Letter: The pleasure of exploring and travelling around the United Kingdom

Bertrand Russell, in a story that could have come out of a PG Wodehouse novel, recalled visiting a beautiful lake with his Aunt Agatha. It was in County Wicklow, when he was a young man, and he never forgot it.

Fifty years later, staying in Dublin, he persuaded someone to take him back. But it was not the same, and he regretted trying to renew old memories.

Ted Heath had the same concerns. He recalled another lake, Konigsee in Germany. There must be something about lakes ! He never dared return, in case this spot had been spoiled.

I'm not so sure about all this. We live in a more connected, digital age, where past, present and future seem to sit more easily alongside one another. Nowadays, we can check Google Streetview before investing in a journey.

How fortunate we all are, across the four corners of the kingdom, to be surrounded by wonderful landscapes and hidden treasures. We should keep exploring them, and try never to tire of them.

I have loved Northern Ireland since I first visited in 1980 and stay in touch with what is happening there, which is why I have long written to this newspaper. But I have also decided to travel far more in England, the country in which I live. I am never going to get through my long bucket list of foreign journeys. It will be easier to explore home turf, the new and the familiar. To that end, I finally made my first visit to the surprisingly interesting Halifax, and I have revisited a dear and familiar old village in Northumberland.

I tend to travel by train as you can take in the passing landscapes. The journey to Halifax involves a change from Piccadilly to Victoria stations. How difficult can that be ? Refusing to consult a map or ask a local, I almost took a full detour to Salford.

But Halifax was worth it. The extraordinary Piece Hall is like an Italian Piazza. Unbelievably, it was almost demolished in the 1970s. Down in London, the majestic Euston Arch was destroyed.

I wonder what Joe Biden is up to now ? Perhaps, like me, he could join Ancestry UK - other websites are available. On reflection, the "UK" part of the company name might distress him. The censuses, back to 1841, give a wealth of humble, domestic information. I reconstructed so much detail from my grandmother's family, which was from Mickley Square in Northumberland.

I remember visiting the village many times when I was little. Years later, an elderly relative told me that when she and my grandmother were girls they could " go around the village, knock on any door and find someone belonging to us, go inside, and have some tea and jam and bread." That stuck in my mind.

After a long gap, I have been back twice in the last few years. It's good to see Mickley modernising. But there is still a lovely walk up a very long, steep hill, essentially the rising ground on the side of the Tyne Valley. At the bottom is the railway, and a fine old farmhouse called Cherryburn. It was the boyhood home of the great engraver Thomas Bewick, and it now belongs to the National Trust.

Continuing upwards, and crossing the main Newcastle to Carlisle road, you reach St George's Church, some old miners' cottages, and eventually Hedley on the Hill, home of a Northumbian bogle, a creature from folklore called the Hedley Kow. Keep walking, and you are in County Durham, a solid place, a place of effortless consequence.

John Gemmell, Wem Shropshire