You’re meant to loathe tourists. When you live near a hotspot, you’re supposed to show just how local and unimpressed you are by shoving past their gigantic rucksacks with an exaggerated sigh-grunt.
You have to roll your eyes at how gauche they are – getting a photo pretending to take a call in a red phone box? Groundbreaking! And also get annoyed when they do their homework and start clogging up the actually good places. I grew up near Chester and Liverpool, two tourist hotspots. The more you seethe, the more of a local you are.
It was in this spirit that I joined Reddit’s UK travel subreddit. It’s peak tourist season out there right now, and Reddit is full of prospective holidaymakers to the UK asking for advice on whether their trip itineraries make sense.
Most are completely insane. An American will announce that they have four days to play with in London, during which they will get round Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, London Zoo, the Tower of London, the British Museum and Madame Tussauds on the first day, then for a change of pace they’ll take a day trip to Aberdeen.
On day three they’ll hit up Stonehenge, Bath’s most Bridgerton bits and Cheddar Gorge (Americans are obsessed with Cheddar Gorge) before a whirl around Cotswold – always singular, no definite article – en route back to Heathrow.
And let me be clear: this is still very funny. But I could still see replies on Reddit were condescending and mean. I remembered my younger self telling a few Beatles fans from Pennsylvania who were looking for The Cavern that actually, it’s not even the real Cavern – that got filled in with rubble by British Rail in the 1970s – and winced.
Then about six months ago, on the train to work one morning, I met a very sweet Canadian kid. He and his mate were in a flap about whether they were going to Heathrow, or would end up being spat out in Ruislip. You could tell he was Canadian because everything he owned had a maple leaf on it, and also because he told me immediately.
I reassured the Canadian boys that they’d be OK, and went to put my earphones back in. Before I could do that, though, one of them introduced himself. His name was Eli, and he wanted to know everything. Where was I going? Did I take this train often? Did I live in London? Did I like it?
Eli liked it. Eli liked it a whole lot. The history, the architecture, the parks, the food – everything. Eli was absolutely hyped to be in London. “Man!” he bellowed. “Everything is just so old!”
Obviously I was mortified. The Tube omerta had been shattered. But Eli – this sweet summer child – shook me out of the reflexive grump that I’d always had toward tourists. Yes, their habit of checking Citymapper immediately after going through Tube gates makes me want to punch them in the back of the head. But they’re excited, bless them, and I want them to have as good a time in the UK as possible. So I decided from then on, I’d try to help every tourist I could.
I started small. “Try Avebury stone circle rather than Stonehenge,” I told a peppy Californian. “You can touch the stones!” Someone else asked for cool pubs. It hurt to imagine them going for a Wetherspoons breakfast pint, so I pointed them toward the Southampton Arms near Dartmouth Park, and suggested a route from their hostel across Hampstead Heath. It felt good. It felt really, really good.
Now it’s getting a bit out of hand. I’m hanging around near big Tube maps hoping someone will ask for help. I scan for massive rucksacks on public transport which might need shepherding. If someone folds out a map of central London – a literal paper map! In the year of our lord 2024! – I’m there in a heartbeat.
There is possibly an ego thing here. I do like the idea of being That Nice Man Who Recommended That Lovely Pub in people’s holiday anecdotes. And of course, there are places where tourists and tourism create chronic problems. But since I started looking at places I know well through visitors’ eyes, it’s made me so much happier.
The country feels very rundown and tired (remarking that nothing works like it should is so uncontroversial that Keir Starmer’s made it a central plank of his election pitch). Who wouldn’t prefer being around people with a genuine enthusiasm for the UK to counting the ways in which the country is ruined?
It’s impossible to ignore all of that, of course; irresponsible to pretend it’s not there. But if we could all look at the places we’re from through tourists’ eyes occasionally, we might be a bit more content. People save up for years to come to London, just to fleetingly feel like they’re part of it.
Everything is broken and there are no quick fixes – and we are so, so lucky.