World Heritage Sites – the heart thrills

JOUMOU SOUP

Milan, 27 January 2022

Long-term readers of my blog will know that I have a love-hate relationship with Unesco (the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization in full), and especially with its World Heritage Sites list. This list is composed of actual, tangible sites (“brick-and-mortar” sites, as it were) from all around the world which have been judged to contain “cultural and natural heritage of outstanding value to humanity”. We’re talking about things like the Parthenon in Athens

or Angkor Wat in Cambodia

or the Grand Canyon in the US.

In several of my posts, though, I have frothed at the mouth about some of the other sites which have been listed, considering them to be unworthy of the honour. However, I do not propose to use this post to do more frothing on the subject. My focus instead will be a companion list which Unesco has compiled of so-called intangible cultural heritage. This has been defined as “the practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills (including instruments, objects, artifacts, cultural spaces), that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage”. In this case, we’re talking about things like oral traditions, performing arts, and traditional craftsmanship. Worthy examples of entries on this list are Bunraku puppet theatre in Japan

or sericulture and silk craftsmanship in China.

If any of my readers are unaware of which forms of intangible cultural heritage have been listed for their country, I invite them to go to the Unesco website on the topic. I’m sure there are also unworthy examples on the list, which – if I ever come across them – will cause me to start frothing at the mouth.

In any event, the reason I’m bringing all this up is that on 17 December last, I saw an article in the Guardian entitled “Culture in a bowl: Haiti’s joumou soup awarded protected status by Unesco”. Given my love-hate relationship with Unesco, I was intrigued to find out what the organization had been up to and clicked on the link. It turned out that the relevant Unesco Committee had just voted to include Haiti’s joumou soup on the list of intangible cultural heritage. “It is Haiti’s first inclusion on the list, and the country’s ambassador, Dominique Dupuy, cried as the announcement was made”, the article intoned. The article intoned about much more, showing that the Committee meeting had clearly been a love-fest between Ms. Dupuy and the delegates of the other countries sitting around the table – although as I read I doubted Haiti would be getting any increase in the development aid which its people so desperately need. Oh dear, the cynic within me, fed on years of watching the rank hypocrisy on show in UN meetings, was coming to the surface – down, boy!

Luckily, as I read on, the positive Me got the better of the cynical Me. To explain this, I need to clarify that “elements” (that’s Unesco-speak) on the intangible cultural heritage list which are food-related don’t get listed just because they’re food and yummy to eat. Otherwise, the list would be a mile long. No, to be listed, a foodstuff has to have a strong cultural value. This is just what joumou soup has, in spades, and it’s that cultural value which brought out the optimist Me.

Joumou soup is inextricably entwined with Haiti’s history as a former slave state. As elsewhere in the Caribbean, the planters in this French colony became immensely rich on the backs of a large population of African slaves growing sugar and coffee for them. The slaves were worked mercilessly and died quickly, so the slave population had to be constantly replenished from West Africa. Here, we have a picture of a slave market in the nearby island of Martinique.

The French planters also took African women as concubines and over time this created a population of coloured people, free but second-class citizens compared to the white planters.

The French Revolution started a struggle among the black and coloured people of Haiti, who took the Revolution’s message of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity seriously. Here we have a picture of their first leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture; he was captured and died in France.

The struggle, which towards the end turned really vicious with both sides committing atrocities, culminated in 1804 with the black and coloured people gaining their independence and throwing out the white population. They went on to create the first black republic in the world, with Jean-Jacques Dessalines their first head of government.

This story really resonates in this day and age of Black Lives Matter.

And what of joumou soup in all this? It became a potent symbol of the slave population’s freedom from servitude. Prior to 1804, joumou soup was prepared by the slaves for their masters but only eaten by the masters; slaves were forbidden to eat it. Naturally enough, the eating of that soup by ex-slaves and their descendants became a strong symbol of their continued freedom. And in fact, it is now a solemn tradition for all Haitians to eat joumou soup on 1st January, the country’s day of independence. Here we have Haitians eating the soup on Independence Day.

But what exactly is in this soup, readers might be asking? Well, the core ingredient of the soup, the one that gives it its name, is a variety of squash, the giraumon, which is found in the Caribbean.

The word “joumou” is probably the Creole version of “giraumon”, which is itself derived from “jirumum”, the name given to the squash by the island’s original Amerindian inhabitants, the Taìno. Therein lies another layer of cultural meaning in this soup, which no-one seems to have remarked upon. Christopher Columbus and his crew were the first Europeans to meet Taino people when he reached the Caribbean in 1492. We have here a rather fanciful engraving showing this fateful encounter.

At the time of Columbus’s arrival, the Taìno probably numbered a million or so and were the principal inhabitants of what are now the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola (shared today by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and a few other islands. By the late 1500s if not before, the Taìno had disappeared, killed off by a combination of forced labour for the Spaniards, starvation, and Old World diseases vectored by the Spaniards and against which the Taino had no resistance. Some historians have labeled this the world’s first genocide. The Taìno have left but a shadow of themselves, in the DNA of many of the islands’ modern populations as well as in words adopted into the languages of their destroyers to describe things they had never seen before reaching the Caribbean: tobacco, hurricane, potato, maize, hammock, barbecue, canoe, cassava, and many others. Joumou soup too carries the ghosts of the Taino.

But back to the making of this soup! The giraumon is pureed, which gives us something very much like the classic pumpkin soup.

To this core of pureed giraumon is added marinated beef. It is no doubt this ingredient which explains why slaves were forbidden to eat the soup. Meat, especially beef, has historically been the preserve of the rich and powerful, the elites. To these two base ingredients are added a host of others. All recipes call for the addition of root vegetables, although which ones precisely varies quite a bit: I’ve seen malanga, mirlitons, yams, turnips, carrots, potatoes (sweet and not), and onions listed in various recipes. I see here another layer of meaning in this soup, since it marries – probably without meaning to – vegetables from different parts of the world. Their use together in this soup is a reflection of the Great Columbian Exchange which took place after Columbus discovered the Americas and which I’ve written about in previous posts. Some of these root vegetables – malanga, mirlitons, some species of yam, potatoes – are native to the Caribbean or the wider American region, the others – turnips, carrots, onions – are Old World imports. Other vegetables are also added, the ones most often mentioned being cabbage, celery, and leeks – again, Old World imports. Pasta – Old World import – of various shapes are also part of the mix. This must be a modern addition to the soup’s recipe; I can’t see it being present in the soup eaten in 1804. Various herbs and spices are of course thrown in, parsley, thyme, and so on, along with pepper. And the cherry on the cake – as it were – is the addition of one of those hideously hot chilis which I so hate, although they do have the merit of originating from this region of the world. A Scotch bonnet or habanero chili are the most often suggested. The result of cooking all these things together looks like this.

As I say, I read about joumou soup on 17 December. I got all excited about it and thought we could try making it on 1 January in Los Angeles, where my wife and I were spending the end of the year with our daughter and her fiancé. I suggested it to our daughter, who is very much into cooking, but she had other plans for the cuisine of that day. So this dish is still to be tried in our household. We could wait until 2 December to make it. That’s the UN’s International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, which seems a very suitable moment to be eating this particular soup. But that’s a long way down the road; I feel we should strike while the iron is hot. I’ve read that many Haitians also eat joumou soup on Sundays, for breakfast. I’m not sure about breakfast but my wife and I could make it for a Sunday lunch. We could invite our son to partake. I’ll go and talk to my wife about it now. In the meantime, though, should any of my readers want to give it a go, I give below a recipe for making the soup; it’s a mishmash of a number of recipes I found online.

Bon appétit … and BLM!

Source

Recipe for joumou soup

Joumou soup is meant to be a festive dish eaten by crowds of people, as attested by this enormous cauldron of joumou soup prepared somewhere in Haiti.

So I give here amounts required for a mere 8 people. You will of course adjust the amounts to your requirements.

Ingredients:

- ½ kg stew beef (preferably chuck) cut into smallish cubes
- 2 limes
- 1 cup épis
- 10 cups broth (beef broth preferably, but chicken or vegetable broth will do)
- 1 kg squash, peeled and cubed (ideally, of course, you should use giraumon squash, but here it really depends on what is available to you locally)
- 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 1 celery stalk, chopped coarsely
- 1 leek, white and pale-green parts only, finely chopped (you can use scallions instead)
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 2 small turnips, peeled and diced (if you can get it, use malanga instead)
- 2 potatoes, cubed
- 5 parsley sprigs
- 2 tsps salt, plus more if you want
- ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper, plus more if you want
- Pinch of cayenne pepper, plus more if you want
- 1 Scotch Bonnet chili pepper (habanero chili pepper can be used instead)
- 1½ cups of pasta (of a type like rigatoni or maccheroni; but if all you have in your cupboard is spaghetti, then use that broken into short pieces)
- ½ kg cabbage, sliced very thinly

Preparation:

Step 1: Make the épis. Épis is a blend of various herbs, spices, and vegetables which is used a lot in Haitian cuisine. You will be using it to marinade the beef. You can buy ready-made épis, but I am assuming that you will be brave and choose to make it from scratch. Well done! And this is what you will need for 1 cup of épis – you may not use it all up for the marinade, and can use the remainder in the soup.

- ½ bell pepper (colour of your choice), coarsely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
- 3 scallions, coarsely chopped
- ½ small onion, coarsely chopped
- Herbs of your choice. I suggest 1/2 cup parsley (leaves and tender stems), coarsely chopped, and 2 basil leaves. But you can consider partially substituting the parsley with cilantro and/or thyme.
- 3 tbsp oil (I prefer olive oil, but it’s your choice)

To make the épis, simply put all the ingredients into a food processor or blender and purée until smooth. Or if you’re feeling traditional – and have the equipment – use a mortar and pestle.

Step 2: You will now marinade the beef. Place the beef chunks in a large bowl. Juice the limes. Pour the juice (should be at least 3 tbsp) over the beef chunks and massage the juice into the meat. Add a good portion of the epis to the bowl and mix it well with the beef; the beef chunks should be well coated. Put the meat in a refrigerator and let it marinate: ideally overnight, at a minimum one hour.

Step 3: Next – ideally, as I say, the next day – take 6 of the 10 cups of broth and cook the squash in them over medium heat until fork-tender, 20–25 minutes. Purée the squash in the broth.

Step 4: In parallel, you will brown the beef. Place a heavy-bottomed frying pan or casserole dish over a high heat and add a little oil. When the pan is very hot, add the meat to the pan in batches. The oil should ‘sizzle’ as the meat is added. Cook the meat for 1-2 minutes on each side of the cubes.

Step 5: Add the browned beef cubes to the pureed squash. Top up with the remaining broth. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

Step 6: Add, the carrots, celery, leeks, onion, turnips, potato and parsely to the soup, bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour with a whole scotch bonnet on top. Remember that the whole scotch bonnet is there for flavoring not to make the soup “hot”. Make sure you don’t burst it as you stir the soup, and remove it at the end of the hour.

Step 7: Add the pasta of your choice and cook it until it is soft and tender (15 minutes or so).

Step 8: add the cabbage and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes; the cabbage should just become wilted. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

À table!

AUSTRALIA – KIMBERLEY TOUR HIGHLIGHTS

Bangkok, 5 June 2016

My wife and I both agree that without a doubt the Bungle Bungle National Park was the highlight of our recent tour of the Kimberley (I suppose I should use its proper name, Purnululu National Park, but Bungle Bungle is such a delightfully silly name that I shall stick to that). It has been chosen as a World Heritage Site and for once I agree with this. What we have here is a deeply eroded range, and I think the best way to appreciate the unique geology of the Bungle Bungle is through an aerial photo

or two

or three.

Readers will immediately notice the smooth rounded shapes into which the rocks have weathered – beehives is a commonly used descriptor and seems very apt. The guidebook with which we were thoughtfully supplied on our coach stated that this type of formation is very rare – only a few other places on Earth have it, and not nearly as extensively as in the Bungle Bungle Range. UNESCO, in its World Heritage Site write-up, notes approvingly that “the Bungle Bungles are, by far, the most outstanding example of cone karst in sandstones anywhere in the world.” Without going too much into the geological whys and wherefores, the fact that the rock has eroded into these smooth rounded shapes seems to have to do with the bands in the rock, seen quite well in the third photo above and even better in this photo taken by my wife from ground level.

The key to the bands’ existence is the clay content of the rock. The darker bands have more clay, which means they hold moisture better, which in turn allows a very thin film of cyanobacteria to grow on the rock. It is this film which gives the rock its darker colour. The red bands, on the other hand, having less or no clay, dry out quicker and so cannot support a colony of bacteria. Instead, they have been stained orange-red by iron and manganese deposits. The bacterial film protects the rock from too rapid an erosion, which allows the rounded shapes to form.

Geological considerations aside, it’s a delight to walk through these humped and rounded rocks, which are split by numerous gorges and chasms, a number of them having trails laid along them. We walked just two, the Cathedral Gorge and the Echidna Chasm. The Cathedral Gorge narrows slowly

to finally finish in a pool partially covered by deep overhangs.

The Echidna Chasm, on the other hand, is a deep, narrow gash in the rock, at times so narrow that it is hard to get through. After the surprise of coming across Livistona fan palm trees at its mouth (palms are not the first trees that come to mind in this hot and arid landscape)

one edges into the chasm itself. There is a certain fun in threading one’s way through, at some points having to climb and clamber over huge boulders, sections of the walls which have come crashing down; one keeps looking nervously up to see if others might not be about to give way and squash one like a beetle. But there is also an ethereal beauty in this chasm. At certain times of the day, the sun catches the rocks and makes them literally glow. Our iPad cameras were too feeble to catch this wonderful light, but this photographer has managed beautifully.

We would gladly have stayed longer in this Park and done more of the trails. But that is the downside of organized tours: the tyranny of The Schedule.

After detailed discussions, my wife and I have agreed on two more modest scheduled highlights, both, interestingly enough, having to do with water. One was the boat ride on a section of the Ord River near Kununurra, which has been dammed for irrigation purposes. From such utilitarian objectives has come a very pleasant body of water, in the form of several kilometers of the river which are filled year-round with water (a rarity in Australia).

“Water is life” our driver-cum-guide would constantly intone, and this stretch of river was the living proof of this. Apart from several well-fed freshwater crocodiles which we spied along the banks with a twittering of excitement, we saw a large number of birds, the most majestic of which was undoubtedly the white-breasted sea eagle

and the sweetest of which was the Jesus bird (aptly named since it seems to walk on water).

The mother hatches the chicks, the father is then solely responsible for their upbringing (many of the ladies on board noted this division of labour with approval; the men said nothing). But perhaps the most interesting wildlife we came across was a colony of fruit bats hanging out (literally) in a couple of trees along the bank, making quite a noise as they yelped and barked – when do they sleep, I wonder?

From the mutterings of disapproval among our Australian companions and the spirited defense of the bats put up by our guide, we surmise that they are considered a nuisance in more urban settings, no doubt because they sink their fangs into the fruit of your garden which you had been looking forward to eating.

The second modest scheduled highlight was Windjana gorge, in the King Leopold Ranges (why the British explorer who first came across these ranges named them after the King of the Belgians is a bit of a mystery to me; my guess is he was hoping the guy would fork out for his next expedition). Apart from the frisson we got from seeing twenty or more freshwater crocodiles all in one place waiting in complete stillness on the banks or in the water for their next meal to go by

the gorge itself was very pretty

and once again the rocks glowed orange-red in the setting sun.

There was one other highlight, which wasn’t marked in The Schedule, and that was the night sky. In many places, we camped far, far away from any polluting light sources. This, combined with the normally clear skies, meant that when the moon didn’t get in the way we had glorious views of the night sky. It was a sky without the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere with which my wife and I are familiar, but nevertheless a magnificent site to behold, especially on the nightly walks to the toilet to which I alluded in the previous post.

Our last night out, we dragged our camp beds out of our tent, and as we dozed we watched the Milky Way wheel across the sky. Wonderful. But as they say, there is no gain without pain. I am still spreading anti-histamine cream on the dozen or so bites I got from the accursed Australian mosquitoes that night, may they rot in Hell.

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Bungle Bungle aerial view-1: http://www.kimberleywilderness.com.ccd. dau/the-apt-experience/photos-and-videos/photo-gallery
Bungle Bungle aerial view-2: http://www.ryanphotographic.com/Essay.htm
Bungle Bungle aerial view-3: http://kimberleymedia.photoshelter.com/gallery/Bungle-Bungles-Purnululu/G0000GcT6t3sRLPw/C0000uv7H8rn8We0
Cathedral Gorge trail: my wife’s photos
Cathedral Gorge pool-1: http://studyperth.com.au/about/news-feeds/2015/10/top-10-walking-tracks-and-bike-trails
Cathedral Gorge-2: my wife’s photo
Livistona palm trees: my wife’s photo
Echidna chasm: http://www.wildroad.com.au/galleries/australia-photos/echidna-chasm-purnululu-national-park-australia/
Ord River: my wife’s photos
White breasted sea eagle: http://thelife-animal.blogspot.com/2012/07/white-bellied-sea-eagle.html
Jesus bird: https://well.smugmug.com/keyword/WadingBirds;birds
Fruit bats: https://drivedownunder.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/its-a-bungle-out-there/sony-dsc-138/
Crocodiles, Windjana Gorge: https://flamingoing.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/the-devonian-reef-national-parks/
Windjana Gorge: http://www.broomeandthekimberley.com.au/gibb-river-road-and-gorges/
Night sky: http://www.3rf.com.au/gallery.asp

WORLD HERITAGE SITES – OUR LIST

Beijing, 9 March 2014

I was recently in Dubai with my wife for a long weekend. If you don’t like shopping, which I fervently do not, if you don’t get much of a kick out of visiting the tallest building in the world, which is definitely my case, if you don’t quite see the point of going skiing in a mall, which I certainly don’t, then your to-do list in Dubai is really quite short. On one side of the saltwater creek which wends its way through the middle of the city

you can visit gold and spice souqs of dubious antiquity. On the other side, you can visit a small remnant of the old town, saved, so it seems, from the wrecker’s ball by the intercession of Prince Charles with the Sheikh of Dubai. You can follow this up by a visit to the Dubai Museum, housed underneath a quaint little old fort and filled with a rather pathetic set of dioramas showing the old ways of life in the sheikhdom. A 20 minutes’ walk downcreek will bring you to the Sheikhs’ old residence (or rather, a nearly complete reconstruction of it) filled with some old photos of Dubai. You can cross from one side of the creek to the other in supposedly old wooden boats which ply the waterway. And that’s it. Of the four days that my wife and I spent in Dubai, we actually only needed two to visit the city itself. We used one of the days to visit Abu Dhabi (or rather, the planned eco-city district of Masdar) and while I was sitting in a conference my wife used another to visit Al Ain, an oasis town some two hours’ drive from Dubai.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s really very pleasant to wander around without haste, poking your nose in here and there, snapping photos of this and that, taking long lunch and coffee breaks, and enjoying mild and sunny weather. But what really got my goat was a small exhibition which we stumbled across somewhere in the souqs, which proudly announced that some time this year Dubai expected UNESCO to nominate the creek and its immediate surroundings as a World Heritage Site. Give – me – a – break! The Dubai creek a World Heritage Site?! That’s ridiculous!! For those readers who may not be familiar with this UN programme, I should explain that it implements an international convention, the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, whose purpose is to protect and conserve for present and future generations cultural heritage (monuments, groups of buildings, sites) or natural heritage (natural features, geological formations, natural sites) of outstanding universal value. Please note: outstanding universal value. Those are big, big words. Put another way, the sites which are nominated as World Heritage Sites should be so fantastic that it would be a crime for me and every other citizen in the world not to do everything in our power to protect them for future generations to marvel at. Does that describe Dubai creek? I – don’t – think – so!

I had first entertained serious doubts about the World Heritage Site listings when we went on a family holiday to Finland some ten years ago. I had seen that a church along our itinerary had been listed. Intrigued, I dragged the somewhat unwilling family to visit it (to this day, my children remind me of this and other churches I forced them to visit in Finland). What we were confronted with was a small, rustic church whose three main claims to fame were (a) that it was quite old, (b) that it was made entirely out of wood, and (c) that no nails had been used to make it … this was “outstanding universal value”?? Puh-lease! My cynicism over World Heritage Site listings only deepened over the following years as everywhere I went I came across really quite ordinary sites which had been listed. UNESCO’s convention has obviously been hijacked by the tourism industry and its hacks in Ministries of Tourism to brand national sites and raise tourism revenues. And no doubt political correctness has reared its head. It won’t do for just a few countries to have all the heritage sites of outstanding universal value, every country should be able to claim at least one …

This debasing of the World Heritage Site brand is a pity, because I think there are a number of places around the world which through some magical combination of geometry, colour, light, and siting really do have an outstanding and universal value to all of us in the world and whose preservation truly deserves the concerted attention of the global community. My wife and I put our heads together, and what follows is our list. Its main weakness is that it is based only on places which we have seen – so much of the world for us still to see …

Since Dubai got me going, I’ll start with cityscapes:

– Venice, which must be the most beautiful city in the world

– Paris, especially the part along the banks of the river Seine running from Notre Dame Cathedral to the Eiffel tower

(I find Paris to be at its best at night, when all its buildings are lit up like theatre backdrops)

– Rome, especially the Baroque part of the city

where, though, older Roman urban fabric can poke through

– The historic nucleus of Istanbul, on its peninsula jutting out into the Bosphorus

– Old Prague

– On a smaller scale, San Gimignano in Tuscany

which can stand for all those wonderful hilltop towns and villages scattered throughout central Italy (Siena, Todi, Gubbio, Assisi, Volterra, Arezzo, Perugia, Urbino, and on and on …)

– I will add Savannah in Georgia. My wife and I stumbled on the city by chance thirty years ago, and we were blown away

I wonder if I should I add Edinburgh? My wife is doubtful, but the New Town there is really very nice, with a magificent view over the Firth of Forth

and there is the dramatic backdrop of Edinburgh castle

What about Manhattan?

I’m torn. Manhattanites certainly think that the borough has outstanding universal value, non-residents may not be so sure.

After cityscapes we list a series of buildings and complexes that stand out because of the beauty of the buildings themselves, often highlighted by their siting:

– Taj Mahal, which must be one of the most sublime buildings in the world

and which can stand in for a series of wonderful Mughal edifices dotted around northern India (Fatehpur Sikri, the Mausoleum of Akbar at Sikandra, the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi, the mausoleum of Humayun, …)

– Angkor Wat

with its wonderful faces carved in the temple walls

– The rock gardens and temples of Kyoto

– The chateaux of the Loire in France, especially Chenonceau

and Azay-le-Rideau

– The Alhambra palace in Andalusia

with its typical Arab love of water

We don’t just list old buildings. We would add at least two modern buildings:

– the Sydney Opera House

– the east wing of the National Gallery in Washington DC

My wife thinks we should also list Labrang, the Tibetan Buddhist monastery-town in Sichuan

I’m not convinced that it really has outstanding universal value, yet.

I’ll add here a couple of the wonderful garden-parks which were created around some of the grander country houses in the UK in the 18^th century.

– Stowe gardens

– Fountains Abbey and Gardens

Which brings us naturally to our last list, our choices of natural heritage sites of outstanding universal value. We would start with the canyons in the American west. Rather than list the Grand Canyon, which some might consider the natural choice, we would list some of the smaller canyons:

– Bryce Canyon, especially lovely in winter, which is when we saw it:

– and Canyon de Chelly

– We are moved to list here too the Atlas mountains in Morocco. When we first saw them, we were immediately reminded of the canyonlands in the US

but what was even better was that the locals were still making their villages from the local clay so that villages seemed to grow out of the landscape

– From canyons on land to canyons on the sea, and here we found the fjords in New Zealand more striking than those in Norway

– From water to none, with the red sand dunes of Namibia

– and back to water again, with the Amazon River

– from hotter to cooler, with the high meadows of the Alps in the Trentino in Italy

– from grass to trees, in this case the truly magnificent sequoias

– and finally back to grass and water, with the Scottish Highlands

-o0o-

Well, that’s our list of cultural and natural sites which we would consider to have outstanding universal value. As I said earlier, the list is no doubt incomplete simply because there are still lots of places we haven’t visited. We’d be interested to know how readers feel about this. What sites would they put on their own list?

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