13. Give a comparative description of some ancient English towns («Salisbury, Caernarfon»)

To start with, I should say that Britain is a fabulous country of starling beauty and diversity, it’s really worth exploring, visiting and living in. It’s packed with exciting places to go and interesting things to discover. Everyone who comes to England is fascinated by its magnificent, picturesque, enchanting, breathtaking and inviting towns where past and present exist side by side. Some of the ancient towns in England are Salisbury, Caernarfon, Durham and Liverpool.

Salisbury was one of the earliest «row-towns». It was founded in 1220. The most striking feature is the cathedral which was founded at the same time as the town. It is thought to be one of the most beautiful in Europe. The cathedral is 473 feet long. Salisbury is a market town and a shopping centre, because of the cathedral and old town and because of Stonehenge.

Caernarfon has always been an important stra’tegic and military site. The Romans built a castle here in 78 AD. The castle is one of the finest surviving castles in Britain. The town is a market centre and a tourist centre for the Snowdonia National Park. It’s famous for sailing and fishing.

Durham is built on a bend in the River Wear and it grew around the Norman castle which was built in 1072 to protect England from Scots. The religious schools developed from the 15^thcentury, eventually becoming the University of Durham. It’s England’s third oldest University after Oxford and Cambridge. Durham is an administration and market centre.

Liverpool is one of the Britain’s largest cities. Its most famous inhabitants are probably John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star, and Liverpool has built a 1 mln pound «Beatles Museum».

Liverpool developed quickly in the 18^th and 19^th century as Britain’s major Atlantic port. It was also a centre for the cotton trade and manufacturing industry. There are 2 20^th century cathedrals here: one church of England., the other Roman Catholic. Liverpool is a cosmopolitan city. Today it’s well-known for the wit and humour of its people, and its high unemployment figures.

As you can see, every ancient town in England has something to offer a visitor and has attractions of its own.

14. Describe a journey that went wrong for some reason (“Journey to Namur”)

My aunt is a businesswoman so she travels a lot. Last summer she had to go to Namur on business. Early in the morning on Friday the taxi arrived on time and took her to the local railway station. She was in plenty of time for the train. In fact she was early for the train and when she got to the station a slow train to Reading was waiting on the platform. She thought that she would go and wait for the fast train past the time it was supposed to arrive. About 10 minutes after it was supposed to be in the station an announcement came over that there were floods in Woodenbasit which were delaying the train. And she waited, waited and waited. The train finally got there but because the train was late she had missed her train to Reading and had to wait hours for another.

She got to the airport just barely in time, because there were roadworks on the motorway and the taxi had to stood it the traffic jam. She got worried then that she was gonna miss her plane. When she stopped out of the taxi at the airport, it was 19 minutes to take off time. Fortunately she only had handbaggage, she grabbed her bags and ran to the departure area. She put her bag through the X-ray machine and then found a short passport line, she got into the line, had her passport checked and ran to the gate. When she was almost at the departure gate she realized that she had left her handbag at the X-ray machine. So she ran back towards the X-ray machine. She did get her hand bag and ran through passport control. Fortunately the man at the passport control had recognized her. Then she found out that the plane was late. So she waited and waited and the plane finally took off.

She was almost an hour late getting to Brussels. She hurried out and found the longest lines for passport control she had ever seen in her life. The lines just snaked all over the arrival area. It turned out that the Pope was in Belgium and the Passport officers were very careful trying to keep the terrorists so the passport control took ages and ages. She was really getting worried about her being late. But when she got out of passport control she saw a local representative waiting for her.

Then they jumped into a taxi and rushed off to the train station and the local representative was wonderful. She said it was real sigh of relief that they sat down in the taxi and she applied herself to the yoghurt and apple the representative had brought along as a snack. The finally got to the Namur about 10 or 15 minutes before she was supposed to begin talking to those people.

Well I think it was a really heroine experience.