"The world of Virtual Tourist and me" Britannia2's Profile

Bishop Burton, England in the late winter

England

Home is a small village called Swanland in East Yorkshire - very traditional with a duck pond, pub, village hall and some famous residents - it is home for example to Diana Wallis who is Vice President of the European Parliament.
England is such a small country compared to many others across the world but despite this has so much variety in its landscape - even East Yorkshire which forms a tiny part of this beautiful land has gentle rolling hills in one part and large open flat lands near the sea.
Swanland is a beautiful English village set on top of a hill and it lies in rolling country that is wooded in part.

About me

Avis Hill 1954 - 2008

I was widowed in late August 2008 - we had been happily married for 22 years. My wife was very disabled and a wheelchair user. Travel overseas had not been possible for some years due to Avis' health and we were very much confined to the UK but this is such a beautiful country and we always found places to go.
So life is about to change dramatically and perhaps if finances work out I can start to travel - it will perhaps ease the pain of losing Avis. We shall see.
I will certainly not forget the needs of the disabled traveller and continue to put disabled access tips within my pages. Remember - we are all potential wheelchair users.

Photos

I have been interested in photography for many years and am a member of the Brooklands Photographic Club ://www.hill.karoo.net/brooklands/brooklands.html.) All the photos are my own with the exception of a few. I will eventually replace these with my own photos. Until March 2006 I used a simple 2 meg camera but bought an 8 megapixel camera in March 2006 and all photos were taken on this until April 2007 when I moved up to a digital Pentax SLR. Now updated to a 15mg Canon EOS500 from May 2009. This also takes HD video so look out for more videos too in 2009.
The overseas travel pages have photographs scanned from slides and this is why the quality is not my new digital standard.
I am also a judge on the East Yorkshire photography circuit.

Travel

The man who spent a weeks housekeeping on wine

I got the travel bug when I was at school and my sister and I were lucky to be able to be taken all over the UK by our parents but never overseas.
It seemed the parents of the 1960s had an aversion to anything foreign! I loved the BBC travel show presented by Cliff Mitchelmore in the late 1960s and envied his foreign travel. I remember how in one episode he went to Sydney and bought what he said was a very reasonable bottle of wine for 17/6 (82p in todays money) and my dad said he could feed us for 17/6 a week! That made my mind up - I wanted to travel like that too and live a life of luxury. It never happened but I have seen a lot of Europe and distant shores are now possible.

Travel by train if you can in the UK

Trans Pennine express at Northallerton

Not only is it more environmentally friendly it can be faster than driving although admittedly not always as convenient. The rail system is at long last getting some investment and although there is still room for improvement the rail system is not as bad as some tabloid newspapers show it to be. Many trains in the UK and now mainly run on set interval timetables on dedicated routes that interlink with other routes well.
If you are coming to the UK from a country that drives on the other side of the road to us I would recommend you use the trains at least on your first visit.
I realise UK train travel is expensive but the link below shows how it is possible to save money on rail travel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6442947.stm and also http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-train-tickets

Advice given in forum pages

Here to help

I really enjoy answering the travel questions in the VT forum pages on the United Kingdom. This is my main reason for joining VT - I have been to every county within mainland UK and visited every major city. I love looking at maps and can find my way around every city and major town in the the north and midlands of England without a map.

Virtual Tourist

A VT birthday cake

love Virtual Tourist. I always wanted to be a writer / photographer and when I discovered VT here was my chance to do something I had always wanted to do. Many European trips were made before either the internet was invented or before I discovered VT but an early trip to Germany in 2003 is featured.
At times it has been a real comfort too - when Avis died I received many messages of comfort and building pages took my mind off events in the long winter following her death. I have been to two VT meetings and I thought these were not only good fun but very sociable and there are some wonderful members here in VT.
Even my 2009 birthday cake was a VT cake!