Ways of seeing
By Kate Simon
Last week, I was in Norwich researching a guide we’re putting together for the upcoming City of Ale festival. ‘Between The Pubs’ will launch on this blog next Thursday, the opening day of the month-long event, which this year runs from 26 May to 26 June. Complementing the festival’s official pub trails, our self-guided tour will provide less obvious suggestions about what to see and do in between beers.
Our aim is to offer a slice of the city. The all-encompassing guide has surely had its day – no corner of the Earth is unexplored, certainly no part of Britain. Even leading guidebook publisher Lonely Planet recently felt compelled to launch an “experience-led” series labelled the “anti-guidebook”. Browse any bookshop’s travel shelves and you'll see many guides have a theme imposed to attract different audiences – road trips, family holidays, eco-travel, the list is endless.
Mass travel has made it necessary to see our world through a prism. Rather than reach for a guide to a destination, I usually prefer to be equipped with the tools to interpret what is around me, wherever I'm headed. It's a useful approach to gather publications that enable a deeper understanding of points of personal interest. A random sample of what I have recently popped in my bag includes How To Date Buildings (Trevor Yorke, Countryside Books) and Wild Flowers (Collins Gem).
And then there’s what is available to view online as you go about – fun apps such as ChirpOMatic to identify birdsong, and more searching tourism projects, such as North Norfolk District Council’s Deep History Coast.
This multi-layered guide delves into the pre-history of 36km of the coast path, from Weybourne to Cart Gap, where some of the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe has been unearthed. It centres on a GPS map that triggers information about ancient Doggerland, employing clever techniques such as augmented reality to create visions of such things as the steppe mammoth whose 600,000-year-old bones were found in the cliffs at West Runton in 1990.
Tourist board websites are an obvious place to find this kind of thing. But check out accommodation providers such as hotels and self-catering cottage companies, transport providers, even local estate agents, many of which commission “rich content” to attract browsers and help boost their Google search rankings. It’s part of my day job to create content of this kind – if you’re in Norfolk and fond of crab, the “Crab Crawl” I created for my client Congham Hall suggests a different way to tour this coast.
Back on paper, local tourist information centres offer rich pickings, often stocking publications with true local insight. And that information could as easily come in the shape of a poster or pamphlet as a book. (Gathering these collectables has become a bit of a hobby of mine.)
I'm not against a weighty tome (Pevsner’s architectural guides are regular travelling companions). A few years ago, I co-wrote a 300-page guidebook to Cheshire for the independent travel publisher Bradt. Yet, while the book covers the whole county, its content is shaped by the fact that it sits within Bradt’s increasingly popular Slow Travel series, which applies the philosophy pioneered by the Slow Food movement. Just as Slow Food celebrates food with a commitment to community and the environment, Slow Travel is about taking time to explore, seeking out the local differences that make up a sense of place, usually on foot, bicycle or public transport.
Slow Travel is one of our influences at British Beer Breaks. After all, it goes hand in hand with our quest to help our readers seek out and savour good beer. We’re also guided by news and the more left-field things to see and do. It’s our response to the widening and increasingly inquisitive audience we detect are embracing the beer revolution that has launched hundreds of new breweries, beer styles and drinking spaces and events in Britain in the past decade.
Our growing beer community is prepared to travel to enjoy a beer experience and explore as we go. Next stop, Norwich.