This book arose from my travels around the UK over the past 10 years, to gather information for a series I write for the Mail on Sunday.
Though I enjoy foreign travel, there is something peculiarly appealing about the short break on home soil. You don't need to queue through immigration to visit a place which can be singularly different from your home town, city or village.
I've had deeply enjoyable days away in places that are no more than an hour's drive from home.
The articles here are meant to help you choose a short visit - it could be a day trip, or the classic Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon weekend - to a selection of towns and cities that I've written about. In some cases I have turned the destination into an entire county, where there isn't one obvious big place to command your interest.
I hope, too, that visitors from overseas will find much here to guide them through Britain, particularly if they are looking for options beyond the well-known destinations.
Although the articles are based on pieces of mine published in the Mail on Sunday, they have been revised and updated, and are drawn from my own research in each of the locations, augmented with further Internet research.
This isn't intended to be a comprehensive guide. I've arranged the points of interest (well, interesting to me) under random headings. And, for each destination, I've included at least one hotel and a restaurant.