resent Tower Hamlets council branding the area ‘Banglatown’ in the 1990s in a bid to emulate the commercial success of Chinatown. They say that culturally important streets like Brick Lane are being ruined by the neon lights and all the tourists.

Of course, not all of East London has developed as much as Brick Lane and Spitalfields. You can still walk down Whitechapel and feel like you’ve entered another world, for example. But the big question is how far will the trendy restaurants and loft apartments spread in years to come? Let’s fight to keep at least some of the East End untrendy.

The political question of opening up Britain's countryside

Britain is famed around the world for its great historic cities. Visitors have everything from awe inspiring cathedrals and great parks to fascinating museums and first class theatre. Take a boat ride down the Thames in London for a close up view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament; visit Stratford to see Shakespeare’s birthplace; take the waters in Bath and follow in the footsteps of wealthy Romans and Georgians; get onboard Brunel’s infamous boat SS Great Britain in Bristol; find out about Vikings in York. The list is, quite literally, endless.

This great heritage is not just available for visitors; Britain’s cities are for British people to enjoy as well. Addressing the British public, Conservative leader David Cameron told his party’s 2009 conference that Britain is a great place to live: “Look at Britain in 2009. It is, in so many ways, a great place to live. Great culture and arts, great diversity, great sport.”

But there is another Britain that most, visitors and residents alike, barely dip their toe into. This is the Britain away from busy cities where political parties hold their annual conferences. Far from the crowds there is literally mile and mile of rolling national park to enjoy. Some parts are so peaceful and so unspoiled that you can walk for hours and not see a single person.

Yes, some parts of rural Britain can get busy. Ghastly hotspots like Windermere in the Lake District sometimes feel just as busy as Oxford Street in London. Arriving here on a summer's day could put you off the countryside for life.

Do persevere though; get out there and enjoy the wonderful scenery and the natural landscapes. Britain is a small island but the wild areas you find in the Lake District are repeated in national parks across the nation, in Snowdonia, the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales and the like. By picking the hills you walk carefully, away from the touristy towns, you quickly get away from all the strains and stresses of everyday life. It's the ideal opportunity to re-charge your batteries.

In his conference speech David Cameron said: “to be British is to have an instinctive love of the countryside and the natural world.” That is the way it should be. Unfortunately many Brits don’t even get to see the fake countryside around Windermere in the Lake District. Whole groups of people don’t even get out of the cities. They are imprisoned in their own neighbourhoods.

Britain is a divided nation; there are the middle classes who get to enjoy walking in the hills at the weekend and there are those who don’t have the means to afford a car or the bus fares to reach such places. In many cases the latter groups don’t simply know what there is on offer.The Industrial Revolution brought a massive population shift; in the 1800s the majority of people lived in urban, rather than rural, areas for the first time. Whole generations just lived for their work so had no reason to travel to the countryside. The opportunities were in the cities.

David Cameron has a vision: “I see a country where more children grow up with security and love because family life comes first. I see a country where you choose the most important things in life — the school your child goes to and the healthcare you get. I see a country where communities govern themselves — organising local services, independent of Whitehall, a great handing back of power to people.”

Whatever political party wins the next general election has its work cut out to eradicate poverty. Not least, it is important to make sure the countryside is open to and enjoyed by all. This apartheid can’t continue. Perhaps then we can also then start put more emphasis on educating our visitors that there is more to Britain's countryside than Lake Windermere and the Cotswolds.

A pub worth saving

THE papers are full of statistics these days about pubs shutting up for good. Many are said to be struggling following the introduction of the smoking ban and the fact that you can enjoy cut price drink at home. According to recent reports between 36 and 52 pubs are closing every week.

Time and time again I’ve read the same story about closures and thought nothing of it. Surely it must just be lazy landlords who refuse to respond to current customers’ needs? Perhaps they should all just turn into gastro pubs? But then at the weekend I visited the Sun Inn in Leintwardine, Herefordshire, and my whole opinion changed.

The Sun Inn is said to be Britain’s last remaining parlour pub. You walk through the front door and it’s like entering someone’s living room. You join the regulars on wooden benches at long tables and get involved in the pub table games. There’s no bar; drinks are brought direct from the barrels in the kitchen (regulars just help themselves).

But earlier this year the pub was threatened with closure. Following the death of the landlady (who was in her nineties) in June the property was put up for auction. Many feared it would be picked up by a developer for converting into a house. Britain’s heritage was on the verge of being destroyed.

Then, after national media coverage, the pub was withdrawn from the sale and a team a team of volunteers stepped in to keep it running. They come in and open the pub for a few hours in the evenings. Now ‘a friend of the pub’ is on the verge of completing the purchase of the Grade II listed building and keeping it as a parlour pub.

Entering the cosy bar, that looks straight out of the 1930s, you can’t help but get involved in the conversations of the fellow drinkers. There’s no juke box or noisy quiz machine to divert your attention. It means that visitors quickly feel as if they are part of the village.

From talking to villagers both inside and outside the pub, we saw the important role The Sun plays in the village. The other, more conventional, pub in Leintwardine closed about a year ago so there was great worry about The Sun closing. All the local interest groups drink there and friends meet for drinks. There is nothing else for them in Leintwardine.

We heard the stories about regulars who travel from across Britain to visit the pub, some even come from London each month. The night we visited there were drinkers popping in from all over the county.

But the most interesting stories were about the former landlady Florence ‘Flossie’ Lane who died in June. Across from the bar was Miss Lane’s private sitting room, with the armchair in where she slept most nights for many years, rather than venturing to the upstairs bedrooms. But as she became more frail the regulars converted a store room into a downstairs bedroom. One would kiss her good night at the end of each day.

The Sun Inn may need a bit of updating; some complain about the grotty toilets. But changing it too much would destroy what is unique about the pub. We shouldn't just change things to respond to consumer demand. Britain’s heritage deserves to be saved for future generations.

Hopefully now the future is more certain for The Sun. I will certainly be keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t become another statistic.

Checking in to new British heritage

THE classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers first hit our screens more than 30 years ago but the re-runs still leave fans in hysterics. Few can claim not to have seen at some point an episode of the series featuring the manic and inept manger Basil Fawlty, his dominant wife Sybil and the incompetent Spanish waiter Manuel.

Business rarely ran smoothly at Fawlty Towers: meals were served cold, guests faced maintenance to their rooms while they slept and luggage went missing. But anyone that complained faced a torrent of verbal abuse and insult from Basil. Rather than trying to sort the problem out, guests would be kicked out the front door. Now that’s customer service.

Fawlty Towers may have only been a fictional seaside hotel yet its legacy has become enshrined in British culture. No matter how much is spent improving and marketing facilities, many still expect poor service when they choose to spend the night away from home.

Putting the plush five star properties aside as they are out of reach of ordinary leisure travellers, the traditional hotels have for some time had a challenger in the form of budget hotel chains.

Travelodge, the first budget brand to launch in the UK, started with seven roadside lodges in 1985 (it all began on the A38 north of Lichfield). The chain now has about 380 locations in Britain, and claims to currently open one hotel every six working days. Travelodge says on its website it targets adding more than 3,000 rooms every year.

But the number one operator in Britain is Premier Inn with more than 500 hotels. Like Travelodge, they are now as likely to be found on A-roads on the outskirts of towns as they are in city centres.

Premier Inn, Travelodge and the like started out as roadside stop-offs for weary travellers wanting to break long journeys. Today, they are more often destinations in their own right. Families enjoy breaks in them while they visit seaside resorts like Blackpool and Eastbourne or explore Britain’s heritage in major cities like London and Manchester.

In the early days of holidaying the catering options for guests were not good – they ate the food given or nothing at all. Today, budget hotels normally have a restaurant and bar like a Beefeater or Harvester’s metres from where they will sleep. Choice is the flavour of the day on the large menus.

Premier Inn recently revealed sales had fallen by 7.7% in the previous six months but was keen to emphasise that this was not as drastic as the hotel sector as a whole because business travellers were “trading down from three and four-star hotels to find better value”. Adjoining eateries defied the credit crunch with 2.1% a growth in like-for-like sales.

Once the economy recovers you can imagine that budget hotel performance will pick up again. In the next few years there are going to be many more Travelodges, Premier Inns, Day’s Inn and the like cropping up around Britain.

As a child of budget hotel age (I was born in 1983 when Travelodge was in the planning stages) I’d say the opening up of new sites is a good thing. These chains are raising the game of all in the market and encouraging all hotels to offer better customer service. That can’t be a bad thing.

Just as the hotel typified by Fawlty Towers has a lasting legacy in British culture, is Travelodge be part of our national heritage? Perhaps one day the original Travelodge building will get protected status. Only time will tell.