Trip Report with Tanya Munro [Insider Tips, Memorable Moments, and Unexpected Discoveries]

Welcome to Episode 82 of the UK Travel Planning podcast! Today, we have a special treat for you as we're joined by guest Tanya Munro, who recently embarked on an exciting 35-day trip to the UK and the Republic of Ireland. 

In this episode, Tanya shares her in-depth trip report, from her favourite accommodations to the highlights of each destination, and provides valuable insights and tips based on her extensive travel experience. From scenic drives in Fort William to the charming streets of St Ives, Tanya's journey is packed with adventure and discovery. 

So, grab your headphones and get ready to immerse yourself in Tanya's unforgettable travel experiences on this episode of the UK Travel Planning podcast.

Show Notes - Episode 82

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast. Your host is the founder of the UK Travel Planning website, tracey Collins. In this podcast, tracey shares destination guides, travel tips and itinerary ideas, as well as interviews with a variety of guests who share their knowledge and experience of UK travel to help you plan your perfect UK vacation. Join us as we explore the UK from cosmopolitan cities to quaint villages, from historic castles to beautiful islands, and from the picturesque countryside to seaside towns.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Welcome to episode 82 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast. It's lovely to have you here. I'm actually recording this podcast from a damp and rainy UK. I'm very excited with this episode to have a fellow Aussie on the podcast. So we have Tanya, who has recently returned from a 35 day trip to the UK and the Republic of Ireland and Singapore on the way back. Tanya has agreed to come onto the podcast today and tell us all about her trip. So, tanya, would you like to introduce yourself, tell us who you went with on the trip and whereabouts you're from.

Speaker 3: 1:15

Okay. So, as Tracey just said, my name's Tanya and I'm married to John, so John and I went on the trip. We come from sunny Brisbane, australia, so not too far from where Tracey's from, and so I travel with John to the UK. We have adult kids and we're just a tiny bit over 50 and we love travelling.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Oh, that's brilliant. I know, and we've known each other as well for quite a few years. I'm a Tanya, so it was brilliant when you started planning this trip that you joined the Facebook group and started looking at all our resources and everything. But we'll talk about that in a bit. But do you want to give us a brief overview of where you went?

Speaker 3: 1:51

Yeah, sure. So the trip was about five and a half weeks long, although we lost a couple of days flying, because obviously, coming from Australia, it's a long way and you do loose days. So we flew into London, but we didn't stay in London, we went straight to Bath. So we did some travelling around that sort of southern part of England. Then we caught a plane across to Dublin and we actually took a bus tour around Northern Ireland down to Ireland, which was fabulous, and then we jumped on a plane again, flew to Edinburgh, had a couple of days in Edinburgh and then again hired a car, like we had in the south of England, and we did a road trip around the Scottish Highlands. Once we finished there. We finished at Inverness and caught a train down to York for a couple of days and then to London for six nights and then we chuffed off to Singapore on the way home. So that's the trip in the nutshell. Obviously there's way more detail.

Speaker 2: 2:39

So how did you choose? Because, I know one of the biggest things that people say when they're choosing the destinations that they want to actually go to in the UK because it can be overwhelming because there's so many places to visit. So how did you choose the actual destinations to include in your itinerary?

Speaker 3: 2:57

Yeah, we've actually found that quite difficult.

Speaker 3: 2:59

Originally we were going to just go for three weeks and we thought we'd do a week in London a bit of England, a bit of Wales, a little bit of Scotland.

Speaker 3: 3:08

But as we got to know more about each of the places, we're like oh hang on a minute, we need to go to you there and everywhere. And I guess we got to know about the places largely initially through your Facebook page, just following things on there and particularly seeing other people's itineraries. I mean obviously the big ticket London, edinburgh, dublin they were on there, but some of them were regional and smaller places and we've not heard of them. And I look at our trip now and I think probably two thirds of the places we went 12 months ago I hadn't even actually heard of some of those places, or I might have heard of them but I didn't know what they had to offer. So that was largely through the Facebook group initially that I kind of heard of these places and then from that we did further research using your products and sometimes other people's as well, but largely yours, yeah yeah, so you find the websites helpful.

Speaker 3: 3:57

Oh yeah, absolutely. So once we'd nutted down, you know we wanted to go to this place, like Bath or Cornwell or Isle of Skye, we'd sort of we'd taken what we could from the Facebook page, but then I'd actually go to your website and have a look on what articles you'd written about those sorts of things. Also, with the itinerary, we use the website quite early on to look at. I think you had some suggested itineraries there Now, so you probably noticed a lot of places we went to on your train itinerary because when we first started out that was probably what we were going to do the train itinerary.

Speaker 3: 4:28

But then as time went on and saw about people hiring cars and whatnot, we kind of changed it a bit. We probably actually started out doing a lot of that train itinerary and we swapped out whales. So we didn't go to whales at all. Unfortunately, and it really was just a time factor and it was because I just loved so much about Cornwell and I really want to go to Cornwell, and particularly so Michael's Mount. I just want to do it and it's a reasonable drive down there for you After we were in, and so something had to give. So we had to make that choice, and so we crossed out whales to do Cornwell.

Speaker 2: 5:00

I think that happens. It doesn't matter how long you're going for there's always going to have to kind of, you have to drop. It's very difficult to fit. I know even just when you sit and start thinking out, you know we're over there. We're going to be over there for six weeks in November, december and I've just come back for three months. It even feel my itinerary, I'm like, oh, I was going to have to be here, or it's going to be there because I'm not going to be able to fit it all in so obviously you said you obviously used the Facebook group and you find the websites really helpful.

Speaker 2: 5:28

So that's great. Because that's what we're going to do and obviously I know you were just talking to me before we start the podcast podcast as well and found those really helpful. So should we talk a little bit in more detail about your itinerary? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3: 5:44

So we got to London and I think I got this advice from you on another trip a few years ago actually, or maybe someone else. But you know, sometimes don't start with the big city. Do you say that? Yeah, some more. So we did that a few years back with Italy and we kind of love that, because you know you're quite tired and jet lagging that when you first get there and dealing and look, I've been to London before and dealing with London when you've just had this massive, big, long trip is really quite challenging. So we had decided to go from London straight to Bath. So we got into Heathrow and we're going to catch a train to Bath. Well, train strike the day we arrived. Lots of chances.

Speaker 3: 6:18

But, anyway, train strikes did cause us a bit of grief. So I think I got in contact with Doug going ah, um, so Banzu and Duck have been so helpful. So we decided you know he talked about either a private driver or a bus, and the private driver was probably a bit too expensive for us. So we chose the bus option and, look, the bus worked out really well. The only issue was the buses don't go that often like a train does. So I think when we got Heathrow we had to wait three hours for the bus and then and then the bus is longer. You know the travel time is longer than the train too. So door to door from our home to our accommodation bath was 33 hours, whereas you know the flight's about 24 to London. So if we'd stayed in London it might have been about 25. So that was an absolute killer and in hindsight I think maybe we should have changed our plan around and stayed in London, because I was quite sick too. I was a little bit sick before we left. He got quite sick on the plane. So by the time I got to bath I was cactus. But anyway we got to bath. We had a few days in bath Another piece of advice I've picked up along the way from you know, travel plan is I'm not sure if this was you or someone else a few years back, was you know, try not to make first day totally packed and crazy when you're coming off a big 30 hour travel experience.

Speaker 3: 7:35

So I often do like a small group bus tour or something like that on the first day. Yeah, because that way you don't have to think about it, and I don't generally like the bus tours, but small ones are fine, quite manageable. So, yeah, we did mad Max tours, it was called. So they're just a small bus and that was really fabulous because that took us to Stonehenge and that was interesting itself because Stonehenge is one of those things I thought I mean the vicinity, I probably should do it, but I wasn't jumping out of my skin to do it, but it was fabulous and I really, we both really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2: 8:06

I'm so glad that you say that, because quite often we get a lot of British people who say, oh, I don't bother going to Stonehenge, they're just a lot of, I get a little bit cross. I'm like, excuse me, like you know, a long, long long time ago, before you were born, there was stones, strong wheels, all the way to Salisbury. You know, maybe we should have a little bit of kind of I don't know.

Speaker 3: 8:32

I've seen a lot of those big beat ups on Stonehenge and it wasn't. I was like, oh well, there's stones, but it was actually so much bigger than I thought and it's just so much more impressive than I thought and the stories behind it and the kind of mystery about, well, what's all this about? Like you know, I really found it quite fascinating. So yeah, so with that that day bus trip went from Stonehenge to Avery, which I really loved that too, and not just the stones, but just the little village and everything. I really loved that. So that was good and then went to, so I was just gonna say Avery's.

Speaker 2: 9:07

really I love Avery as well, and because you can walk up the stones, you can touch the stones and Avery yeah so it's a kind of different experience from Stonehenge. But the advantage of the fact that you took that tour is that because otherwise you do need really a car or you're gonna have to get do a tour to be able to go Stonehenge you can get to by train from Avery. You want to do Avery either after the tour or the, or a have a car.

Speaker 3: 9:30

Yeah, and look, we would have been too tired that first day to be navigating transport and that sort of stuff. And so then, just then, just you know briefly, then, after Avery went to tour the lower Cotswolds villages Castle Cummin, oh, one of the other ones, yeah, lake Hop, yeah, that's how I went, yeah, so, yeah, so that was that was a really good day. So, yeah, then the next day in Bath, we just, you know, did our own things. They hit most of the main tourist attractions. I think that day it was my Australian birthday, so later in the day it wasn't yet in England, the time had been clicked over. So we went to the pump room, slayed in the afternoon for afternoon tea and that was fabulous. But we'd done all the, you know the what do you call it? Bath Abbey and that sort of stuff first. So that was really good. So, yeah, we'd had the couple of days in Bath and we really loved Bath, love the architecture, love that it was a bit smaller, love that we could get around on our own.

Speaker 3: 10:23

So then, from Bath we picked up the car and we drove down to Cornwall. So we went from Bath to St Michael's Mount just in the one day, and we want to be there by 1.15 because of the tide times. So we knew we were going, but we got there and we managed to get a boat across to the mountain and walk back and we actually decided to stay in that village, which some people pronounce as Ion and some call it Morazian I don't know, it depends who you talk to. We stayed in that village and we stayed in Airbnb there, but it actually overlooked the mount, so it was kind of like almost a little artist's studio or something like that that overlooked the mount. So that was fabulous, because every time we were at home we could see the mount. So we kind of saw the sun rises just above there, I think, or sunset or something or other anyway. So that was really fabulous.

Speaker 3: 11:06

And so then the next day we were traveling around that sort of southern bit of Cornwall in our car. So we had no issues driving down to Morazion but driving around Cornwall. That was an interesting experience and everyone had told us that. But look, we probably did underestimate it a little bit. And so we had all these places that we thought we were going to see, but the driving was much slower than what we expected. But everyone told us you told me that.

Speaker 3: 11:37

But it wasn't just the driving, it was the parking and you had also said that I remember you saying on one of your trips you had to miss out a mouthful totally. She couldn't get a park, and we just found the parking such a pain as far as but you know that's how it is. So we've, you know, got to get on with it and not winch too much. But you know, like having to find a car park, pay for a car park, and often the car parks aren't. They're not necessarily right in the middle of town and I mean they're not way out, but then you know. So then it's a bit of a walk in and we were kind of lucky that first week that the weather was like fabulous, but it was kind of around about 30 degrees Celsius and very humid. So it just says little walks, when you're out you know you're outside town, you've got to walk in. They were quite taxing. So we ended up not seeing everything that we thought we'd see, but we ended up not going as far as Leonsend I think they. Probably one of the reasons we didn't see everything was we.

Speaker 3: 12:27

We went to Sunnives and we took your recommendation of going to the Earth Station and catching the train, and we sat on the right side was it the right side of the train? Yeah, and the view is just spectacular. We got to Sunnives. Well, I fell in love with it because I love peaches, and the beach there right near the train station is just beautiful, and it was a beautiful sunny day, and so we went down there and spent quite a lot of time at the beach. We saw the bathing boxes. You know they have some colour. Yeah, I had a chat to a lady that had. You know she had one of those and you know she told us all about that, and so we spent ages at the beach and I was disappointed I didn't bring my togs or swimmers or the people would call them. We couldn't swim, but I hitched all my clothes up and went in the water. So we went there and then we kind of walked into town and I went to the fish and chip shop that you recommend in the middle there near the harbour, yeah, and that was fabulous fish and chips and the best fish and chips we had the whole trip actually. And so we did that.

Speaker 3: 13:23

So we spent a heap of time in Sunnives, so we ended up dropping off some of those places that are a bit lower down in Cornwell. And also, when you did that night, we were going back to the Manak Theatre, which is something I'd highly recommend. So we actually saw a show, we saw a theater at Manak Theatre and that was wonderful. So I'd highly recommend that people do that, as long as you're okay with the driving, because the driving to get there's not for the faint-hearted and you've got to bear in mind it's night driving as well. So you're on those skinny little roads at night, yeah, and I'd be driving down there if I was on. Well, I didn't drive anyway, and my husband did the whole lot of it because he loves driving. I would have found it a bit scary to be on those small roads. And also, like everyone talks about, we had experiences you're driving down and next minute is a truck coming towards you or a tractor and all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 3: 14:14

I've read this about Scotland and England, some of the visitors and the tourists just not knowing how to drive in those places, and we saw that a lot actually, particularly in Scotland, where people didn't kind of know to pull over into the pullover bays or they were going too fast for the row. So after Cornwell we went up to the Cotswolds and it was just as picturesque as everybody tells you that it is, and it probably surpassed my expectations. It was amazing. So we went to lots of the villages there and one thing I did there that was probably different from Cornwell. You know, I sort of had a itinerary for the Cotswolds but with each thing I kind of put down what would be a good thing to see in this village, and so that was kind of good because we'd get to, you know, snow Seal and it's like well, I want to see this, this and this or get a photo of these. So that kind of helped.

Speaker 3: 14:59

And also in the Cotswolds, before we got there, with the parking, john would drive on Google. You know where to park in, wherever you were. And I found that helpful because there are a few places where it was like we can park in this shopping centre for free for two hours or oh, you can park on this road and it might be just a bit behind me. So I don't think we pay for parking at all there. And also we left very early that morning, so when we got to the slaughters, for example, but there was no one out and about. It was like those two little villages where our villages. So I think that's good to go early.

Speaker 2: 15:30

Yeah, that's really good Either go early or go later on in the day, and actually the first day we got to the Cotswolds.

Speaker 3: 15:36

we went to a couple of them late in the day and that's good.

Speaker 2: 15:39

That tends to be better, because there are times that if you go in the middle of the day, a lot of the coaches are there trying to get parked Sundays can be really difficult, but if you go later on I think Doug and I went to library at about half past seven and easy to park and walk around it literally felt there was just us and another couple which you know and you go in the day and you just can't get parked or walk around. Is that the?

Speaker 3: 16:00

library, the one with Arlington Road, yes, yeah, so we went to library late in the day too, on the way to the Cotswolds, but probably only about 530. So I've got photos of, like, just me and John, not other people in the photo. It's because there was no one much there, and but I've seen other people's photos where there's 50 people in there because there's so many people near that Arlington Road. Yeah, so from the Cotswolds, which we had a fabulous time at, we then drove to Bristol Airport, called it Plain to Dublin. We did one day in Dublin. Oh, look, I didn't mind Dublin, but it wasn't like rave worthy, like some of the other places. Then we jumped on a bus to and look, we only did that because Dublin was a late addition, ireland was a late addition and we I just didn't feel I had it in me to meticulously planned all of Ireland as well as England and Scotland.

Speaker 3: 16:43

So a pretty gibious about the bus tour. I've never done one before, but we actually really loved it. I think we've really lucked out on the driver. He was a young guy who was just hilarious and very informative in that too. And also I found the Irish people. I didn't know a lot about them. That was so funny and they just had this really great sense of humour, sarcasm, not unlike a lot of Australians, so comfortable in Ireland. Particularly we found the English people very polite and helpful and friendly, but the Irish people just a crack up, quite a bit of a lyrical. And so that bus trip went up into Northern Ireland, which again I found fascinating because I didn't know a whole heap about the troubles, so that was good.

Speaker 3: 17:20

And then round the coastline violent pretty much, and I was very scenic and I knew Ireland was scenic, but probably not as scenic as what it was. So, yeah, so that's Ireland in a nutshell, and then we Skip over to Edinburgh, which again really loved Edinburgh. It did rain. Both days were in Edinburgh and I mean, that's what the weather's like there, so you can't complain about it. But you know, I'd seen, for actually the day we left it was bright blue skies, it's beautiful and I was like, oh, I wish I'd seen it in with the bright blue skies, but we'll have to go back and try our luck. But, like I said, we got quite adept at just raincoats on raincoats, off that sort of thing, dressing in layers, as everyone said, because the weather, particularly from Ireland, are not but a couple of days in Ireland, but particularly in Scotland. It was just so changeable and oh yeah, so that's where the layers, and always having your own, come with you.

Speaker 2: 18:11

I'll often say last, last year, past May, I was in Edinburgh and we arrived on a Sunday and it was beautiful, blue sky, hot. This is so middle of May. I actually got sunburned, slightly sunburned. The next day I'm covered head to foot in winter weather gear, raincoat, my face picking out because it was so cold and it was pouring down the rain, and that that's between a space of like 12 hours. It was crazy. It is, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 18:36

and I've heard people say that. But until I experienced it I was like, oh, what you know? So it was hard to know how to dress so some days, because it was just like, oh, it's hot day today, but two hours later it's freezing cold, and you've got like. I had like two puffer jackets on at one point. Oh, one of them was a vest, but you know like that. So that was tricky, but we got used to it and that was fine so yeah, so we did, you know, did the main winter Edinburgh.

Speaker 3: 19:00

I saw most of the main tourist attractions. Then we hired a car and we sort of set out through, stirling into the Highlands and again we love that, like that was amazing, so good. Probably Fort William. We really liked Fort William. We liked the driving because you were driving just in between locks all the time and there was all this water and I think because it had been raining, it kind of added to the just the mood. And driving through that Glencoe area if, like, it was absolutely raining, raining and blowing a gale that day and every few kilometers I'd say to John, stop, I've just got to get out and get a photo. So I'm in the poor area and getting photos. But we love, you love drive, the drive, we love Fort William, the place I said Fort William was magical.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Yeah, it's a fabulous. Um, it's a fabulous drive. That is probably one of my favorite in the world. To be honest, I could I could see that that kind of Luke Brown. I don't know, I just you know, add Infern item because it's so gorgeous, oh yeah like it was beautiful and it was like I could stop every one minute today.

Speaker 3: 19:57

It was just stunning and I took 5,000 photos at the windows of cars, which probably four and a half thousand didn't work, so that would be a 10. Maybe don't waste your time doing that, but it was just so beautiful I want to capture it. So then, after we were in Fort William, we did the Jacobite train, which we loved. Unfortunately, on the way out it was pouring rain because you couldn't see a lot, but on the way back I did find up. So that was really good and we really enjoyed that experience and it was kind of a down day, down as in rest day for us. Yeah, because we've been going 102 the dozen for a couple of weeks by then.

Speaker 3: 20:31

So that's all good, and then you went up to Sky, yeah, and then we went to Sky and Sky is just as amazing, as everyone said. We loved all that and we did some of the walks and the best thing about Sky for us the accommodation was actually great. We stayed at B&B. But I think we're in Scotland for nine days and it ran quite a lot for seven of them. There were two fine days and one of them was our main day in Sky, which was when we went to the old manor store and like that's what we had planned. So it just happened to coincide that we got this bright, beautiful blue day on the day when we were going to be trying to do a lot of that outdoor hiking stuff. So that was just so fabulous that it worked out like that.

Speaker 3: 21:07

So yeah, so a few days in Sky and then we headed back to the mainland and this bit was really interesting. My husband our surname is Monroe, so that's a Scottish clan, so way back he's got some connection to the Scottish clan and they've got a castle. It's quite old Phallus Castle. It's cool, and it had been rebuilt in the 1700s after it had been burnt down. So it's more like a stay at the home now, but it's still got the walls and the tower.

Speaker 3: 21:35

And so I've sort of said to him, oh, we've got to go there, and he wasn't super keen but anyway. And then I realized it was an Airbnb. So we actually got to stay there for a few days and we met the people that live in the castle and like this sort of two generations still there. And you know we had a tour through that and just learned a lot of that clan history and like we're probably not big into history but like we were fascinated. You know there's a I think there's a Monroe clan gathering in two years time and my husband's like, oh, we should go back for it. And he got right into it and so that was really cool actually doing that, yeah.

Speaker 3: 22:09

So from there we headed back to Inverness, called a train to York which loved York Like it's. It's really compact so it's easy to get around and then to London. We did six days in London.

Speaker 2: 22:20

So what did you do in London? Let's chat through London.

Speaker 3: 22:25

In London. Oh, we did a lot of the royal type stuff. So, you know, changing of the guard, buckingham Palace, so we couldn't go into it. It was shut. Now I've been there before Westminster Abbey, st Paul's Cathedral, a lot of that sort of stuff. We did that. You've got a loop you sort of talk about a bit in that area near the Tower of London, the bridge, the barrow markets. Yeah, we love the Tower of London. I've been before, but I've kind of probably liked it even better this time.

Speaker 3: 22:51

And we'd learned about St Dunstan's in the East, probably from you and your side of the podcast or something. So we'd gotten there quite early for the Tower of London because we knew again from your sites that if you go into the Tower of London, get there a bit earlier. You know, go in first, see the Crown Jewels first, but we'd got there about 45, 50 minutes early. So instead of doing some Dunstan's in the East after, we did it early, like prior to the, and that was really, oh, it's just beautiful, isn't it? And it's just like an oasis in the middle of such a busy bustling city. So we did that. Yeah, oh, we did heaps of stuff there.

Speaker 3: 23:26

We had tickets for the Sky Garden, but we had a couple of train strikes and that when we were in London, and so one of the train strikes was planned for the day, we were meant to go to the Sky Garden and we thought, oh, it's going to be pretty tricky to get down there and it was our last day. So we approached them at the Sky Garden the day before we were in that area and said, oh, you know, can we come in early? And they said no, so we ended up going up to I think it's 120, which is another tall building that's got a Sky Garden but nowhere near as tall. So we got a view from there. And then later that day we went to St Paul's Cathedral as part of that loop, and so we climbed the hallway to the top, which was really was I was pretty proud of myself and the other highlight, for we love theater, so going to the theater was a big highlight.

Speaker 3: 24:09

We tried to see shows that we couldn't see here, although we did see Harry Potter, but and that's been in Australia for a couple of years I just haven't been able to get to Melbourne to see it, but we saw Back to the Future, which has not been to Australia. Yet I would highly highly recommend that. It was so much fun. It was a great script, great songs, but it was a lot of fun too and some good special effects. So yeah, I'd say, see Back to the Future if you're there, and we stayed in Cove it Garden, which we'd taken that advice from you, and staying in Cove it Garden where you just had such great access to theaters and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 24:42

You've talked a little bit about some of the accommodation options that you show, so obviously you're staying in some air B&B, some hotel, yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:48

So we stayed in a range of places. We stayed in hotels, which was nice because you know they make the bed for you and that sort of thing. We stayed in a few airbnb's and we made sure they always had washing machines, so that gave us a couple of opportunities to wash wash, which was really great, and also we could heat up some food, because you do get a little bit sick of eating out every single meal. And interestingly, I know you've spoken about some supermarkets before but we found, particularly in Scotland. We went to Aldi and the meal that Aldi were amazing. They were so fresh and just really yummy meals so we loved that they had that they weren't frozen but they were pre-prepared and I wish they did that here because I probably wouldn't need to cook.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Can I be down there as well doing exactly this?

Speaker 3: 25:32

So that was quite good. And we stayed in some bed and breakfast too. Look the bed and the bmbs. They were probably our favourite in that they were so lovely and great breakfast. And so there was a bmb and Broughton on the Water that we stayed at called Halford House, which I'd highly recommend, and one up in Portree called Rockview again I'd highly recommend it. And then the one in Myrtles Guest House which I know is from your you've got that as one of your recommendations. I thought, william, that was amazing. There too. She's also got an airbnb out the back of the Guest House, a couple of them that are double story apartments which are just stunning, because we ended up staying in one because there was a water overflow problem with the toilet where we were staying, which was fine, and she sorted out and we helped her a bit with that. So she said I want to put you up in these other accommodations, so that would be something we'll go out for because they were beautiful. We felt really pampered there.

Speaker 2: 26:32

Well, I'll get the names off you and I'll put links into those in the show notes as well. So tell me about some of the food that you enjoyed in the UK, then Tanya.

Speaker 3: 26:40

Well, one thing I absolutely loved and it's a big embarrassing to say this is I love the Yorkie bar in England, so it's chocolate bar and it's quite sweet and I really love them. So I bought a few of those home with me. Well, they're good and I think you can find them a bit in Australia. So we'll see, and I shouldn't have too many of them anyway. So maybe I'll wait till I go back to England.

Speaker 3: 27:00

But look, we loved the Sunday roasts Like they were fabulous with Yorkshire Pilding, and I mean probably, depending on the pub, they were always good, but the quality did maybe, you know, it's different depending on the pub Went to the Lamb and Fig in Covent Garden, which is, I think, quite an old pub, and it was fabulous there. We in Edinburgh went to a place called Queens Cafe which had a Scottish breakfast which was just amazing, and we surprised ourselves. In Scotland my husband had said he wasn't even tasting haggis, but he did and we actually both really liked haggis. And we went to the Makers Mashed Bar too that you'd recommended and had the haggis there, but of course they have other stuff with it there which was great and we really enjoyed it. But we also had just straight up, haggis without all the additional flavourings, and that we liked.

Speaker 3: 27:47

It Didn't go into the blood sausage, though, and we love the scones, so who doesn't love scones? So every opportunity we got, we had scones and we had a calamity. And the clotted cream. I've actually looked up a recipe of how do you do this clotted cream, because we don't have that when you go to get scones here. So I've looked at it and I can make my own.

Speaker 2: 28:08

Oh, that's good, that's good. Yeah, I don't know. I just I'm just so used to having it when I'm over there, I don't, I don't think anything of it. And then I think in North America they, they're not allowed to have it. I think it's.

Speaker 1: 28:18

I think it's banned.

Speaker 2: 28:20

Yeah, it's banned.

Speaker 3: 28:21

I wonder if it because when I looked it up it's like it looks like you bake the cream at a really low temperature in the oven for quite a few hours.

Speaker 2: 28:29

So I wonder if it's so, maybe.

Speaker 3: 28:31

I don't know. Anyway, I'll give it a try. I'll bite you over one day, tracy, and you can have your jam and clotted cream with me on this Sounds good.

Speaker 2: 28:38

That sounds good. Tanya, so packing obviously you're packing for for five weeks, so how did you get on with that? Is there anything you think or I shouldn't have taken with me? Or is there something you thought I wish that's hard taken.

Speaker 3: 28:49

Look, we had way too much stuff, as everyone says, because our bags were quite heavy and also I didn't have room for souvenirs, which really irked me. But I knew that before I left and look, I'd thrown in, because I'd been watching the weather, as you suggest, leading up to the trip. I knew that it was quite hot down in the south of England, so I'd thrown in a couple of extra summer outfits. Yeah, look, there wasn't a whole heap. You know what I probably didn't need as much, like thermals and underwear. That's what I took because, like underwear, you wash it. You know we washed it pretty much every day.

Speaker 3: 29:19

Yeah, and I'd taken a set of boots, which I often do when I go away, but I didn't actually really wear that much. I had two pairs of sand shoes and one of them were waterproof, so I wore them a lot. And I took a pair of like slides, more summery shoes. So probably not boots, yeah, but apart from that, maybe a few less shirts and things. So a couple less outfits, but I didn't most stuff I did actually use. My husband he said to he he's probably more likely to read where he's clothes much more than I do, so he felt he had too much. I wore every single thing in my bag, but I probably didn't need to wear some of them, so I need to revisit that next time I go.

Speaker 2: 29:56

Was there anything that surprised you about your trip to the UK? I know you've been before, but was there anything this time? You kind of went wow, I didn't expect that.

Speaker 3: 30:03

Oh, you know one thing that surprised me, which people probably laugh at the dogs Like we're dog people. It's dogs everywhere. People take their dog everywhere with them. We loved it. My husband probably had more conversations with dogs or people about their dogs than anything else because it seemed like our dog that we've got here is a Spoodle. In England they call them Cockapoo's and that seems to be one of them premium sort of brand of dog and so we don't talk to all these dog owners. So yeah, we loved that was a big surprise to us. Also the roads in Cornwall. Even though we were on a toll list about them, they were kind of next level. They also were up the top of Skye. We went to the lighthouse at Skye and the roads up there were pretty crazy. But, like I said, my husband likes driving, so he was like a rally car driver on those roads. He had a great time with it. But I don't. I've got to driven those. You know I could drive like the motorways and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3: 30:53

But some of those real skinny ones. You know, yeah, the beaches in Cornwall, like I have a particular sense of, I've said really surprised me because I love the beaches in Australia and around where we live here so and I've always kind of considered, oh that you know, australia's got almost the best beaches in the world and I probably wasn't expecting a couple of those really beautiful beaches, so that surprised us. I was surprised by the weather, as we've discussed. I'd heard all about the changeable weather and all the rest of it, but until I'd actually lived it, yeah, so yeah, so they were quite. I was surprised by Ireland just generally too, how much fun Ireland was and the people and just the night, you know, going to the pubs and then at night was so much fun.

Speaker 1: 31:33

So yeah, there was lots and lots of things.

Speaker 2: 31:34

Oh, the cost.

Speaker 3: 31:35

I've said to you before the thing, just the cost to the Australian dollars probably not doing that well against the pound. So sometimes things were more than double and I knew it was much more expensive over there. But it was probably more expensive again than what.

Speaker 2: 31:47

I thought, I think every time I go back I think it's got more expensive.

Speaker 3: 31:51

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:52

And, as you say, the Australian dollars not particularly brilliant at the moment either. So it's always a bit of a when you pay for something, you go. How much would that be?

Speaker 3: 32:00

Yeah, well, we didn't buy many souvenirs and things. We didn't buy many sizeable souvenirs or anything Large. I mean we couldn't fit them in our luggage. But largely to just that, exchange rate just wasn't great. But in saying that, this week I've since I've been home, I ordered a China tea cup from one of the palaces because I liked to do that when I paid a ridiculous amount of money for it. But I liked them, so I did.

Speaker 2: 32:23

Yeah, yeah, no, no. So is there anything that you plan to do differently next time you visit?

Speaker 3: 32:27

Maybe try and start in Edinburgh, do London in the middle, have some downtime, maybe in the middle like actually schedule a holiday, like a beach holiday or something where you're not sightseeing at all and you can see the book.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Yeah, cause, you had 35 days, which is a long time, so in that time really it is pretty full on. And I know you flew back via Singapore and spent a couple of days there, didn't you having a chill out?

Speaker 3: 32:49

by the pool. Yeah, and look, I would do that, though we actually found the flight from Australia quite difficult this time, just the length of it, and it's so uncomfortable. So we've said every time we travel to that side of the world, we're going to break the flight both ways. We don't care what country it is or where it is, but we'll always break it and have at least one night.

Speaker 2: 33:07

No, it's a good idea. I mean we've done that. We've broken it up in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Dubai and it just makes a difference.

Speaker 3: 33:15

So this is the first time we've ever broken a trip, and it was the best thing.

Speaker 2: 33:19

Yeah, now 100%. So I'm going to end the podcast with a question that asks absolutely everybody who comes on the podcast yes, Okay. So, Tanya, what is the one tip you would give to anyone planning a trip to the UK for the first time? Oh, look.

Speaker 3: 33:32

I'd just say research, research, research. Talk to you know, use your Facebook page or podcast website, talk to anyone that you can talk to who's been there and get their opinions. Yeah, so get all your research. And then I really thought it was very good. We had it planned very well from the research. It was planned very well every day we had planned. But it's important and you say this, I know you've got to be flexible in your planning. Look, we had train strikes and bad weather and some days we just couldn't do all those 50 things I had planned. I know you say not to over plan, and we probably did over plan a bit, but with the plan prior to leaving, I'd gone through and highlighted just two things that we must do that day. So if we were too tired or something happened and we couldn't do the other few, that was okay. So you have, research is my key point. Plan well from the research, but be flexible in your plan.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Yeah, no, I think that's a really, really good tip and it's something that we do suggest. I love actually the idea of what you said about highlighting a couple of must do's and a D, because I think sometimes you might you're having your head, I'm going to do these five or six things, particularly in London, and then they get disappointed when they can't do all of them. But actually if you're better off going, well, you know, if I could do these two things, then I'll be happy at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 34:45

The others are kind of a bonus.

Speaker 3: 34:47

Yeah, that's right, so yeah. So that's why I found it important. And look, I think being a teacher, that's probably part of that planning. I know when I used to teach you little kids years ago, you don't want them not to be busy, so you'd play with the creeps, but then maybe only do half, and so I think that's quite natural to me to do a lot but don't do it all.

Speaker 2: 35:07

It's really good. Well, thanks so much, tanya, for coming on the podcast. It's been fantastic talking to you. It's lovely to have an Aussie on as well, so hopefully we get some more Aussies coming on to check, because obviously it's slightly different when you travel from this side of the world, because it's a heck of a long way to go. It is so you've got to. Yeah, when you go over there, kind of make the most of that at the time that you've got there, because it takes just such a long time to get there and back.

Speaker 3: 35:35

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 35:36

Yeah. So thanks again, tanya. It's been fantastic talking to you. Yeah, thank you, had a great time, thank you. Thanks once again to Tanya for agreeing to come on to the podcast. It was great to talk to her about her fantastic trip. You can find all the information about the places that Tanya visited in the show notes for this episode, which are at uktravelplanetcom. Forward slash, episode 82. All I can say until next week's episode, which, if you are arriving into one of the London airports, you might want to tune into, because you're going to be talking to Riz of Exford Cars about his transfer service into London, and I'm sure that's going to be a really interesting episode. I know when I arrive into Heathrow or into any airport actually around the world, I always want to have a driver pick me up and whisk me at my hotel. I find it so less stressful when I'm flying having to even consider when I arrive what I'm going to do. So that'll be next week. So until then, I just want to wish you all happy UK travel planning.