Castles and stately homes may dot the landscape, but the true character of England lies in it’s eccentricities, many of which can easily be witnessed by visitors if they happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Luckily, VisitEngland.com, the official tourism body for England, is making it easy to for visitors to be in the right place at the right time with their list of the some of the most unusual events  scheduled to take place throughout England during 2010.

The quirky one-of-a-kind events include the annual World Coal Carrying Championships, held on Easter Monday (April 5) in the West Yorkshire village of Gawthorpe, the Worcestershire Asparagus Festival held in the rural market town of Evesham every spring to mark the beginning of the English Asparagus season, the Annual (stinging) Nettle-Eating Contest (June 12-13) in Dorset, the World Toe Wrestling Championship (August) in Derbyshire, and the World Snail Racing Championships (July 17) in Norfork.

But the VisitEngland.com list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to England’s eccentricities and quirkiness.

A recent read of The Bradt Guide to Eccentric Britain revealed that England, with it’s unbelievable customs, daft sports and strange rituals, is really awash in quirkiness. The author, Benedict le Vay, was once a sub-editor for the Daily Mail, during which time he had the opportunity to explore and discover the full extent of Britain’s eccentricities. And uncover them he did.

The book, a must read for any traveller to England who wants to know where to expect the unexpected, provides in depth look at not only on Britain’s ongoing eccentricities but also the history of some of Britain’s oddest eccentrics. And by dividing the chapters by subject rather than geographic location, author Benedict le Vay has created a highly readable and entertaining travel guide.

When you get a few a travel bloggers together, you can guarantee they will be talking about travel and blogging.

But that’s not all these four Seattle travel bloggers – Pam Mandel (Nerd’s Eye View , Beth Whitman (Wanderlust and Lipstick ), Michelle Duffy (WanderMom), and Debbie Dubrow (Delicious Baby) – discussed when they got together last year.

They also started talking about a way of gathering travel bloggers from around the world together to fundraise for the Heifer Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate hunger and poverty around the globe.

And so Passports with Purpose was born. The goal was to raise $5,000 for the Heifer Foundation by having travel bloggers host giveaways in support of this fundraising effort. And travel bloggers everywhere did this in style, posting, promoting, and donating to such a degree that the original goal was exceeded by over $2000.

With such a great result, it’s not surprising that the Pam, Beth, Michelle, and Debbie decided to run another Passports with Purpose this year, this time fundraising for the American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC) an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving opportunities for the youth and rural poor in Cambodia.

The goal – to raise $13,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia. And guess what, that goal has already been reached.

As of today, Passports with Purpose has raised $16,590.

Amazing results in a shaky economy.

This great fundraising exercise doesn’t finish until Dec 21st, so there is still time to join the Travel bloggers community and donate.

Here’s what you do. Head on over to the Passport with Purpose site and pick out a couple of prizes that interest you. Then buy tickets ($10 each) for that prize.

It’s that simple.

You donate and also get a chance to win great travel prizes such as books, cameras, travel gear, and accommodation and travel packages.

I’ve just been on site and done just that, donating last month’s (and this month’s projected) Perceptive Travel pay to such a worthy cause. 

Why not join me?

I see it in the packed social media-related workshops and presentations at travel and tourism industry conferences.

I see it in my email IN box, overflowing with “Look! Here!” pitches from every travel-related marketer you can imagine.

I see it in advertising campaigns like Starbucks VIA instant coffee, which distributed their product to travel bloggers in hopes that the bloggers would talk about it.

The marketing and public relations din has only grown louder – is your decibel meter picking it up?

They want what bloggers have.

They want access to our “authenticity,” our “communities” and our “conversations.”

They want access to our Twitter networks (so they host us on Twitter cruises.)

They want us to talk about them and link to their Web sites.

They want us to be their Fans on Facebook.

They’re realizing how much travel-related video gets uploaded to YouTube every day.

Bloggers, wired writers, new media….whatever you want to call us, we’ve gone from marginal to magnificent in the nearly four years since I launched my first travel blog.  It’s been an interesting shift to watch; as a writer who prefers to publish online but would like to be paid decently for that work, I never forget what businessman David Bullock said to us at a Chicago blogging conference a couple of years back:

“We want what you have, what you have right in your DNA….the ability to communicate on the Web. Don’t ever sell yourself short. We WILL pay you for it.”

Don’t get me wrong;  I’m a marketer, too.  I make money teaching tourism people how to access people like me.  They want to know. They have stories to tell about their destinations, and they’re seeing that this is the “new” way to tell them.  That’s great, as long as they also understand that (most of us) are not in it with any expectations of making big money.

I blog and connect and exchange ideas with you down in the comments because I love to travel and talk about travel with others.  I’d do it even if I wasn’t paid; in fact, that’s exactly how I started.

It’s rather ironic to enjoy this suddenly-elevated view from the catbird seat – by doing what we love, without any particular expectations, the class nerds are now in the running for Prom Queen.

We already “get it.”  We already know how to connect with like-minded folks in an organic way, using the same free/low-cost social media tools that some corporate marketing departments are just figuring out.  We may not have deep pockets, but we are more nimble and have more room to be creative.

Even backpackers can rock the social Web to market their travel dream, and a small Dutch company can put together one of the first AR (Augmented Reality) mobile apps for city travel before the biggies have figured out what hit them.

So, thanks so much for reading and supporting this blog over the years. Thanks for reading our “parent,” the excellent Perceptive Travel webzine (which is going strong because no, the travel narrative is NOT dead.)

By reading our posts and keeping me, Nia, Alison, Liz and Tim company with your links, comments and stories, you’re auto-magically in the right place at the right time in travel and Web history.

I’ve been a little hard to find on the PT blog lately, and I feel badly about it. The semi-good news is that my excuse is a new business, and we launch this week.

My partner Becky McCray and I are starting Tourism Currents; it’s an online learning community and membership site for tourism professionals who are interested in social media.

How does a woman in Texas (me) and a woman in Oklahoma (Becky) go about starting a business together?

A lot of Skype video calls and shared Google documents, that’s how.

We did get together in person last week, though, in Dallas (that’s about the halfway mark between our homes.)  I was so pumped afterwards that I made a pit stop for a late lunch in Waco, and used Utterli to record this audio post from my cell phone in the Taco Bell parking lot.

‘Cause I know how to have an exciting time in Waco!

(If you can’t see the audio player box below, here’s the URL directly to the recording.)

The intrepid and widely published travel photographer and writer — and former Perceptive Travel blogger! — Steve Davey is bringing his photographic and travel expertise to a wider audience. Not that you could get a lot wider than his books Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die and Unforgettable Islands to Escape to Before You Die, both excellent travel and photography compilations that took Steve to the higher echelons of the travel writing and photography world.

But now Steve’s doing something different. To coincide with the release of his new book Footprint Travel Photography, Steve Davey is launching a series of travel photography tours, with Morocco and India both being offered this fall.

It would be hard to pass up an opportunity like this. Long-time readers of the Perceptive Travel magazine and this blog will know that few people know India and Morocco like Steve Davey, and even fewer can give those incredible places the photographer’s eye like this long-time travel photographer and writer. If you doubt me, just check out this post on Marrakech or some of Steve’s thoughts on India in “On the veranda of my bungalow in my khaki pyjamas.”

So if you’re at all interested in these places, or in learning travel photography in the field from a renowned expert, these are tours you don’t want to miss. Impressions of Morocco starts 21 September 2009, and runs for 13 days, visiting the evocative cities of Fes, Casablanca and Marrakech, trekking in the High Atlas Mountains around the remote village of Armed, exploring ruins, gorges, kasbahs and holy sites, and spending a night under the stars in the Sahara Desert.

Impressions of India visits the stunning Taj Mahal, and the holy city of Varanasi before spending three days at the Sonepur Mela festival in Bihar. The largest livestock fair in Asia, this festival is noted for the ‘Haathi Bazaar,’ or second-hand elephant market. The tour will also visit the Buddhist pilgrimage site of Bodh Gaya with its strong Tibetan influence and the bustling city of Kolkata. The tour runs for 16 days from 26 October 2009.

Tours in the next two years will also include Southeast Asia and Southwest France. For more information about all these tours, including pricing and more extensive discussion of the technical photography aspects covered and taught, visit the Photo Tours website.