Every County in England - Part 1: Introduction
When I get the chance to head off on a new adventure my head
usually fills with a wanderlust for distant oversees experiences. I rarely stop
to appreciate some of the attractions slightly closer to home. It was with this
though lingering in my mind that I found myself flicking through the pages of a
road atlas to Great Britain. It occurred to me that although I've been to most
corners of my home country, there are still a lot of places missing or that
I've only seen whilst whizzing past on the motorway. Perhaps it was time for a
new challenge, a challenge that didn't involve a passport this time! Let's go
and see England, time to find some new things on my own front door!
I settled fairly fast on the idea of counting counties, visiting
each on seemed a good way to see each corner of England, but there was just a
slight confusion here, what exactly counts as a county?
This may seem like a simple question to answer but there are a
number of different ways of defining a county in England, depending on what you
count the number ranges from 39 to 83 counties. There's Ceremonial, Postal,
Historic, Ancient, Administrative counties, the list goes on.... who would have
though it'd be so complicated! I thought I better see what other folk had done.
It turns out I am not alone in this challenge, many have gone before me and
there's even a world record for visiting them in the fastest time. Although I'm
not in a rush to get a world record (they completed the circuit in 23hrs
34mins, I'd have nearly 4 weeks), it made sense to me to define a county in the
way the Guinness World Record holders define them - Ceremonial Counties.
Helpfully these are clearly marked in my road atlas so that may have swayed
things slightly! So that's 48 Ceremonial Counties to visit, that sounds like a
plan!
The only thing left to do was deciding what counts as a 'visit'.
Staying any length of time in each county would mean I'd run out of time very
fast, so I settled for the rather vague definition that I could tick the county
off if I did something or saw something worth taking a photo of whilst there.
This felt open enough to be able to linger or pick up the pace as needed.
The plan is in place, car packed, blank map printed ready to be
coloured in, all that's left to do is hit the road. It's time to visit England
- all of it!
