Free Attractions - 50 Free Things to do in the United Kingdom

Top arts organizations all over the Midlands city of Birmingham devote a weekend in early September to topnotch performances, totally free. Concerts, theatre and film are scheduled at all the city's major concert venues and theatres. There are also street performances and special events in neighborhoods like Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. The event is organized and supported by Birmingham City Council and, perhaps because of that, information about this great annual arty party tends to be hard to come by until the very last minute. But persist in checking the ArtsFest website where details are published as they become available.

The United Kingdom has some of the world's most beautiful beaches. That shouldn't seem so surprising. After all Britain is an island kingdom with nearly 7,800 miles of coast. Nowhere in the entire country is more than two hours from a beach.

These are not the sort of beaches where you can bask in the sun (not very often, anyway) or spend hours swimming warm seas. The water, even on UK beaches washed by the Gulf Stream is pretty chilly. But what the UK's beaches lack in tropical charm, they more than make up for in sheer drama. For walking, surfing, exploring, wildlife watching, these are some of the most beautiful and isolated free beaches in the world.

A real coal mine that includes a multi-media tour of a modern coal mine with a virtual miner in the Mining Galleries, exhibitions in the Pithead Baths and historic colliery buildings open to the public for the first time. The highlight is a world-famous underground tour, taking visitors 300 feet underground, to the coal face, with a real miner. Located in Blaenavon, it is part of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape UNESCO World Heritage site
Open: daily, 9:30a.m. to 5 p.m., Underground Tours between 10a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

Birmingham was one of the manufacturing engines of 19th century Britain. Wealthy Victorian industrialists endowed their city with art and culture. The 120 year old Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, known locally as BMag, is a reminder of their generosity. The museum's collections range from Renaissance paintings to 9,000 year old Middle Eastern treasures.

BMag is best known for its outstanding collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. One of the largest collections of this once radical school of art in the world, the collection is now searchable online.

Open: Everyday except December 25,26 and January 1; Monday to Thursday amd Saturday 10a.m. to 5p.m., Friday from 10:30a.m., Sunday from 12:30p.m. Late opening during Artsfest.

The first time I visited England, I happened upon this ancient stone circle high up in the Lake District near Keswick. A half dozen elderly ladies had set up easels and were painting the scene. A single cow noisily ripped at the grass, occasionally licking their oil paintings, while they twittered "Shoo, Bossy." The view of snow-capped Helvellyn and High Seat was unforgettable. The circle, of 33 stones, was erected about 3,000 years ago.

Open: In delightfully English fashion, English Heritage, who manage the site, say that it is open "At any reasonable time".

The best way to describe the sexiest of English national monuments, the Cerne Abbas Giant, is to let the ultra respectable National Trust do it. Here is how one of Britain's most established institutions, and the organisation that maintains the giant, describes him on its website: "A huge outline sculpted into the chalk hillside above the village of Cerne Abbas representing a naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant."

He might be thousands of year's old, or he might be a 17th century political cartoon carved into the chalk hillside.

He was buried in grass during WWII to prevent him from becoming a landmark for the Luftwaffe. Apparently, when he was uncovered after the war, he grew a little.