British wonders: 7 Giants Causeway

Location: North Antrim, Northern Ireland
What’s the damage? Free
Another World Heritage site, the Giants Causeway on Northern Ireland’s Atlantic coastline is one of Britain’s most distinctive sights. A geological freak, it is formed of tens of thousands of great hexagonal columns of volcanic rock that fit together in unnerving symmetry. The tallest are 12m high and the solidified lava in the cliffs is up to 28m thick.
The more romantic explanation for this quirk of nature is that it is the work of the ancient Irish giant Finn McCool, who fell in love with a lady giant living on a Hebridean island, and thus he built a causeway to bring her back to Ulster.
The surrounding cliffs also afford dramatic views, and long walks beckon along the surrounding coastline.

British wonders: 8 Hadrian’s Wall

Location: Cumbria-Tyne & Wear, northern England
What’s the damage? Free
An astounding, 73-mile testament to ambition and sheer bloody-minded tenacity, Hadrian’s Wall is Britain’s biggest Roman monument– and the largest ancient monument in northern Europe.
Running from the western Solway Firth almost to the mouth of the Tyne in the east, this 1,900-year-old World Heritage site is estimated to have been about 5m high and 3m thick and took at least three legions more than six years to build – including an accompanying string of 16 forts. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t built to keep the hairy Scottish barbarians out: rather it was a down-to-earth territorial marker and handy customs post.
But whatever its backstory, Hadrian’s Wall is one of northern England’s great hikes, through lush hills and over windswept basalt ridges to Northumberland National Park and Newcastle.

British wonders:  9 The Tate Galleries of London

Location: Central London
What’s the damage? Free
We have the inventor of the sugar cube – Henry Tate – to thank for two of our nation’s top free-entry treasures: Tate Britain, and its upstart sibling, Tate Modern. If we are sticking strictly to British treasures, then the original gallery is our winner: founded in 1897, it is now devoted entirely to national art, from the likes of Blake, the Hogarths, Bacon, Gainsborough, Whistler, Spencer and Turner right up to his namesake modern art competition, the Turner Prize.
But the tremendous Tate Modern can claim the crown as the largest modern art gallery in the world – and one of the most outstanding. Expect to see work by international superstars such as Monet, Picasso, Dalí, Warhol and Pollock for starters – and to be awestruck by this former power station’s cavernous Turbine Hall, thought to be the world’s largest indoor sculpture space.