Travelogue: Seattle. USA

Seattle: USA

It's not every American city that can boast of many of the locations that provided the backdrop for such films as The Third Man or The 39 Steps, and Seattle can't either, but what this city lacks in excitement, glamour and mostly everything else, it makes up for in it's historical and industrial roots.

Established as a trading post in 1780, the site was used as a stepping off point for prospectors and explorers alike. Many expeditions assembled here before launching themselves into the vast, and as yet, unknown interior.

The first time the famous explorer, Mungo Smythe, saw Seattle, during the ill fated expedition of 1850 to trace the source of the mighty Rocky Mountains, he called it, "the quaintest little town in all of America." Unfortunately he was lost and was actually referring to Vancouver.

First settled in 1851, as the nearest port for Alaska, Seattle grew in the late 19th century under the impetus of the gold rush after Mungo Smythe discovered the precious mineral in Klondykes, the High street jewellers.

Situated between Puget Sound and Washington Lake, Seattle is the industrial, financial and cultural centre of the Pacific North West and is the main manufacturing centre for Boeing aircraft production.

The visitor to Seattle will be surprised by it's temperate climate and the surrounding beautiful landscapes of lakes, forests and mountains.

A place of interest that every visitor must see when in Seattle is the old village Post Office, which dates back to 1855. Rumour has it that it was built based on a design by the great architect John Nash, of Bath's Royal Crescent fame, and is identical in every detail to Nash's very own garden shed.

Suggestions by the Smythe family that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the Rocky Mountains have recently been refuted after carbon dating revealed the plastic bag they were wrapped in only dated back to the mid-nineteen-seventies.

Birthplace of possibly one of the greatest rock guitarist of all time, Jimi Hinchcliffe was set for a glittering career after being discovered by ex-Animals bass player Chas Chandlier in Greenwich Village in 1966.