Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
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Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#2Inevitable by-product of a highly networked society?
I saw a similar, though somewhat more interpretable, situation at Alamere Falls (1.5 hrs north of SF, south end of Point Reyes): a thousand high school students from all over the Bay Area out in a National Seashore where you generally expect to see a hundred hikers tops, heavy on the retired profs in Audobon t-shirts and NPR-steeped Marin mushroom enthusiasts. According to one of the park guards, it is now like this all the time. The park guards get asked all the time by the new visitors 'where is this?'as the visitors point to an HDR, oversaturated picture on Snapchat or Instagram. And every weekend new pictures are posted, and the next week another cohort comes.
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#3Speaking as a local, this genuinely is bizarre.
Three miles from Kidlington is Woodstock, which is a picture-perfect village with stone cottages and quaint shops. Ten miles away (where I live) you're into the genuine Cotswolds.
The theories advanced in the BBC article don't stack up. Kidlington is not a "folksy cultural stop" or "a beautiful English village". It's really average suburbia - the fact it's formally a "village" is just an administrative quirk, it's not village-like in any way.
It's incredibly unlikely that people are "mistaking Kidlington for Kirtlington" because the latter has a population of eight people and a dog, nothing really to look at, and is less pretty than a hundred other villages nearby.
And it's not "on the way to Bicester Village shopping centre"; you have to take a detour to get there, and if you want to detour into a pretty village between (say) Oxford and Bicester Village, there are prettier ones to visit.
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#4Speaking as a local, this genuinely is bizarre. Three miles from Kidlington is Woodstock, which is a picture-perfect village with stone cottages and quaint shops. Ten miles away (where I live) you're into the genuine Cotswolds. The theories advanced in the BBC article don't stack up. Kidlington is not a "folksy cultural stop" or "a beautiful English village". It's really average suburbia - the fact it's formally a "v…
A cynic wonders if a local pub or eating establishment has cut a deal with tour bus companies...
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#5Speaking as a local, this genuinely is bizarre. Three miles from Kidlington is Woodstock, which is a picture-perfect village with stone cottages and quaint shops. Ten miles away (where I live) you're into the genuine Cotswolds. The theories advanced in the BBC article don't stack up. Kidlington is not a "folksy cultural stop" or "a beautiful English village". It's really average suburbia - the fact it's formally a "v…
Do you worry that it may really be time travellers?
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#6When I was traveling in rural parts of China, locals seemed equally baffled that a laowai was interested in their lowly village. Also, I assume most Chinese who have money to travel abroad live in large cities where such single family homes are quite a rare sight and sell in the millions of dollars. Now, why that village more than another I have no idea.
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#7When I was traveling in rural parts of China, locals seemed equally baffled that a laowai was interested in their lowly village. Also, I assume most Chinese who have money to travel abroad live in large cities where such single family homes are quite a rare sight and sell in the millions of dollars. Now, why that village more than another I have no idea.
When I spent quite a bit of time in China, I would use Google Earth to find places that hadn't had all their pre-revolution homes replaced by highrises. It wasn't that easy!
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#8Has no one bothered to ask the visitors why they came?
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#9Has no one bothered to ask the visitors why they came?
I was kind of baffled by this too, does the BBC not have access to anyone that speaks their language?
Also, the article switches between them being Japanese & Chinese tourists.. is the BBC even sure where the tourists are from?
I'm unsure as to why this is on Hacker News.
Re: Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals
#10When I was traveling in rural parts of China, locals seemed equally baffled that a laowai was interested in their lowly village. Also, I assume most Chinese who have money to travel abroad live in large cities where such single family homes are quite a rare sight and sell in the millions of dollars. Now, why that village more than another I have no idea.
I think this might be hinting towards the truth. An additional observation might be the pursuit of authenticity- so many cities and tourist destinations across the world seem to have become hyperreal versions of themselves- in my own home city of Seattle, the Seattle Center park seems to be a good example of this. Walking around near the Space Needle feels like going to Disney World- monorail and all.
I mean, if I visited the U.K., and spent an entire week in London seeing all the tourist attractions (I suppose for me that'd be Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, London Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Abbey Road), what would I really get out of that? I can see pictures of those things on the Internet any time I want (and in Abbey Road's case, I can see live streaming video!)