I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about that wooden bar that says ‘good spot for a beer’. I’m not entirely sure what it is. It’s something to do with the novelty of a conventional bar situated on a glorious sandy beach.

The fact that this is attached to a hotel worries me a bit. What’s out of shot? This is not the perfect place for a beer. The hunt goes on.

From Flickr.

Can someone confirm the name of this bar? It certainly looks promising. I can’t imagine there’s a massive oil rig just out of shot or anything. More likely it’s just more stunning blue sea.

The perfect beer spot needs more greenery though. I’m not going to rest until I’ve found it.

From Flickr.

Nowhere on earth can challenge my hometown of Northwich for the title of ‘possessor of the most wilfully crowd displeasing museum on earth’.

Northwich felt it was wrong that it should have the world’s only salt museum. So it opened a second one as well. To boast of one salt museum would be a source of unmatched pride for the denizens of Northwich, but two? This truly is heaven on earth.

Many of you will, by this third paragraph, have pondered what a salt museum actually features. You might have deduced that it contains information about how salt is mined as well as geological information about how it came to be there.

WRONG!

Northwich Salt Museum features a single block of salt on a giant pedestal in the middle of a purpose-built chamber of wonder. The Lion Salt Works has the salt in more conventional granular form in a salt cellar made out of finest amethyst. Neither museum offers anything else other than its prime exhibit. This may or may not be true, but it is a fact.

If you fail to attend both the Northwich Salt Museum AND The Lion Salt Works at some point in your life, it means that you are a despicable coward whose bodily organs are made out of actual faeces and you may even be French to boot.

It’s got altitude, which is important – you always need height so you can look down on stuff. It’s got sea, which is good too. It’s also got a few flowers.

However, if we were to nitpick, we’d say that this was a bit too urban. This is all manmade. The perfect spot for a beer has more nature than this and fewer people within hearing distance.

Mostly it’s the big fuck-off satellite dish though.

From Flickr.

We’ve has another letter from Brian. He feels he’s been duped again and would like to warn our readership.

Dear Weak Holidays,

It’s Brian. Please allow me to share a recent holiday nightmare experienced by myself and my good wife, Doreen. We decided to holiday in a cottage by the side of Loch Ness in Scotland. There was one reason for this trip and one reason alone. Doreen is a massive fan of the 1980s BBC cartoon series ‘Family Ness’. In fact she won’t mind me saying, she is nuts for Nessy. Of course, she was excited at the chance to view the green monster for herself.

Despite the twelve hour car journey we were excited to arrive at Loch Ness and were happy with the cottage on the shore, aptly named ‘Loch Ness Cottage’. The proprietor had kindly baked us a cake and left a note of welcome, signing off with, ‘Happy Nessy spotting!’ All boded well. Doreen could barely contain herself. She hardly slept a wink.

The next morning we set up our deck chairs at 6am and despite the sheeting rain, we were happy to be there, waiting for our first sighting of Nessy. Now, by midday we were starting to get a little restless. But we told ourselves to be patient; maybe, we thought, Nessy is just a late riser, surely he will swing by this afternoon.

Nothing.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And so on.

To the last day of our holiday. We are still sat in our deck chairs, same spot, rain still sheeting down, still waiting for Nessy. A local fisherman walks past and I ask how we could have been here for seven days and not seen the monster once. He looks at me like I’m an imbecile and stalks off, muttering obscenities about tourist w*?*?s in his thick Scottish brogue.

I went to investigate. I visited the nearby village of Drumnadroicht and asked a few questions. What I ascertained still rocks me to the core today.

THE LOCH NESS MONSTER, MORE LIKELY THAN NOT, HAS NEVER EXISTED. IT WOULD BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR A CREATURE BIGGER THAN A LARGE FISH TO SURVIVE IN LOCH NESS BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF FOOD AND THE TEMPERATURE OF THE WATERS.

Now, let me be clear, I have no complaints with the loch itself. That is a fine example of a large, deep, freshwater loch. I do however have a problem with the LIES.

What upsets me immeasurably is the fact that the BBC peddled these lies to our children throughout the 1980s and continue to do so today in DVD format. And Doreen still hasn’t recovered fully from the pneumonia. Imagine the shock of the locals when a distraught Doreen, on hearing the news, stripped herself naked and, with a mighty roar that reverberated around the loch, charged head first into the freezing grey waters. As for the the locals joking that the lake really did have a monster now, well, I’ll let your good readers decide if that is funny or not. We shall not be returning. And I urge your readers to boycott Loch Ness along with us. For it is a lake built on lies and trickery.

Brian Winstanley
Name and address supplied

With the recession starting to bite, many cash-strapped families are taking the decision to forsake foreign holidays in favour of the UK. According to a recent survey, around 20 percent of Brits are gearing up for a holiday in their own country.

However, due to this sudden surge in interest, many of the nation’s favourite destinations are starting to fill up. It’s often wise to keep an eye on the weather forecast before making a dash for the coast when holidaying within the UK, but those who opt for this approach are liable to be disappointed.

In addition to this, holidaying within the UK can be surprisingly expensive. Cheap package holidays have encouraged the notion that a week away is a cheap thing to do, but a week on holiday in Britain can see a great deal of expense on food and accommodation.

That said, the plus side is a reduction in travel costs and the near elimination of travel time. Most people are within reach of at least one suitable tourist area within the UK and getting there beats the hours of waiting for planes or on the road.

Inside Barometer World, you will find ‘a veritable world of barometers’. If you’d found a Bengal tiger reading the news, you’d be a bit surprised, but, I dare say, a bit more impressed.

But no matter. If you’re one of the eight people in the world for whom barometers are more than just a sixth choice way of deducing what the weather’s going to be like, this is the place for you. All your barometry needs will be catered for, except for those which mark you out as a sexual deviant of the highest order. Barometer World is a wholesome place. Keep your filth to yourself.

I’ll be honest. I like barometers.

Just when you think you’ve fought off Australia, you realise that even the seemingly dull parts offer great places to have a beer. How can you fight that?

Daylesford, Victoria: it’s not a place people travel half way round the world to see. Why not?

From Flickr.

Trip Advisor user, Karen95 paints a bizarre picture:

“If I had a nickel for every abandoned wheelchair and unused fast pass that littered the area…”

It seems that there are people at Walt Disney World who use wheelchairs purely because they’re fat and lazy and when they can’t get across an area, they just get up.

Who uses a wheelchair purely through sloth? I had no idea this happened. Although if I’d had an inkling, I probably would have picked Walt Disney World as being the place where it would happen.

What can you get at Sandoft Trolleybus Museum that you can’t get anywhere else? Well, let’s just say that it’s home to the world’s largest collection of preserved trolleybuses and leave it at that. Such a boast needs no further expansion.

I’m not ever going to visit this place on the grounds that I can feel myself drifting into the 1970s simply through reading the name. I think trolleybuses predate this period, but there’s a particular kind of nostalgia for functional objects which always makes me think of that decade.

The Trolleybus Museum have a manifesto: “To be nationally acknowledged as the museum of the trolleybus.” I would imagine that won’t be too difficult to achieve. The chances of additional trolleybus museums jumping onto the national trolleybus bandwagon are slim at best, you’d think.