From the Barnard Castle to Seattle's chewing gum wall, here are TripAdvisor's weirdest top-rated landmarks
TripAdvisor’s Barnard Castle page has been inundated spoof reviews after senior government aide Dominic Cummings drove to the market town during lockdown.
The story whipped up controversy after it was reported he travelled from London to Durham with his wife and child - and now the beauty spot’s page on TripAdvisor profile has been suspended.
However the website is known for a host of other weird and wonderful top-rated attractions...
TripAdvisor has suspended reviews for a hole in a wall outside a bank after online pranksters turned it into a tourist attraction.
The hole in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, achieved notoriety after it ranked as the fourth best tourist attraction in the town.
TripAdvisor has now stopped publishing new reviews for the NatWest Hole, but it’s not the first unlikely landmark to gain fame on the travel site for the strangest of reasons. Here are some of the others:
Pizza Express, Woking
After Prince Andrew claimed to been attending a children’s party with his daughter Beatrice at the Woking pizzeria on the day he was accused of having sex with a 17-year-old trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, reviews flooded in on the restaurant’s page poking fun at him. (He also claimed he didn’t sweat at the time of the allegations.) TripAdvisor subsequently suspended reviews of the venue for more than a month.
The Bude Tunnel
A plastic tunnel attached to the side of a Sainsbury’s supermarket became the highest-rated attraction in the Cornish seaside resort of Bude in September 2018.
The 70-metre (230ft) structure has racked up more than 800 reviews, with the majority rating it "excellent". It has been likened to the Taj Mahal and called "one of the seven wonders".
As its fame has grown, the Bude Tunnel has been decorated with neon lights and featured on local websites, despite initial concerns the joke might negatively impact tourism in the town.
The Shed, Dulwich
In December 2017 a journalist tricked TripAdvisor into making his shed the top-rated restaurant in London after he and his friends submitted fake reviews.
Oobah Butler, a writer for Vice, transformed his garden shed into a fake restaurant by making a website and enlisting a photographer to take photographs of the "food" – close-ups of shaving foam, bleach and, at one point, the author's foot – that The Shed apparently served.
The website boasts: "An appointment-only restaurant located in South London, The Shed has been operating privately for years. In 2017, it decided to open its doors. As of November that year, it was TripAdvisor's top-rated restaurant in London."
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Despite not actually existing, the Grand Budapest Hotel page on TripAdvisor has 370 reviews to its name. Created in honour of the 2014 Wes Anderson film, this spoof page now has an official warning at the top – reminding people not to try to book a stay at the fictitious hotel.
Chewing Gum Wall, Seattle
A wall covered in chewing gum in downtown Seattle has been labelled a ‘must-do’ for visitors to the US city. Rated 3.5 TripAdvisor bubbles, the Gum Wall is thought to have been started in 1990 as a last-ditch effort by theatregoers of Seattle’s Market Theatre to get rid of their gum while waiting in line.
Authorities spent 130 hours steam-cleaning the wall several years ago, and filled 94 buckets with 168 stone of chewed gum. But visitors were back the following day to start the collection all over again and the wall is now well-known across Seattle and over the Atlantic.
Land’s End...
And then there are those that find legendary landmarks a little underwhelming, such as the reviewer who rated Land’s End with one bubble, saying “Sorry but is this an attraction? Nine Quid to get a picture beside a cheap looking pole? With a really tacky shoping outlet attached. I'm appalled that this is a toursit attraction in the UK. It is really tasteless beyond words.”
