We ranked by visitors per square kilometre rather than by popularity, and found six destinations with autumn colour to match the famous ones and a fraction of the people.
A journey that took five hours will take one hour forty. Accommodation bookings along the route are already up sharply.
The work preserved the original arcades and grey-brick facades, adding night lighting and step-free access. Rents have risen by about ten per cent.
We revisited three old towns at different stages of commercialisation on ordinary weekdays. The difference is not visitor numbers — it is how many people still live there.
Easier entry and denser flight schedules are arriving together, and bookings for the second half of the summer have picked up noticeably.
We rearranged a standard two-day itinerary and dropped the sunrise. The whole thing improved.
