British wonders: a Top 50 Countdown

We rate the nation’s most beautiful and fascinating sights and ask - how many have you actually visited?
We consider ourselves a pretty patriotic nation. And why not? We have enough history, natural beauty and quirky corners packed into these fair isles to keep us busily exploring for several lifetimes.
Yet, according to a recent survey, twice as many of us Brits have visited the Eiffel Tower than Stonehenge.
Are we so obsessed with overseas holidays that we are overlooking our own national treasures? And if so, surely now is the time – with spiralling travel costs, the credit crunch and the weakening pound – to rediscover the best that Britain has to offer.
So, we have grilled our travel experts, polled you our readers and agonised over the options to bring you our countdown of Britain’s very best 50 sights.
Take a look. You might be surprised. And then tell us here - honestly - how many of our nation’s wonders have you actually visited?

British wonders: 49 Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Location: Ballintoy, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
What’s the damage? £3.70
Extreme vertigo sufferers are excused from visiting this national wonder. But anyone with even half a head for heights should keep it on their lists, as the British Isles have few more thrilling and windswept spots than the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge on the rugged Northern Irish coast.
Just 1m wide and 20m long, the bridge is strung precariously across a chasm between the sea cliffs and a small island with excellent views of Rathlin Island and Fair Head. Fishermen have been rigging the rope bridge up every spring for 200 years.
Even on a calm day, the bridge sways in the sea breeze, so try not to pay too much attention to the 30m drop to jagged rocks and crashing surf below. You risk joining the many visitors who have been too scared to return across the bridge and have had to be ferried back by boat.

British wonders: 50 Falkirk Wheel

Location: Near Falkirk, Scotland
What’s the damage? Boat trip £8
A recent – and for some surprising – inclusion in the list of Britain’s top attractions is this ambitious rotating boatlift mid-way between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Falkirk Wheel was designed as an innovative solution to an old problem: how to join the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, which lay 35m – about the height of a 10-storey building – below.
It was designed as a working beast, but has also taken on an iconic status since opening in 2002 – and is now one of Scotland’s biggest tourist draws. You can take a whirl on the huge contraption by hopping aboard a boat that takes you up to the higher level, out through the aqueduct and under the ancient Antonine Wall, itself a World Heritage site.

British wonders: 46 Brighton Royal Pavilion

Location: Brighton, South-East England
What’s the damage? Adult £8.50
If you thought all of England’s stately homes were dry and dusty, a visit to Brighton's outlandish Royal Pavilion is overdue. This flamboyantly exotic palace, built between 1787 and 1815, was the seaside playpad of the young King George IV before he ascended to the throne.
One of the country’s most self-indulgent buildings, its exterior is thick with Mogul-style domes and minarets, while the interior is slathered with vivid colour and lavish oriental-themed decor. Golden dragons coil around elephantine chandeliers, while bejewelled snakes slither down columns and every inch of wall and ceiling is alive with gilt, crystal or exotic hues.
The Prince Regent was notorious for entertaining his aristocratic mates and their floosies with wildly hedonistic parties here.

British wonders: 47 Xscape

Location: Milton Keynes, central England
What’s the damage? Varies
Then again, if history isn’t your bag, how about some indoor real-snow skiing and simulated skydiving to liven things up?
According to research by VisitBritain, the Xscape entertainment complex in Milton Keynes was one of the nation’s most-visited attractions last year, drawing 6.9m people – that’s over three times as many as the Tower of London.
A striking modern building, the second-tallest in Milton Keynes, Xscape contains a real-snow ski slope, a climbing wall and even a new wind tunnel that imitates the experience of freefall skydiving, as well as the obligatory cinemas, shops and restaurants.
There are two more Xscape complexes in Castleford, Yorkshire and Braehead, near Glasgow.

British wonders: 48 Conwy

Location: Conwy, Snowdonia, Northern Wales
What’s the damage? £4.70
Conwy is one of Wales’s most impressive castles – and a World Heritage site to boot – yet many young Brits have never heard of it.
Its exterior is dramatic to the point of theatricality, with eight vast drum towers, chunky battlements and an epic mountain backdrop to Snowdonia. And the well-preserved walled town below is filled with a pretty mix of medieval and Victorian buildings.
The castle, built in the late 13th century, formed part of Edward I's plan to surround Wales with an iron ring of castles to subdue the unruly populace.

British wonders: 43 Callanish Standing Stones

Location: Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
What’s the damage? Free
The windswept island of Lewis off the west coast of Scotland is home to one of Britain’s most-complete stone circles: the Callanish Standing Stones, which date back to the time of the pyramids some 3,800-5,000 years ago.
While it may not get the press of its brawnier southern cousins Stonehenge or Avebury, this ring of 13 monoliths and a central block is their equal for mystery; it also claims an especially atmospheric location on a wild, secluded promontory. Around 40 smaller stones radiate outward in ceremonial avenues.
There are many other megalithic sites in the vicinity, as well as Iron Age brochs –round stone towers.

British wonders: 44 Cheddar Gorge

Location: Somerset, south-west England
What’s the damage? Caves & gorge £15; gorge only, £4
The largest ravine in Britain, Cheddar Gorge is a spectacular rift through the Mendip Hills of Somerset. The area is also riddled with colourful limestone caves bristling with stalactites and stalagmites. Excavators found Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man, here in 1903.
You can drive through the gorge or investigate the 5km-long walking circuit around its sheer cliffs – which reach 113m high – with views to Glastonbury Tor and Exmoor.

British wonders: 45 Cerne Abbas

Location: Dorset, south-west England
What’s the damage? Free
The scandalously well-endowed Cerne Giant (aka the “Rude Man”) stands to attention on a hillside outside Dorchester, in Dorset. This 55m-high hill figure is one of the largest in Britain and certainly the most instantly recognisable.
He is carved from the underlying chalk bedrock and carries a huge knobbled club that has led many people to theorise that he represents Hercules and dates from the days of Roman occupation. The true age of the giant is uncertain, however, as little evidence remains earlier than the 17th century. Some even argue that he was dug as a parody of Oliver Cromwell in the English civil war.
The giant is one of only two human hillside figures in Britain, the other being the more respectable Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex.

British wonders: 40 Edinburgh Castle

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
What’s the damage? Adult £10
Topping a black volcanic crag looming over the city at large, Edinburgh Castle is a defiant symbol of the nation, as well as being one of Scotland’s top tourist draws and a World Heritage site. Its position makes it visible from nearly everywhere in the city, but just in case your attention wanders, it reminds everyone of its presence with an almighty cannon blast from the battlements at 1 o’clock daily.
Most of the castle dates to the 16th century but St Margaret's Chapel has survived since the 12th century – making it the city’s oldest structure.

British wonders: 41 Seven Sisters

Location: Near Eastbourne, south-east England
What’s the damage? Free
Move over, Dover. While many people think of the White Cliffs of that southern port city as being the most beautiful series of chalk rock faces in Britain, the Seven Sisters cliffs can actually claim to be purer, whiter and just plain prettier than their easterly neighbours.
Indeed they are often used as stand-ins for Dover’s cliffs in film and television because they are less blighted by modern development.
The Seven Sisters rollercoaster their way along the English Channel below the South Downs of East Sussex. The highest clifftop point in the area is Beachy Head, a site of intoxicating beauty but notorious for being one of the nation’s top suicide spots.

British wonders: 42 Longleat

Location: Wiltshire, South-West England
What’s the damage? Adult £10
One of the south-west’s more eccentric family attractions, Longleat is part stately home, part safari park and part showcase for its owner’s quirkier whims. Open to the public longer - since 1946 - than any other ancestral home, it claims to be the oldest safari park outside Africa.
The park, which has had its own BBC TV programme about it, is set amid grounds designed by the legendary landscape artist Capability Brown. Other attractions include a narrow-gauge railway, a maze, the Elizabethan mansion and some truly trippy murals by the present day owner, Lord Bath.

British wonders: 37 Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Location: Lancashire, North-West England
What’s the damage? £15
The disarming seaside resort of Blackpool claims to be England’s second most-visited town after London, and a large part of its appeal is down to the giddy, nostalgia-riddled delights of its 112-year-old funfair.  Opened way back in 1896 and still boasting many of its age-old rides (nicknamed the “woodies”), the pleasure park nonetheless has its fair share of the latest pulse-juddering rides, too.
It represents the kind of unselfconscious, unadulterated fun that even the most cynical of Brits finds hard to resist – as evidenced by the astonishing 5.5 million visitors it received last year.
If that’s not enough of a nostalgia fix for you, catch a tram or a donkey ride or stroll along the beachside promenade to Blackpool Tower, where you can indulge Strictly Come Dancing fantasies in the ornate Victorian ballroom.

British wonders: 38 Whitby Abbey

Location: Whitby, Yorkshire, North-East England
What’s the damage? Adult £5
In an impressive case of split identity, Whitby manages to be both a Goth’s dream and a delightfully quaint little seaside resort. Lying on Yorkshire’s scenic coastline, its main claim to fame is its eerily imposing abbey, which features so prominently in Bram Stoker’s classic horror story Dracula.
The abbey, glowering over the town from its clifftop perch and founded in 657, has also served as a kings’ burial place and was home to the saintly poet Caedmon. The town as a whole is a tangle of narrow medieval lanes leading down to a busy little harbour and – reputedly – some of the best fish and chips shops in Britain.

British wonders: 39 Pembrokeshire Coast National Park

Location: Pembrokeshire, Western Wales
What’s the damage? No charge
Stretching out along the far-flung southwest coast of Wales, the Pembrokeshire coastline does not court or get the attention of other British national parks – but that makes its wild, untamed beauty all the rarer.
Its wave-battered shoreline of soaring cliffs and secluded golden beaches makes for irresistible walking, not to mention rock-climbing, kayaking, surfing, coasteering and diving. Boat trips run to offshore islands alive with squawking seabirds – including puffins – and grey seal. Also keep an eye out for dolphins and minke whale.
Pretty seaside towns including St Davids – Britain’s smallest “city” – pepper the coastline. St Davids’ fragile cathedral is among Wales’s holiest sites.

British wonders: 34 Caernarfon Castle

Location: Caernarfon, Northern Wales
What’s the damage? Adult £5.10
Caernarfon is Wales’s most celebrated castle and a World Heritage site. You can see why – built, as it is, on a truly commanding scale, designed to leave the rebellious Welsh in no doubt as to who was boss back in the 13th century. Its polygonal towers and intimidating battlements loom over the walled town below.
Constructed as the final chapter in Edward I’s conquest of Wales, the fortress also served as his palace and seat of government.

British wonders: 35 Imperial War Museum, Duxford

Location: Cambridgeshire, Eastern England
What’s the damage? Adult £16
The rip-roaring Imperial War Museum at Duxford, just south of Cambridge, is a magnet to aeroplane-obsessed kids, Biggles-raised grown-ups and misty-eyed grandparents.
Europe's biggest aviation museum, it is home to around 200 winged war machines, from dive-bombers to biplanes and Spitfire to Concorde.
The enormous airfield around which its vast hangars are spread played a crucial role in the Battle of Britain, during the second world war.
No surprise, then, that Duxford airshows are reckoned the most spectacular in Europe, if not the world.

British wonders: 36 Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Location: Glasgow, Scotland
What’s the damage? Free
Recently reopened following years of restoration, the Kelvingrove is Scotland’s top museum and gallery, chock-a-block with famous names and fascinating artefacts. Dali, Botticelli, Monet and Van Gogh are all represented in the gallery – deemed by experts to be one of the best civic art collections in Europe. And the gallery’s stash of weapons, armoury and natural history is also rated as one of the best in the country.
But best of all – entry is free. Little wonder, then, that this is one of the most-visited museums in Britain outside London.

British wonders: 31 Brecon Beacons National Park

Location: South-Eastern Wales and Herefordshire
What’s the damage? Free
A rippling blanket of moors, valleys and uplands laid out over east Wales and a sliver of England, the Beacons tempt many a walker on to its two long-distance paths - Offa’s Dyke, along the border with England - and the Taff Trail. Some of Britain’s longest and deepest caves are hidden beneath its mountains. There are also long-distance pedals for cyclists and plenty of opportunities for horse-riding, cycling, caving, canoeing and hang-gliding.

British wonders: 32 West Belfast’s murals

Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland
What’s the damage? Free
They are surely one of Britain’s more unlikely tourist attractions, but the murals of West Belfast continue to draw huge numbers of visitors every year. Born of sectarian hatred and violence, the paintings - daubed over houses, businesses and walls – reflect the bloody history and politics of their Loyalist and Republican creators.
They can make an intimidating sight, with masked gunmen, paramilitary symbols and martyrs all featuring heavily. However, many of the more hard-edged murals are to be replaced under a government-funded scheme and new murals symbolising peace and tolerance are springing up across the city.

British wonders: 33 Shakespeare’s Globe

Location: Bankside, London
What’s the damage? Tour £10.50
You need not be a fan of the bard to appreciate the labour of love that is this theatre. Faithfully reconstructed in all its thatched and timbered glory, the Globe sits on the site of the original playhouse built in 1599. It was rebuilt in the 1990s as a celebration of the greatest dramatic poet in the English language, whose freshly inked plays were played here in Elizabethan times.
To experience it fully, you will need to attend in a play in the summer months. But a year-round tour includes plenty of lurid tales from the Globe’s heyday, from where the audience went to the toilet, in the absence of loos (yes, you guessed it) to which types of people sat or stood where. The building also houses an exhibition on Shakespeare, the original Globe and its reconstruction.

British wonders: 28 Warwick Castle

Location: Warwickshire, The Midlands
What’s the damage? Adult £15.95
Warwick is a real humdinger of a castle, with magnificent turrets, sprawling gardens and a remarkably well-preserved interior. It’s also a tourist honeypot of epic proportions, with long summer queues and a souvenir industry to rival the GDP of a small country. Run more as a medieval amusement park than a heritage site, its waxwork-inhabited rooms, torture chamber and “ghost tower” are little short of gaudy Madame Tussauds.
But you can’t argue with its mighty, don’t-mess-with-us construction or its stunning location on a cliff overlooking the River Avon. The castle’s oldest features were constructed in 1068, following the Norman invasion.

British wonders: 29 Angel of the North

Location: Near Newcastle, north-east England
What’s the damage? Free
The Angel of the North (aka the Gateshead Flasher) is one of Britain’s most recognisable and talked-about works of art, despite being only 10 years old. The steel structure, the creation of the artist Antony Gormley, spreads its wings beside the A1(M) in Gateshead, near Newcastle in north-east England.
Britain’s largest sculpture, it has a wingspan wider than that of a Boeing 767 and weighs approximately 200 tonnes.

British wonders: 30 Alton Towers

Location: Derbyshire, Central England
What’s the damage? Adult £29
Before Eurodisney, this was Europe’s premier theme park – and it’s still Britain’s No 1, drawing millions of visitors each year thanks to its sheer size and cutting-edge rides. Indeed it would be higher in our countdown, were it not for its skyrocketing prices and relative inaccessibility to those without their own wheels.
Still, few theme parks can compete when it comes to variety. Aside from the rides and play areas, there are an indoor waterpark and a spa for the grown-ups, as well as a hotel and extensive gardens for people needing time out.

British wonders: 25 St Michael’s Mount

Location: Mount’s Bay, Cornwall
What’s the damage? £6.60
This island-abbey forms Cornwall’s best-known landmark, marooned on its own rocky islet with only a low-tide causeway to connect it to the mainland. It is the Cornish counterpart of the renowned fort of Mont Saint Michel in France and served as a fortress during the English civil war.
Time your visit right and you can make your way 366m across the slippery man-made causeway on foot or, less perilously, catch a boat at high tide.

British wonders: 26 Rosslyn Chapel

Location: Near Edinburgh, Scotland
What’s the damage? Adults £7.50
Da Vinci Code fever may have shone a spotlight on Rosslyn Chapel in recent years, but this uniquely beautiful and fascinating little church has been a highlight of Edinburgh’s hinterland for centuries.
What really marks the chapel out is its collection of painstakingly executed decorative carvings, which are loaded with the kind of obscure symbolism that could – and has – kept scholars happy for a lifetime.
These carvings include ancient pagan symbols and mysterious “musical boxes” - a string of 213 patterned cubes protruding from the stonework that some believe may represent a coded message or a musical score.
Founded in 1456, the chapel is linked to the medieval religious order the Knights Templar.

British wonders: 27 Loch Ness

Location: Scottish Highlands
What’s the damage? Free
Forget Nessie for a moment and consider Scotland’s most famous lake for what it is: a breathtakingly lovely expanse that is not only Britain’s longest body of water, at over 23 miles, but also the country’s deepest, to the tune of some 129 fathoms. Plenty of murky water for the legendary beast to lurk in.
Outdoor enthusiasts will be in their element here, with superb walking and horse-riding trails, sailing and fishing opportunities, beaches and wildlife. History lovers can make for the picturesque loch-side ruin of Urquhart Castle, blown up in 1692, and the Caledonian Canal, a vast 19th-century construction bearing ships through the country’s heartlands.

British wonders: 22 Windsor Castle

Location: Windsor, Berkshire, south-east England
What’s the damage? Adult £8-14.80
Arguably the largest and longest-occupied castle in the world, Windsor is an immense pile of castellated ramparts and bastions. Begun in 1070 by William the Conqueror, it soon became his royal hunting pad and is still the royal weekend retreat almost a thousand years later.

You can nose around the Queen’s lavish state apartments and admire works of art by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Van Dyck, Holbein, Rembrandt and Rubens. Then count off kings and queens by the dozen in the royal mausoleum. Among its illustrious corpses are Henry VIII and Charles I (reunited with his severed head) and, most recently, the Queen Mum was buried here in 2002.
Travellers have even been known to bump into HRH in her weekend togs in the castle’s sprawling parkland. Also nearby are the elite public school Eton and the preteen’s favourite Legoland Windsor.

British wonders: 23 Shakespeare houses

Location: Stratford-upon-Avon, the Midlands
What’s the damage? Varies
Shakespeare’s childhood home may be a national treasure but it is also an obligatory spot on the international tour bus circuit. So expect to fight for space in the five half-timbered Tudor homes linked to the bard and his family. The most important is Will’s presumed birthplace. A tourist spot for three centuries now, its guestbook bears the signatures of many a famous English writer.
Shakespeare’s mother’s childhood home and Anne Hathaway’s cottage are both similarly preserved, as is his daughter’s luxurious residence. Little remains of the house in which Shakespeare died, but its foundations stud a commemorative garden.
To remind yourself what all the fuss is about, catch a play by the Royal Shakespeare Company while you are here. The company attracts many big stars to perform in Stratford.

British wonders: 24 Leeds Castle

Location: Near Maidstone, Kent, south-east England
What’s the damage? £15
This enormous moated fortress is often described as one of the world’s most romantic castles. Hardly a reputation to strike fear into the enemy’s heart - but then Leeds Castle has seen very little military action, despite formidable defences and a fine location straddling two islands in a large lake.
Indeed it is characterised as something of a “lady’s castle”, having housed a veritable who’s who of queens throughout its 1,000-year history - most famously being home to Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. For much of the 20th century it was the lavish country pad of the high-society hostess Lady Baillie, who entertained the likes of Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks and JFK here.
The huge estate also has country walks, a maze complete with surreal grotto at its centre, an extensive aviary and falconry demonstrations.