What is your favorite thing about England?
 

Any thoughts?

My favorite thing about England is the English import I married almost 20 years ago. He's a keeper. ((L))

I'm not sure if you looking for specifics or are posing the question in a more metaphorical sense, but, as an American, I like the history of England. I'm continually amazed at the age of buildings and the history that constantly surrounds you when you're in London, for example. In America, we put ropes around anything over 100 years old and charge admission. In England, I think I've slept in beds over a hundred years old.

Another of my favorite things about England is London's pub culture. So much fun!

Thanks Gekko, this is good to know as I will be traveling alone and probably going to the pubs!

I hope this isn't another one of these questions actually posed here by the Fodor's staff so they can enhance their guidebooks with "free" feedback from unsuspecting users. Think I'm joking??? just ask them directly whether or not they constantly monitor the info here and mine it for all it is worth PLUS collect the addresses of every user and sell those for profit!
Enough ranting...my favorite thing is the shade of green in the late Spring and the roses in all the gardens.

No, I'm not from Fodors, I really wanted to know, haha

Several things:

-Sense of humor, e.g., Evelyn Waugh
-Great acting, e.g., Alec Guinness
-Writers: Greene, Waugh, Swift
-Their departure from America and Ireland

Anthony

My favorite thing is that even though it is a foreign country, when I go there I feel like I am going home. Also, the first time I went (I have been twice and will shortly go for my third time) it was better than I imagined from everything I have read about it.

bookwurm, by any chance, do you sell model trains?

Keith

The food.

The extraordinary variety of activities.

Ditto Gekkos's sentiments.
The history is amazing to me...I would love to be able to drive just a few hours to get to somewhere like York or visit Wales...there are hundreds of wonderful places everywhere you turn.
And the pubs...

The culture, the history, the countryside. I love England in general. The historical aspects are fantastic. The countryside is rolling and unspoiled, and I just love the culture in general; the accents, the pubs, the cream teas...love it all!

Wales, Scotland and Ireland are not in england ...but very nice they are too !!

Mucky-I wasn't implying that Wales was in England. Just that it is very visitable from England.

England produces some of my favorite products - Portmeirion ceramics, fine bone china, LUSH bath and body products and Mitchell's Wool Fat soap. All that girly stuff.....

I like the pubs too.

The very best thing about England is that, wherever you are, you're not all that far from Scotland!

As I live here, too many things to mention, and the list is topped by all the friends and family I have here.

More tangible things include the excellent cosmopolitan nature of London's population (and restaurants) and the fantastic range of accents - that one language can sound sooo different is a constant source of amazement to me.

As for whether or not Fodors mine the forum for information that they can then use in their guidebooks - so what if they do? By posting in such a public domain one is surely ceding all rights to ownership of that information and anyway - TINSTAAFL - There is no such thing as a free lunch - there has to be something in it for them - I would bet that the minimal income from advertising doesn't even begin to cover the costs of hosting this site, a site we all benefit from for free.

I'd rather think that Fodors finds this forum plays an important role for them than worry about them making a decision to scrap it because it's a bit of a white elephant.

That's just my opinion, of course!

Beginning at Heathrow, I love that you can see virtually every nationality on the planet represented and hear every language.

I love that ivy grows around everything.
That the 'Goth' and the businessman sit side by side on the tube and are actually tolerant of each other.
That everything I read about English history becomes real the moment I land there.

That I get to rent a thatched cottage in the middle of a chocolate-box village and wander home from the pub at night along streets filled with night-scented stock. That the sound of birds wakes me in the morning. And that a cuppa tastes better there.

That green in England is not a product of chemicals. That they love their dogs. That Druids actually cavort around Stonehenge. That you can be totally lost a minute after you get off an 'M' road.

That the people don't gush or fawn over you. That they fill your pint to overflowing and you don't have to tip everyone all the time. That they know about their country and its history and read newspapers voraciously. That they are irreverant in a clever way.

That you actually have to think when you watch their game shows. That they are a bit eccentric. That you can find the holiday you want - hiking, museums, pub crawls, architecture, sailing - in one small island.

That you can have a pint where the Crusaders had a pint. Stand in the room where Rudyard Kipling wrote. See the place that Winston Churchill loved the most. And go to a village fete, complete with Morris dancers and a maypole.

Castles, Manor Homes, the countryside, and the British accents. Tea and scones.

No question about it -- THE THEATRE!!

RickMav....NICELY PUT!!! Can I ditto that?

To Ani - ditto away.

I'll have to add my vote to the history of England.

The Sally Lunn Bunn in Bath is another fav.

EastEnders - the best soap opera of all time now cancelled by those dastardly folks at BBC America!

And of course, the history, the pubs, the countryside, the people, watching the saga of the royal family, staying at snooty Claridges - it's all good!

It's so........English.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts here. This is exactly what I was looking for. It has really amped me up for my trip in May!! At first I considered 4 days in London, now I am thinking a week!! Even this will not be long enough, but I'm sure leave me longing to come back again soon.

I can't wait to see the pubs! I am in Portland, Oregon and beer is a really big deal here!

London ... and those British colloquialisms.

What's not to love about England?!

My favorites are:
the history of the place -- the fact that everything is so old and treasured.
the fact that England is such a nation of readers -- I love to browse in English book stores
That the people may be reserved on the outside, but are just about the most considerate people ever on the inside.
Annette

Rickmav - thankyou for a great piece of writing.

For me - a Brit expat - the UK is encapsulated in what I miss about it most. And that's not the castles and such - it's the BBC.

Alice, if you really mean what you say about the BBC, I suggest that you e-mail Tony Blair ASAP. Sorry to introduce politics, but the present government seems to be determined to destroy the BBC or a least to intimidate it. To be politically even-handed I'll say that the Tories also hated the Beeb when they were in office probably because they too were held to account for their policies.

London's cheap airfares so I can get away from this horrrible congested island as often as possible!

The gardens, the weather (HONEST), the loooooong summer days, Pimms on the lawn w/ salmon sandwiches and scones/clotted cream, the history, THEATRE, sitting by a roaring fire in a country pub having a civilised political discussion (as opposed to un-civilized as it often is at home), Scrumpy, Newcastle Brown, punting on the Cherwell or Cam (and Oxford and Cambridge for that matter), Roundabouts!, and a thousand other things . . . . .

History everywhere. Preservation of the small villages and towns. Fantastic stone houses with beautiful gardens. Theater. Pubs. The English sense of humour. The British accents in all their varieties. Walking paths through so much of the country. Beautiful countryside. London with all of its history, museums, and huge variety of terrific restaurants in all price ranges. And most of all, my sweetie.

I'm partial as I have friends there. I like the idea of their "locals"
In my friends' crowd, they are very laid back, could care how you look or dress as long as you were nice and fun, where the otherside of the coin, I once had a love who owned a place on Saville Row.He was the opposite;
We broke up because he hated the French.

I get the sense that most of you lot would have us preserve this nation in aspic.
The danger would be that it'd end up some theme-park chocolate-box-y merrie olde Englande, with long summer evenings, the dull thwack of leather upon willow, warm beer and old maids cycling to evensong, thatched cottages and caps doffed to village squires. (To borrow liberally from the unlamented John Major).

I don't believe it's our history or our theatre, pubs or village greens that define England.

For me the things that are most redolent of England are either landscapes (particularly the chalk downlands that I grew up on)or the vibrancy of some of our cities... for me it's either the uber-urban or the supra-natural, never, I'm afraid the cutesy rural idyll of Agatha Christie & The Daily Mail. Give me the earthen sod of Ted Hughes or the zeitgeist of Zephaniah anyday!

Dr D.

Our first trip to England was in 1969 and we still talk about a phenomenon we saw then and have experienced again and again since.

We call it "the two of clubs syndrome."

No matter where and no matter with whom, simply start a conversation using the "two of clubs" gambit, the lowest common denominators of person-to-person talk. The weather, the headlines, the traffic, just anything banal.

And your British conversation-mate will be off and babbling. For minutes, for hours. Just talk, talk, talk. It takes them 50 words to say what we Yanks say in a couple or just with a grunt.

We found this "two of clubs" habit to be particularly effective with older people out in the country. They were so lonely, so longing for human conversation, argument, or companionship that we struck up talks that would go on and on. Some of those people of 1969 and later trips are friends to this day! "You Yanks have such a funny way of talking," they would say. And they say so to this very day!

The memories

The "two of clubs" story reminded me so much of one of Bill Bryson's observations on the quirks and foibles of England and the English. Anyone with a fondness for this subject should read (if they haven't already) his "Notes from a Small Island". It is certainly one of the funniest travel books I have ever read.

"The finest sight and Englishman ever sees is the High Road that leads to Scotland"

That's what Johnston said, isn't it?:)

Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his dictionary of the English language, defined oatmeal as follows: a grain eaten by horses in England and by men in Scotland.

He had it all wrong, now didn't he?

But you prove a point; there is a long-lived antipathy between the two cultures and it makes for some very, very funny conversations.