The Draw

The Draw

On 16^th December the draws for the knockout phases of both the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League took place.  However, on the 5^th floor of a London office, near the River Thames, a third arguably more significant draw was taking place.  I am of course referring to the ‘UK Cities Challenge that shall determine which City I shall visit first’ draw.  I decided on picking my first three destinations on this day as this would allow me time to research each location and make any suitable plans.  Placing each City on a folded piece of paper and calling on the aid of a trusty work colleague the first City to come out of the pot (a small trophy celebrating the runners up prize from the 2007/08 Wednesday Night Division 3 5-a-side football league – yes I was very successful in my youth) was Oxford.  This was quickly followed by Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and then Wells.  So there we have it.  Our first 3 locations have been decided.

Further Planning

Waiting eagerly for 2014 to arrive, I began tentatively researching each location and decided to focus first on just how I’d get there.  It seemed logical to me to make use of the UK’s extensive rail network to get to each City (namely because I don’t actually own a car, buses would take too long and flying would only be possible for 1 or 2 of the larger locations).  It remains to be seen just how expensive rail travel will prove to be, but for now this research would enable me to get a sense of just how long I’d be travelling each weekend.  I was delighted to discover that nearly all of the UK’s Cities are accessible from London directly by rail.  There are 6 English cities that cannot be reached in this way, although 4 of those require just one change along the way.  That leaves just 2 Cities (Ripon and Wells) that I’d need to seek an alternative method to get to as neither of them have a station within their boundaries. 

Wales looks to be slightly trickier as 2 of its 6 Cities are not connected to the rail network, although St David’s is only a 40 minute drive from Haverfordwest, which does have a direct connection to London.  So that leaves me with only needing to work out how to get to tiny St Asaph’s. 

I was somewhat shocked to discover that all of Scotland’s Cities have direct routes from London, although obviously the journeys will be lengthy and time consuming, and I imagine the prices not too cheap.  That’s certainly something to think about, perhaps a flight or two would be preferable after all when visiting these places.

The Challenge

There are 69 Cities in the United Kingdom.  The majority of these are in England (51), with the remaining 18 being shared between Scotland (7), Wales (6) and Northern Ireland (5).  Whilst glancing through the list I noticed that shamefully I’d only ever visited 15 of these.  And of those 15 it would be fraudulent to suggest that I’d actually spent time exploring more than just a handful of them.  In fact, aside from City of London (where I currently live and have worked for the best part of 10 years) I couldn’t actually claim that I really knew any of them at all.  Perhaps I could confidently tick off Bath as I’ve been there on two or three occasions (most recently in 2012) and at a stretch Cambridge and Brighton due to a couple of day trips there in the past.  But aside from that the remaining places on my list are reduced to mere fleeting visits such as a stag do (Bristol), attending a football match (Southampton and Cardiff), visiting a mate at University where all we saw was the inside of a few pubs (St Albans), using it as a stopover for the night (Newport) or merely just passing through (Carlisle).  And of the remaining places I’d seen, a trip to Chelmsford would have occurred before it was even granted City status, and up until now I wasn’t even aware that City of Westminster was even considered to be a City in its own right.  As for York, I may have once visited as a child but I’d have to ask my parents.  I hardly feel that I could count that as a place I’ve been to.  Granted I’ve seen quite a bit of both Edinburgh and Glasgow, but I’d failed to set foot in any of Scotland’s other Cities.  And for me Northern Ireland in its entirety is still a blank canvas.

So I decided I wanted to change this.  As I sat there reading through the list and being amazed that I hadn’t even heard of some of these places (St Asaph in Wales(?!)) let alone been to them, the idea for a new challenge began to form.  I would attempt to visit every single City in the United Kingdom. 

Initially I decided to begin ticking off each place at the turn of the year, and to have completed the challenge by the close of 2014.  I quickly realised however that this for me would be unfeasible.  Namely because there are more Cities in the UK than there are weekends in a year, and unless I put all of my holiday into this, then I’d have no chance of completing it on time.  Secondly, I’m not that committed.  Knowing myself (and I think I do pretty well), I can easily envisage not fancy taking myself all the way off to some far flung corner of the UK on a cold weekend in February, so there’s bound to be weekends where I choose not to journey somewhere and pick sitting on my sofa as a cosy alternative.  Thirdly, there’s the issue of money.  This mission will not be cheap, and seeing as at the moment I still can’t get from one payday to the next without coming up short a week or two in advance, I think it would be foolish of me to think things would be different here.  And lastly, I’m starting this challenge in 2014.  2014 is a World Cup year.  I’ve the feeling I won’t be journeying further than the nearest London pub during most of June and July.

But I needed a focus.  I didn’t want to just set off on a never ending tour of the UK, where I’d still find myself gallivanting across the country as I eased into middle age.  No, I have other things to achieve in life (like growing up and settling down one day – perhaps).  Looking for inspiration as to how to contain my new goal I soon found it in the form of politics.  Scotland’s bid to gain independence from the UK.  This was perfect.  Firstly, it was topical.  It was relevant to what I was trying to achieve.  If Scotland were to remove themselves from the United Kingdom then I’d instantly lose 7 of my intended targets.  What good is a challenge like this without getting to soak in the delights of places such as Stirling and Inverness?  Exactly.  So I had my deadline and what’s more it seemed manageable.  If Scotland is even to go down the route of independence then the earliest this will happen looks set to be March 2016.  This should give me more than enough time to complete my task whilst allowing for life’s other distractions to not get in the way.

So just what is the task?  Sure, it’s easy to go somewhere, take a photo of a sign and then tick it off as visited but that’s not enough for me.  The goal for me is that once I’ve returned from each trip, I want to feel as though I know that City, I want to gain a sense of what that City is about.  Sometimes I’ll be able to go somewhere for just a day, whilst other larger destinations may require one or even two nights stay in order to get as much from them as I can.  I will look to research just what is unique about each City before visiting and try to tap into that culture once there.   I am going into this fairly blind and to be honest my main impression of what I’ll get from this challenge is that I’m going to be visiting a hell of a lot of cathedrals!  I need to ensure I get more than that from each location.

In order to determine in which order I will take on my challenge I’ve decided to make it random.  This for me adds to the adventure as each week I will be unaware of just where I am going to next.  There will be exceptions of course, I’m sure there’ll be times where a long trip up to Inverness is just not feasible and I’ve already decided that I will try to visit all of the Northern Ireland locations in one go by taking time off work and making a road trip of it. 

Here then is a list of all of the Cities I will be attempting to visit;

        Bath

Birmingham

Bradford

Brighton & Hove

Bristol

Cambridge

Canterbury

Carlisle

Chelmsford

Chester

Chichester

Coventry

Derby

Durham

Ely

Exeter

Gloucester

Hereford

Kingston Upon Hull

Lancaster

Leeds

Leicester

Lichfield

Lincoln

Liverpool

City of London

Manchester

Newcastle upon Tyne

Norwich

Nottingham

Oxford

Peterborough

Plymouth

Portsmouth

Preston

Ripon

Salford

Salisbury

Sheffield

Southampton

St Albans

Stoke-on-Trent

Sunderland

Truro

Wakefield

Wells

City of Westminster

Winchester

Wolverhampton

Worcester

York

Aberdeen

Dundee

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Inverness

Perth

Stirling

Bangor

Cardiff

Newport

St Asaph

St David’s

Swansea

Armagh

Belfast

Derry

Lisburn

Newry