Help with Travelling to the UK

[cgy2london]

Originally Posted by valo403

Curious why you'd recommend Gatwick over Heathrow, I've never experienced more of a pain in the ass (and a costly one at that) getting into a city than dealing with a flight into gatwick.

And cold? Really? Not compared to a Canadian winter.

i lived around the corner from heathrow so i always used it but its about half the cost if you fly into gatwick from calgary. just using gatwick, luton, stanstead or city airport is 10x cheaper for any flight than using heathrow.....heathrow, being one of the worlds biggest airports is gonna have some high operating costs, hence why all flights out of there are always way, way more than gatwick, luton, stanstead or city

well before a few seasons in the uk, id spent every winter in either calgary or regina, regina was bitter bitter cold, but calgary was wayyyyy wayyyy wayyy warmer than london, with about 9 million times more sunshine, spend a complete winter there and the dampness and darkness will eat you alive.

[simmonjam1]

Are you looking at hiking any part of Hadrian's Wall? The Housesteads Roman Fort is cool and there is a pretty good pub by Vindolonda (sp?) just a further bit down Hadrian's Wall from Newcastle.

[CalgaryFan1988]

Originally Posted by simmonjam1

Are you looking at hiking any part of Hadrian's Wall? The Housesteads Roman Fort is cool and there is a pretty good pub by Vindolonda (sp?) just a further bit down Hadrian's Wall from Newcastle.

Well, after a google search, I am now....... I'm in the beginning of trying to plan a trip, so not sure of all the sights I want to see. After seeing this on google I would very much like to see it live. What beautiful country.

[NBC]

The biggest concern you will have here is the weather. If you get it right, you will have a great time, see some beautiful countryside, do lots of fun things and meet happy (relatively) people. If it is cold, wet and grey, things are much different here. People are less friendly, the ground is saturated with rainwater making outdoor activities difficult and it is unbearably depressing. Unfortunately it is hit or miss with the weather. April can and has been great the past few years whereas May has been crap. June was good last year, but there hasn't been anything resembling a half-way decent summer since 2006 and it was high 20s/30s all July and August. That sounds nice but nothing here is air conditioned and houses, etc aren't set up to deal with extreme heat.

Not that I think April is the perfect month here, we did get some light snow early April 2008. But the past few years the spring has been much nicer that the summer.

You know how Canadians like to go away for a hot holiday in the middle of winter? Brits like to head to Greece or Spain in July. I always thought that it was silly for them to go away to a warm place in the summer. I soon realized that if you want to get guaranteed warm, sunny weather, you have to go abroad. You can have lovely weather here, but you never know when it will come or how long it will last. Sadly, umbrellas are more part of everyday life than sunglasses.

If you have anything you want to ask, PM me and I'll try to help.

[icarus]

Re: going to a soccer game.

I live in Fulham, about oh a 30 second walk from Stamford Bridge stadium, and if you want to go see a Chelsea match there are about 40 or 50 ticket touts (scalpers) in the general vicinity before any match. You can shop around for the best deal. Two tickets to an FA Cup quarter-final a few weeks ago were going for about £70-90 (I assume prices go down once the game starts). There's a ticket office at the stadium too so who knows you might get lucky. With Fulham FC, you can buy general sale (legit) tickets for just about any fixture and it's better value. Advance sales definitely, walk up sales probably too... I saw Fulham v. Sunderland this year and there were rows and rows of empty seats behind us.

The whole point is you can go to any football match you want and budget for it. If you're up north Newcastle gets huge crowds but you should still be able to get some tickets outside the stadium.

Re: Heathrow vs. Gatwick

Both are easy to get into the city from, how quick and how cheap is up to you.

Heathrow -- underground (cheap but long), Heathrow Express (not cheap but fast), cab (not cheap but kind of fast)

Gatwick -- Easybus to Fulham (cheap and quick), national rail (cheap and slow), Gatwick Express (not cheap and fast), cab (not cheap but fast... although why not just take the Easybus?)

I am poor so I always go for the underground from Heathrow and the Easybus from Gatwick (which pretty much drops me off at my door).