DDiscover Alone Open the map

What nobody tells you

If they can't make money out of it, they don't advertise it

The places you see on posters are the ones with a ticket office. The rest, the castles, wells, forts and wrecks, nobody is paid to tell you about. So nobody does.

By Rickie · Discover Alone

A fairy fort near Carrigcleena, County Cork. No sign, no leaflet. Picture: Wikimedia Commons

Follow the money

The brochures, the tourist boards, the ads and the top ten lists all push the places that charge you something: a ticket, a car park, a café, a gift shop.

That's not a plot. It's just business. If there's nothing to sell, there's nobody paying for the advert.

The free stuff is invisible

Ardboe High Cross, County Tyrone — Ardboe High Cross, County Tyrone. Over a thousand years old, free to walk up to. Picture: geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0

So the ruined castle on the hill, the holy well people have walked to for a thousand years, the fairy fort in the field, the shipwreck on the shore: no sign, no leaflet, no website.

They're not less interesting. They just don't make anyone any money.

Nobody paid to be on my map

The wreck of the Kasko at Blackhall Rocks — The wreck of the Kasko at Blackhall Rocks, County Durham. Picture: geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0

That's why I built Discover Alone. 1,118,481 places, people and events across Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. Most of them free. Most of them with nobody there.

Nobody paid to be on it, and nobody pays to be at the top of it.

Go and find one

Open the map and tap where you are. Within five miles there's something nobody ever advertised to you.

Go and see it before somebody works out how to charge for it.

See what's near you

1,118,481 places, people and events. Free, no sign-up to look.

Find places near me

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Look at one old cross or church on its own and you get the shallowest understanding imaginable. See the places beside it together and the whole story appears. Carndonagh shows how.

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