A Little Advice…5 Tips to Plan a UK Backpacking Trip
The kids are out of school, many businesses in Europe are closed, flights are packed in elbow-to-elbow…ah, it must be August. Late summer in the United Kingdom is a very rough time of year; I’ve just learned this lesson and the stress it caused trying to travel around the country on a backpacker budget was intense.
Tourists from the United States and from all over Europe head to Scotland from July through September; cheap accommodation is booked up quickly and tours and food are all at a premium.
There are five key points I wish I had known before planning a trip to the UK during the summer months:
- Book ahead. I’m definitely a fan of spontaneous travel and rarely like to fully book my trips advance – I usually suffice with booking the first two nights of hostels and leaving the rest up to whim. In this case though, it’s extremely difficult during the UK’s high tourist season to find cheap accommodation, particularly on the weekends. Even the cheapie beds are expensive if you’re exchanging home currency into the dominating pounds sterling, and booking a hotel eats up about a three day budget in one heartbeat.
All of the usual hostel sites will work for pre-booking, hostels.com, hostelworld, etc. (Extra tip, hostels.com does not charge a booking fee if you sign up for their newsletter!). If these sites don’t strike your fancy consider the Scottish Independent Hostels site. If you still want to be spontaneous, consider just booking your accommodation for Friday and Saturday nights.
And for families – hostels are still a great choice by the way! Independent ones especially are family friendly and not only will it likely cost less for the room, but you can save some money by cooking occasional meals (refer to number three!)
- Buses, buses, buses. Trains are faster to be sure, but buses are the way to go in both England and Scotland if you have the time. The UK train system is both extensive and expensive. Seriously expensive. The buses on the other hand can be had for as cheap as one GBP between cities and often less than GBP 10. Megabus is the cheapest by far but has limited routes (mostly between the major cities and towns. CityLink is more expensive but still cheaper than the trains.
Traveline Scotland is an incredibly helpful in planning a route from one city to another – the site gives precise directions and timetables for taking public transport…and you can even select whether you want to include walking, buses, trains, and metro.
If you are going to be a baller, use the National Rail site to plan out your train travel – and book that price online because it could be double or triple at the ticket counter! And if you’re really going to do it right then a rental car would probably be most ideal if you could fill the car and split the price!
- Head to Tesco. Nearly all hostels have kitchens – and they can be surprisingly well stocked! So with that in mind I highly recommend cooking your own dinner at least a couple of times a week. Pick up some fruit, yogurt, and museli and you may only have to buy a lunch for the day!
Additionally, head to the pubs for the daily special – Andy Hayes recommended this tip pertaining to Edinburgh and it worked well for me if I felt like splurging on a dinner.
As a vegetarian, eating out is a bit harder – there is definitely always a vegetarian option but it sometimes lacks much imagination beyond glorified pasta. I actually enjoyed cooking for myself for this very reason…at least in the smaller towns – Edinburgh is a city, and like any city has a huge selection of restaurants, veggie ones included :-)
- Bring an umbrella. It rains, it pours, the country is wet. You shrug right now and say, “Huh, of course it’s wet, this girl must have been crazy to not know that.” It’s even wetter than you imagine; ponchos, rain covers for packs and authentic rain jackets are all needed here because it rains an awful lot. If you’re taking public transport in particular these are imperative because all of the bus stops do not necessarily sport a covered waiting area.
- Plan to Spend More. One of the beautiful things about exchange rates is that you just don’t know what’s going to happen. In the past year (since I started planning this part of the RTW trip) the exchange rate from the US dollar to Pounds Sterling has fluctuated nearly 50 cents on the dollar. Umm. Crap. That means I spent more money than initially anticipated…so take that into consideration and over-budget for the UK.
The thing is, in Asia, if the exchange rate fluctuates you are talking about only a small fluctuation in the amount you’re spending on accommodation…perhaps mere cents more. In the UK though, a change of 20 cents could easily mean $4 more a night just for accommodation. Stretch that across several weeks and you could be grossly over budget going into the rest of your travels.
The United Kingdom is gorgeous and while I do not regret for a second adding this place onto my itinerary for this round the world trip, it was, perhaps, a poor choice. I added in the UK specifically and solely to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival…without this impetus though I might have saved this one as an isolated trip rather than a part of the whole trip RTW.
As an independent/shorter trip it would have been less of a financial strain. Without the worry about my budget holding out until the end I might have more readily enjoyed a few more pints along the way.
For more tips and travel stories you’ll want to subscribe to my RSS feed…it’s free and I promise I don’t bite!
Related posts:
