Prue

@Raja: You could also check the official British tourism website: The Official Website For UK Tourism | VisitBritain I think I booked a day trip by mini-coach to Stonehenge once. Could have been from Salisbury. So you wouldn't necessarily need to rent a car in the South, either. You could stay a few days in a reasonably big city where they offer coach day trips to other destinations nearby. In Cornwall, I rented a car once and did a sort of package tour which included the B&Bs and the rental car. Problem was, they forced you to do the sightseeing at *their* pace that way. Which meant: hardly any time to enjoy sightseeing or stopping somewhere with a nice view to have a cream tea or so. Don't be fooled by descriptions like: oh, only 120 km to reach the next destination. On narrow country roads with hedges (in the North: dry stone walls) that don't allow you to pass a lorry that can take a really long time. And it's stressy. When you had two nights in a row in the same B&B, it was better because you could choose to go where you wanted on one day at least. If you want to visit many historic sites (including Stonehenge) you might want to consider the Overseas Visitors Pass which can save a lot on entrance fees. Which can be really high in Britain. It's only available for non-residents and can only be booked from abroad, I think. There used to be a Great British Overseas Pass, but that seems to have been discontinued. Really annoying. Because now you have to research all the sites you want to visit, check which Pass covers them, and whether you actually save money that way. And you have to get different passes for England, Scotland or Wales, and look up whether a historic site belongs to English/Scottish whatever Heritage or National Trust. If you are a resident in the UK, it might be interesting for you to get an annual membership of e.g. National Trust or English Heritage instead, as you can visit sites as often as you like for free. E.g. if you live near a few castles / palaces that you might want to visit regularly on weekends to e.g. walk through a nice building and garden and have something to eat in the café. Overseas Visitors | English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk)

Surprisingly, the wolves migrated rather quickly here and didn't stick only to true wilderness areas. Wolves in Germany – new data released today | BFN (Wow, I wouldn't have thought that there are over 1,100 wolves in Germany!)

That's strange that they want to introduce wolves again on purpose in the UK. Wouldn't wolves rather hunt sheep instead of deer? With so many sheep running around unsupervised in the UK, that would indeed be problematic I think. In (continental) Western Europe (also Germany) wolves also used to be extinct and they have only slowly migrated westwards from Eastern Europe again after the end of the cold war when the fences to Poland were removed. There's quite a lot of astonishment/hysteria still when wolves are spotted in rather densely populated areas in Western Germany. So far there haven't been any sightings in our little city forest, maybe we are still protected by the many autobahns nearby... The first bear who migrated to Bavaria was shot years ago, but I think there are a few bears in Bavaria now again. Not further north as far as I know. Oh, but there's also a controversy about the herd of wild Wisents (European bison) that was set free in a remote forest years ago. The owners want to put fences around that part of the forest now to protect their other trees from Wisents gnawing on them.

If you don't want to hire a car, you could go to Edinburgh and start a mini bus tour from there. There are several companies offering guided tours, also more than one day trips. e.g. Highlands Tours from Edinburgh | Highland Experience Tours Can't remember if I booked a trip with them or another company, but the day trips from Edinburgh were good and I was glad that I didn't have to do the driving myself. If you and your relatives e.g. aren't used to driving on the left side of the road, or on narrow country roads, you might want to enjoy the scenery and speak with your relatives instead of stressing about how to drive to your next destination safely, too.

I agree that there need to be unpopular measures fought through by the governments without caving in to oil lobbyists or only thinking about being re-elected. If e.g. they prohibit the sale of mass-produced meat EU-wide, meat will become more expensive and people can only afford it once or twice a week (which is healthier anyway). Until the 1960s or so, people only had a 'Sunday roast' and ate mostly vegetarian during the week due to the cost of meat. And that was better for both the health of humans and animals... More important would be to regulate the industry and to even reverse some privatisations. For example, they privatised the national rail system in Germany in the 1990s and told the new for-profit-organisation: You will have to pay for maintenance of the railways yourself, but if they are really in a horrible state of disrepair and can't be saved any more, the German state will pay for new railways. *facepalm* Of course that was a great incentive *not* to do any maintenance but to let everything run down. No wonder they don't have a very good reputation for punctuality any more. If you are able to understand German or make sense of the horribly auto-translated English subtitles, this comedian made a good point:

Would be really great if this works:

Hmm... my hair has never been short enough for a comb to get through, unless it was an extremely wide comb. But is there some unwritten law that it's unmanly to use a hairbrush? I've never had a problem with hair being bunched together in rows by a hairbrush. Maybe you could try one? It's also a nice massage for the scalp if you get a high-quality hairbrush (not one of the unflexible full-plastic ones). eta: Darn, I left in the hairdye for too long and now it's too dark. But I hope it will wash out somewhat as it's herbal hairdye (henna/indigo etc).

Spahn is announcing all sorts of things that are supposed to get the new government in trouble. E.g. supporting really high wages for nursing home personnel.