Start with Chaucer, Dickens, Blake and Larkin in Westminster Abbey. Hop on a bus through Zadie Smiths North London or spend an afternoon at Colliers Wood Nature Reserve in Nottinghamshire and look at the lake all grey and visionary, stretching into the moist, translucent vista of trees and meadow that D. H. Lawrence described in Women in Love. Come back to London to walk along Monica Alis Brick Lane and try to push a trolley through the wall of Platform 93/4 at Kings Cross Station. From the Bronte parsonage in Haworth to Waughs Castle Howard; from Beatrix Potters Lake District, Shakespeares Stratford and Robert Louis Stevensons Edinburgh, there are gardens, monuments, museums, churches and a surprising quantity of stained glass. There are walks both urban and rural, where you can explore real landscapes or imaginary haberdashers shops. Theres the club where Bucks Fizz was invented and a pub where you can eat Sherlocks Steak & Ale Pie. And theres a railway station where you can stroke the muzzle of one of the worlds most famous and endearing bears. You can start in Cornwall and work your way up to the Gateway to the Scottish Highlands, taking detours to Northern Ireland in the west and Norfolk in the east. Or you can drop in on spec on the place nearest to you. Wherever you are in the United Kingdom, youre never far from something associated with a good book.
