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Enjoyed that, thank you Harribobs. A pleasant way to spend a few hours this weekend in the sunshine. Now off for a quick cycle to celebrate!

Provided one doesn't make an error in entering the letters of across answers, I don't think the endgame is all that tough. It just needs concentration. I think there are four options for the first letter of the first destination. Three of those result in a pretty odd sequence of letters for the various 4-letter strings that end in the circled cell. With the first three letters identified, all that is needed is the Times atlas or similar, which is a standard Listener reference. Failing that, Wikipedia is a pretty useful resource. The same logic and process of elimination applies to the second destination.

I'm glad some people enjoyed this one. I filled the grid pretty quickly and came to the endgame, which sounded tedious and boring - and so it proved. Having had three attempts at completing the endgame only to discover that I have obviously made an error somewhere earlier on - I'm giving up. Even self-isolating, I have better things to do than this. Sorry Harribobs.

Hi, I'm just starting this one and wondered if someone could add some clarity to the preamble.

1. When it says "most answers are initially entered after cycling" does that mean that any of the answer's letters could be entered first, but all others will then remain in order? E.g. an answer of the form abcde might be entered as cdeab?

2. The preamble mentions destinations, but I assume this doesn't mean all answers are placenames? I need to revisit my first 2 solved clues if not.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I don't understand the placing of letters in the example. I can see that the O of one goes in 1,1 but N = 14 so why count on 15? And then why count on 14 for E instead of 5? And why a gap before the next word starts? Confused!

patch 49 - it's the O which makes you count 14, then the N makes you count 15, and so on.

sorry: wrong way round. (Memo: check your work before handing in.)

O = 15, so count squares 1,2 ... put in N at 15, then count 14: 1,2,... put E in at 14. And so on (that's the easy bit!)

Lofthouse. You are correct on both counts.

I'm in Murky's camp on this one.

Completing the 1st grid correctly gives you the starting point for the 2nd grid 1st place name which in turn then yields only 4 possible first letters for the first place name (O, P, R or S). You know there are 30 letters in all to comprise the two place names and they are both 'double-barreled' from the preamble.....so this narrows down the place name options considerably.

Only grumbles were that I made a false start using the 1st grid entries for the 2nd grid but that didn't waste too much time; and I was looking for real words to start with in the 2nd grid but I guess that would have been asking way too much!

Thanks Harribobs, last week's Listener and this defy my expectations of what's possible with simple grids!

Can someone remind me where Dickens comes in to it ?