Listener 4124 Travel Guide by Aedites

[Zabadak]

Much more fun for me this week, challenging but not daunting. It gets much easier once the theme is grasped, but the final straight line takes a bit of spotting. One of those which manages to be educational as well as pretty, and nicely put together. Appreciation to Aedites.

[tilbee]

Catching up on the thread after a business trip. I am a little confused as to how to have ascertained the theme without the cells marked X. In this case initially solved the grid without worrying about the anagrams of extra words in the clues and would have otherwise made the 'obvious' assumption about the location.

You can probably guess that I flew from local airport of Heathrow - I genuinely didn't realise these things existed elsewhere in the UK. My ignorance I confess.

[Mysterons]

Personally they were merely confirmatory,tilbee - googling the first anagram I tried provided the theme (albeit I intuitively added the word s?????n)

[Philoctetes]

Tilbee,
The straight line removes the need for the x letters.

[IainGrace]

A pleasant journey, and one right up our street, as it were.

[trux]

Mostly completed on 12-hour flight back home, but no local knowledge so had to wait to get to home PC to complete .... excellent ... many thanks, Aedites

[tilbee]

Philocotes - agreed, but I prefer the idea that a Listener is a layer by layer construction, In this case - grid; theme; s*******s and finally the thematic geographic feature, Of course we all sometimes work out one element and work backwards, but as far as crossword constuction I think we need to accept the logical progression ?