Britannia2's VirtualTourist Home Page

Send Photo to a Friend

Friendly England

Try and see not so well known places

Visitors to the UK always seem to want to visit the major tourist towns. I guess we all would do the same wherever we went and I have done so myself. However as people will know I always recomend places that are not widely known in the forum page.
The pages here shows some well known places and some places probably not so well known but equally well worth a visit.
Hull is my birthplace and I still work here but live just a few miles out. Perhaps its because I come from such a maligned city (unjustly so) I can see the value of visiting other under visited places.......

For the record I am married with a teenage son. We have travelled across Europe and I have been to Ireland but we have not been overseas since 2003.
My wife is disabled and uses either a wheelchair or motorised scooter. Although disabilty can cause upset to some travel plans - for example when a foot path suddenly ends and to go further involves climbing a wall or walking on stones and then good ideas end. However most places are getting more and more disabled friendly and we have not been hindered too much.
I would be interested to hear from any other people who travel with disability problems. My travel pages sometimes mention particular barriers to travel.

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.
The overseas travel pages have photographs scanned from slides and this is why the quality is not my new digital standard.

Send Photo to a Friend

The man who spent a weeks housekeeping on wine

Travel

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 lfe of luxury. It never happened but I have seen a lot of Europe but would one day love to see the world. That's why I enjoy VT so much - reading about peoples travels and hoping one day we could make some great journeys too.

Send Photo to a Friend

Trans Pennine express at Northallerton

Travel by train if you can in the UK

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/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1154104247,31062 andhttp://money.uk.msn.com/Specials/Holiday_Money/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6240035 also

Send Photo to a Friend

Swanland

Where I live

I lived in Hull all of my life until we moved to Swanland in 2004 in rural / urban East Yorkshire. I say rural / urban because this is Hull and Leeds commuter land and it is not very far from anywhere else. The A63 thunders by a few minutes away on its way to and from Hull but this is still a tranquil village that is a good place to live. There are very few country people left here - high property prices have changed the face of the village and most people seem to be from Hull just like ourselves although there are lot of people from the south who have moved here for cheaper property.
London is only just over 2 hours away from nearby Brough station but it could be a thousand miles away - life here is far better than London life.

Send Photo to a Friend

Here to help

Advice given in forum pages

I really enjoy answering the travel questions in the VT forum pages on the United Kingdom. This is my main reason for joining VT - we cannot travel outside the UK at the moment for several reasons and my new and recent pages are limited to the UK although I am slowly adding pages from Holland, Germany and Menorca from recent years holidays.