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Home exchange can get you to some fantastic places. Our home
exchange in the UK gave us a home in Camberley on the outskirts of London for 5
weeks, a computer and a car, and the experience of an English Christmas
and winter. The English couple we exchanged with enjoyed our home, our
car, our computer and a New Zealand summer.The cost to each of us...nothing
but petrol, airfares, food and insurance.
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Driving
in the UK
All the roads are numbered rather than signposted with names,
so travelling through towns looking for the place you want to go to, can
be very confusing. You need to find the road numbers on the map before
hand and plan your route the day before to travel easily.
The motorways
are brilliant and fast. ~ 70mph is slow although that is the speed limit,
most drive at 80mph including the trucks, which tend to stay in the left
lane of the three lanes available. However the motorways are only easy
if, once again, you have a "co-pilot" with a map of the UK and all
the road numbers clearly marked.
The atlas we used was excellent, available
here
and it really is an essential in your UK adventure kit.
You get a lot of warning
as to the roads leaving the motorways but if you are driving on your own
and unfamiliar with the numbers, forget it! Take a bus or train! You need
to be able to read the road signs from some distance and so
if you can't, be prepared to often be in the wrong lane. You'll have to go back
and try again. Even a local told us she went round a roundabout twice quite
often so she could work out which exit to take. Trucks can also obscure signs
if you aren't in the slow lane.
The motorways also show you in big brown signs, all the tourist attractions
such as castles, zoos, speedway tracks,historical places etc and if you
decide to leave the motorway to investigate, on impulse, the route is
clearly marked.
You will also
find "Welcome" and "Moto" scattered at intervals on the motorways. These
are great stops designed to give you all you need as a traveller.
The old English Inns of the new millenium perhaps? These stops have
food, fast and English, mixed goods, toilets, petrol and places to fix any
car problems. Many also have accommodation. Don't expect great service though.
We were driving
in winter, and usually left our London base about 9.am and were back by
4.00pm.We left late to avoid icy roads and rush hour traffic. It is dark
by 4.30pm and we liked to be back at "home" by then as it became harder to
read the roadsigns. In the car our exchangee had left an ice scraper
and an aerosol that dissolved ice, and we soon learnt how to use them! However
the car also had heating and we set it at 22 degrees and never had a problem
with the cold!
York
York is a day trip from London, 4 hours non stop travelling at 80mph and
it is actually faster by train but we chose to take the car and not
be tied to timetables.York is a wonderful place with picturesque houses
and shops, narrow and windy streets and city walls that surround the
inner parts.
For us, from the open
wide streets and modern homes of New Zealand, York was all that was
so unique about England. We intended to travel back to London but there was
too much to see and we decided at 4.00pm to stay the night. Even in the middle
of winter accommodation
is a problem in York
so book early. Click here to be entitled to stay with home hosting members in the UK.
We
found a bed and breakfast/Pub called the Old Grey Mare eventually.
The cost was
£30 and we had 5 beds in our room to choose from. It was warm, with tea
and coffee making facilities.
Built in the 1600's the beams were too low for Mike's head and seriously
atmospheric. You could almost feel the highwayman who had slept there before
us.Off street
parking and a pub meal below our room made this a warm and comfortable place to be for the night
A
night walk into the centre of York proved we were right to stay another
day. The walled centre is dominated by York Munster, a gothic cathedral that
is stunning at night.
We felt safe walking
through the town centre with few cars and shops so ancient the windows are
at odd angles and the streets are cobbled with cart wheel tracks. You seem
to be in a medieval theme park. The shambles is a famous tourist attraction
with the house walls almost touching across the street. It was a butchers'
street, and the shambles were the butchers' tables they put the meat on.
First mentioned in the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror, the area was
rebuilt in 1400. Quaint shops straight out of Dicken's era made this a special
night walk
without even venturing among the multitude of tourist attractions.
Daylight and time to explore. Its easier to abandon the car and walk,
as even in winter, the traffic is horrendous in these small, narrow streets.
Munster Cathedral opens at 9.30am, the tower at 10.00am depending
on the weather. No photos can be taken inside but there is a souvenir shop
which can sell you religious articles and postcards. Inside, the cathedral
is truly spectacular. It's huge, gothic and if you are as lucky, as we were, you
may catch a local choir practising Christmas Carols in the quire stalls.
There are memorials everywhere to all who were rich and famous from the area,
massive stained glass windows, chapels and a crypt. There is a charge to
go down and to go up! Admission is free with a suggestion of a £3
donation.
We found the Cathedral awe inspiring, the size, the grandeur, the magnitude
the scale, it is enormous. You can feel hundreds of years of incredible history
seeping out of every stone and block. Historical royal connections are everywhere,
and it is very strongly connected to the military past of the area.
A walk along the city walls is another great activity and a visit to the
National Railway Museum.Here you will see the Royal Train,
glistening, huge locomotives from the era of steam
, and a replica of the first steam engine built.A working engine with
cut away sides explains visually how steam becomes locomotion, and you can
look down on the workshop where locomotives are being restored. You
will also see a small model railway, a souvenir shop, a turntable, and
there is a lovely cafe inside. It is warm and you will be able to
follow the history of the railways in England.
Admission is free,
We had to leave and return to London, for one thing we couldn't afford
the huge cost of the British bed and breakfasts with the New Zealand exchange
rate being very low and our home exchange beds were free. However there is
so much more to see. A teapot Factory, a ghost walk, Falconry exhibits in
the Pennines, old ruins, abbeys, and castles, the Viking Museum, you could
stay a week and still not even have been shopping!
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