The Cool Places Team
Cool Places was founded in 2012 by the team behind Rough Guides and Cool Camping. Their inspiration? The richness and diversity of modern Britain, and how much it has changed since they set off on their travels around the world.
Martin Dunford is one of the co-founders of Rough Guides and was the publisher there for many years. He is the author of many guidebooks and travel features and heads up Cool Places as well as working as a freelance writer and editor, focused much of the time on the UK.
Patrick Beddow first lent a hand at Cool Places on two weeks of work experience back in 2016. After finishing university and working in the world of food and events, he's now the first port of call for all prospective Cool Places and works with our existing partners. When not doing that, you can often find him cycling to a new part of London, mainly guided by what food might be found at the other end.
Taryn Read....
Jonathan Knight's Cool Camping England became an instant travel bestseller when it was published in 2006, since when Cool Camping and Glampingly have become the leading UK websites for camping and glamping sites.
Mark Ellingham founded Rough Guides in 1982, when he wrote the very first guide (to Greece), and ran the series for the next 25 years as Rough Guides became a household name, with guides to more than 150 destinations. He now runs a small press, Sort Of Books (most famous for Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons) and is also a director of Songlines world music magazine and Punk Publishing.
Kenny Grant leads the Tech team at the Cool Places website.
Writers & Photographers
Finally these are all the cool people who have had a hand in writing, photographing and editing the Cool Places you are reading about....
Alf Alderson, Lauren Ash, Sarah Baxter, Ros Belford, Kate Bendix, Alice Brown, Jules Brown, Kerry Christiani, Chris Coe, Sam Cook, Zoe Dawes, Fergus Day, Laura Dixon, Laura Evans, John Fisher, Stuart Forster, Wendy Gommersall, Lottie Gross, Diana Jarvis, Matthew Hancock, Liz Harper, Nicola Holland, Pat Kinsella, Phil Lee, Dan Linstead, Norm Longley, Robin McKelvie, Harriet O'Brien, Helen Ochyra. Beth Pipe, Laura Porter, Donald Reid, Claire Saunders, Sandra Shields, Amy Sheldrake, Hayley Spurway, James Stewart, Caroline Sylger-Jones, Amanda Tomlin, Victoria Trott, Greg Ward, Luke Waterson, Andrew White, Amanda Wragg.
