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Introduction:
I have travelled
extensively in the UK since I was a child and I even lived there for a little while during my student days. I love the British people,
the culture, the landscape and quaint historic towns and I even like the food
which doesn't always have a good reputation internationally. I love the traditional
Sunday Lunch of roast beef, roast potatoes and Yorkshire Pudding and the
Afternoon Tea (scones served with jam, cream and tea), Hobnob biscuits and Scottish shortbread
fingers. I also like fish and chips and the sandwiches. Of course there
are also a few things I don't like very much, Christmas pudding or Marmite
for example, and
I haven't tried Haggis yet (wouldn't be too keen on it). What I don't like
is the weather, but here in Germany it's not much better anyway, so I
guess this doesn't count very much.
When I didn't stay with friends, I usually stayed at
bed & breakfast places (without advance reservations, but I didn't
travel during high season). The UK has a good and ordinarily fast railway
network. Cheap Day Return tickest usually offer the best price. Busses are a
good and probably even cheaper alternative but I've never tried them apart from local
busses.
Places I recommend seeing:
Edinburgh, Bath, Cornwall, the Scottish Highlands, the Lake
District, Wales, Cambridge and Oxford and London of course, just to name a few.
The Beginning:
My first time in the UK was in the summer of 1976 during a
camping trip with my
parents and my sister when we still used a tent. We went to Devon,
Cornwall (Land's
End, Tintagel Castle,
St. Michael's
Mount), Wales, Chester, the
Lake District, Scotland (Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands, Eileen Donan
Castle,
the Hebrides, Holy
Island), the Hadrian's Wall, Durham and
Stratford-upon-Avon. I don't remember very much of this first trip. I was only
7.
From 1983 we regularly went on town-twinning exchanges to
Hastings on the English south coast.
Read more about my trips to Hastings and the south of England.
In the summer of 1986 our family went to Britain on holiday
once again, this time travelling with a caravan. We took the Zeebrugge-Dover ferry and made a short stop in
Hastings to see our friends. Then we travelled through the New Forest
where we saw the wild ponies it is famous for. We visited the Dorset coast with the
Durdle Door
(a natural rock arch) and the
White Horse of Osmington (a chalk figure of a horse and rider, King George III),
Cornwall (Fowey, Tintagel Castle,
Boscastle), the
Dartmoor (Widecombe in
the Moor) with its wild ponies and Bodmin Moor
with the Jamaica Inn from the Daphne
du Maurier novel. Then we went up to Scotland where we saw many picturesque Scottish lochs,
e.g. Loch
Maree, and
Cape Wrath (the most north-westerly point
on the British mainland). We stayed on a campsite right on the
lake (Loch Broom) in Ullapool.
On my birthday Anja and
I went horse-trekking. We visited the ruins of
Dunnotar Castle on the Scottish coast, the Yorkshire
Moors,
Whitby and Whitby Abbey with Dracula's graveyard, York and
York Minster (York Minster is one of the largest churches in Europe
and York still boasts of many medieval houses and cobble-stone streets
like The Shambles),
Cambridge (Christ's College, King's College, Corpus Christi College, River Cam,
etc.), the White Cliffs of
Dover and Deal Castle.
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Graveyard
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Durdle Door
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Ullapool
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Whitby Abbey
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York
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Cambridge
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White Cliffs of Dover
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My Student Days:
When I finished school in 1989 I got the chance to spend a
couple of months with our friends in Hastings where I also had a summer job at a
local restaurant.
Read more about the details.
In the winter semester of 1991/1992 I spent five months studying at
Reading University which was an experience I wouldn't
want to miss.
Click here to read more.
At the end of my time in Reading
I went on a 2.5-weeks tour around Britain. I spent a weekend horse-riding in
Wales and some days in the Lake District and I visited my penpals in Shropshire, Liverpool and Scotland.
Read more.
In 1993 I combined a week of Aikido Summer
School (with people from my Reading aikido club) in Durham
with a little tour around the
UK visiting friends.
Find out more.
In 1995/1996
my ex-boyfriend spent a year at Birmingham University and I visited him
frequently. We also went on short trips to Stratford-upon-Avon, Glasgow,
Edinburgh and Hastings.
Click here for the details.
In May 1996 we did a little tour around
Wales.
Read about the details of
this trip.
This was followed by another Aikido Summer School in Durham
in 1996.
More.
Later Visits:
I was back in Hastings in 1998. After that I
was in the UK only once more on a business trip. On
Sunday afternoon, 16th July 2000, I took a
BA flight to Birmingham at 16:35 and got picked up by an employee of company MEDC
who took me to Pinxton near Nottingham which was about an hours' drive. I spent
two days (Monday and Tuesday) on a product training. On Monday evening I was
invited for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Derbyshire
countryside by my company's contact and his wife. On Tuesday I had a return flight at 19:35. It was really interesting to
get an impression of working life in Britain.
In August 2007 Volker and I went to London for a long
weekend when we had the opportunity to stay at the flat of our Hastings friends.
Read here about this trip.
In May 2017 we went on a two weeks
road trip to the South of England including a visit to our friends in
Hastings.
Go here for details.
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