Hurst Castle sits at the end of a long shingle spit, jutting out into the Solent opposite the Isle of Wight. At its heart is a Tudor castle, built by Henry VIII to guard the Needles Passage, the gateway to the trading port of Southampton and his new naval base at Portsmouth.
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Although Angkor Wat is the most famous sight in Angkor, it is not the only one by any means, despite the fact that the two names are often used interchangeably. Angkor in fact means ‘city’ and Angkor Wat the ‘city temple’. But there are over a thousand temples, ranging in scale from mere piles of rubble scattered through rice fields to Angkor Wat itself.
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Sometimes little details can be as evocative as the complete picture, and perhaps never more so than when contemplating the past. Visiting the iconic sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii back in 2007 I found myself as intrigued by the small details of life in these cities as I was in the grand civic buildings.
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On the shores of the El Peñol-Guatapé Reservoir the infamous Colombian cocaine drug-lord Pablo Escobar built a lavish estate which he named La Manuela, after his daughter.
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In 1132 a small group of monks left their Benedictine Monastery in York, fed up with the extravagant and rowdy lifestyle of the monks there. Seeking a more devout and simple way of life, they were granted a parcel of land by the River Skell where they built a small wooden church and applied, successfully, to join the Cistercian order.
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Wat Phou is a pre-Angkorian Khmer Hindu temple at the foot of Mount Phou Khao. The Khmer chose this site because the unusual shape of the mountain peak seemed to them to resemble a Shiva linga. Today it was so hazy that the peak was hard to make out, but we had seen it yesterday in the late afternoon sunlight.
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You can’t travel far in Oman without hearing the word frankincense. Every Omani home burns this fragrant resin daily, it is an intrinsic part of Omani life. Not only does it make the home smell nice, it also keeps flying insects such as mosquitoes at bay. The best quality frankincense is steeped overnight in water which is then drunk at breakfast time to treat a variety of ailments. And inhaling the smoke is said to be good for asthma.
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Antigua, or Antigua Guatemala to give it its full name, is a city shaped by the movement of the earth on which it stands. It was founded in 1543 and despite the ravages of several earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, it was for over 200 years the capital and economic centre of the whole Kingdom of Guatemala. This was a significant country, covering what today we know as southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
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Kaesong is unusual among North Korean cities in having not been largely destroyed during the Korean War. It is also noteworthy as the only city to have changed hands as a result of the armistice agreement, having been part of South Korea from 1945 to 1950 until the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement brought it under North Korean control.
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In a clearing in the jungles of Angkor the Buddhist king King Jayavarman VII built a monastery, Rajavihara, meaning ‘Royal Monastery’. We know it today as Ta Prohm. Here lived more than 12,500 people, including 18 high priests and 615 dancers. The temple was wealthy, amassing riches such as gold, pearls and silks.
