British Heritage: OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1998 Letters

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to winners of our 1998 Win a Trip to Britain contest. We are pleased to announce that our Grand Prize winner was Gayle Meier of Atlanta, Georgia, who wins a place on the 1998 BRITISH HERITAGE/Lord Addison Travel Ltd. Reader Tour ‘In Quest of Camelot’. Our First Prize winner, Pamela Nichols of Bellingham, Washington, wins a $1,000 shopping spree with Walker Metalsmiths. Our Second Prize winner, Karen R. Kronquest of Napa, California, wins a miniature ‘Equatorial’ Sundial compliments of the National Maritime Museum.

The correct identifications of the six photographs (April/May, page 20) are as follows: 1. Cadbury, 2. Tintagel Castle, 3. Looe Pool, 4. Badbury Rings, 5. Arthur’s Seat 6. Arthur’s Quoit. Thanks to all of our readers who participated and congratulations again to all our winners.

TRAVELLERS CHOOSE …

As a regular reader, I enjoyed participating in your recent Travellers’ Choice Awards (August/September, 1998, page 35). To select among some of my favourites was difficult. At the same time, I missed seeing other choices which would have been on my list–Bodiam, Caerphilly, Chepstow, and Conwy Castles, for instance, as well as Igtham Mote, Verulamium Museum, and Fishbourne Roman Palace.

Perhaps at some future time you can repeat these awards, with readers supplying their favorite choices. While I would not care to be the one to tally the ballots, that process might reveal interesting results.

Mary Loftin Grimes,
Jacksonville, Florida

I was intrigued by your Travellers’ Choice nominees–and found it very difficult to narrow mine to just three in some categories.

‘Churches and Cathedrals’ were especially tough. How does one choose between magnificent St. Paul’s, stately Durham, historic Westminster Abbey (or Winchester, York, or Canterbury?). One glaring omission was Lincoln Cathedral, which is usually esteemed, along with Wells and Durham, as one of Britain’s choicest, best-preserved medieval great churches. Coventry is a special, inspiring site, and yet it seems a tad bit unfair to contrast it with others that represent a different era.

I’ve been to 11 of the 13 nominees in this category, the most of any of the grouping, and perhaps this is the root of my dilemma. Castles were challenging too, and Bamburgh’s inclusion would have added to the difficulty of this selection.

R. P. Lamb

I was surprised and disappointed not to see St. Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire and the ancient Roman Verulamium ruins not listed in the ballot. I am a transplanted Brit and visited these sites many times before I came to the United States, and with my husband on vacations to the U.K. There is so much history associated with the Abbey, which dates back to A.D. 700, I believe.

Joy M. Imms,
Brookfield, Wisconsin

Editor’s note: We have been overwhelmed by the response to our first Travellers’ Choice Awards. We knew that we were giving readers a difficult job, and are very pleased with the amount of thought they have obviously put into their selections.

If readers found it tough to choose from the 13 nominees in each of our awards categories, imagine how difficult it was for the editors to narrow the field to just those few choices. Challenging as the task was, however, we felt that this method would produce the most meaningful results. Certainly, everyone has their own favourite corners of Britain, and many of these enticing places are not the ones featured most prominently in guidebooks. Our awards, however, are intended to recognize sites that have a broad appeal to readers with many different tastes and interests. By asking expert travel writers and tourist board officers to nominate the destinations, we attempted to focus on such sites of mass appeal. (These ‘expert’ recommendations were then voted on by a panel of 150 BRITISH HERITAGE readers to produce the nominee list that appeared on the final ballot.) Naturally, it was easier to reduce some categories to 13 nominees than others, and certainly some magnificent sites were eliminated in the process. This is not meant to detract in any way from any of the places that did not receive nominations. In the final analysis, the most crucial vote for each reader is his or her own personal opinion.

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