Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

I’m in the glorious Georgian town of Bath, in England. While this town offers some fine sightseeing by day, it also boasts some fun evening entertainment — and an easy opportunity to get out of the city to explore the countryside.

In England, street theater is a fun option after your pub dinner. There are cheesy ghost tours in many towns. But the best hour and a half of laughs I’ve enjoyed anywhere in Britain is in the otherwise sedate town of Bath: the Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk by Noel Britten and his partners. A ritual for me with each visit is to join Noel for what he promises includes “absolutely no history or culture” as we wander the back lanes of Bath. Listening to Noel tell the same old jokes, but spiced up with his sharp ad-lib wit playing off the international crowd gathered, makes this £9 and 90 minutes very well spent.

I met Maddy Thomas 20 years ago when she was just starting her Mad Max minibus tours. Her vision was the perfect example of “find a need and fill it”: She offered train travelers a memory- and experience-packed day of touring outside Bath — hitting the highlights that are tough to reach without a car, like stone circles and charming Cotswold villages. As Maddy helped me suss out restaurants in Bath last night, we stumbled upon Noel Britten heading out to meet his Bizarre Bath group for his night’s work. Noel’s Bizarre Bath Street Theatre Walk and Maddy’s Mad Max Tours have, for nearly two decades, helped make my guidebook readers really thankful for my England guidebook. And I’m thankful for the hard work of Maddy and Noel.

These days, the stereotype of “bad food in Britain” is woefully dated. Britain has been on the leading edge of the foodie revolution, and I find it’s easy to eat very well here. Here are some examples of the foods I’ve enjoyed in my British travels.

One of the joys of traveling in Britain is enjoying breakfast at each B&B. Your hosts pride themselves on having a long list of classic “English fry-up breakfast” elements for their guests to check off: fried toast, blood sausage, porridge, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, grapefruit sections, Weetabix, and so on.

For me, one breakfast-time frustration is cold and crunchy toast with butter that’s not melted, but scraped across the top. The toast (“white or granary?” is the cheery question you get each morning) comes in a rack designed so it gets cold long before it meets your butter.

Pub grub is fun, but after the heavy breakfasts and lots of meat pies and fish-and-chips, finding a restaurant that raises the gastronomic bar is a welcome change. And these days, even the simplest town has a little foodie place where you can get well-presented “mains” featuring local and seasonal produce. This delightful plate of Cornish cheese and local fish was good enough to earn this just-opened restaurant a place in the new edition of my guidebook.

One of England’s most famous celebrity chefs is Rick Stein. His base is the Cornish fishing port of Padstow, where he runs a cooking school and a variety of Rick Stein restaurants. His flagship restaurant in Padstow is named, simply, Seafood Restaurant. I took time for a drawn-out, three-course lunch here…and loved it. I needed to give this Rick Stein a serious taste, because for the last several years in England, when I mention my book, people say “Oh, Rick Stein…he’s very good.” Now I better understand who people are confusing me with…and I’m OK with it.

It’s fun to be on the road grabbing photos to illustrate points I make in my lectures. For example: “In the market, characteristic little cafés that cater to local shoppers provide both a great value and a charming memory.”