How about following the canals? They all have towpaths he could cycle along, with pubs at regular intervals for food and drink. Between towns they go through some beautiful scenery, enter towns and cities through run down areas but the city centres have often made a feature of the canals, see the Gas Street Basin in Birmingham for instance. These are the canal a couple of kilometres out from Gas Street.
I was thinking the same thing. Some of my family members went on a two week long canal trip and loved it. (They claimed that going out into rural England was like visiting hobbitown.)
It's also worth considering transportation. I lived in London for a bit, but found it somewhat difficult to get into rural England as I didn't have a car. Buses, though, are fairly nice and often inexpensive if they're along regularly frequented routes. (Cambridge to London was around 10 pounds, I think? And it was a nice bus, with wifi!) But they only go to certain places, and only at certain times. Trains are also an option, but they seemed to be both more expensive and less convenient than the bus routes.
In many ways, it was actually easier to get to other major cities in Europe than to rural England, based on how there were lots of cheap Ryan air flights out of London.
Trains are overcrowded and expensive, buses are infrequent and expensive. By car my journey to work was 20K and too half an hour, by bus the first bus ran every 20mins and cost £3, I then had to change to another bus that ran half hourly and cost £3-50, the last bus only cost £2-50 and the journey took 2 hours. And the same coming home. Transport in London is different from the rest of the country. :~(
Transport in London is different from the rest of the country. :~(
This is very true, and a very important point for those writing UK-set stories. Write about Birmingham, or even more so Bristol as though it were London, and locals will simply boggle at you. (I know Bristol very well: it's a nice city, but public transport is appalling for a place of its size.)
The canals look fascinating, and I had no idea they even existed, so thank you for bringing them to my attention! Off to find out more about them now. =D Definitely looks like something my character would enjoy.
If I've got this right - renting a car's probably the easiest way to get around the area, and public transport outside of London tends to get expensive and/or inconvenient? How easy is it to rent a car, in that case? I'm just trying to figure out how he'd get around each place now, and from place to place...
One of the potential problems with car rental (not something I do often) is returning the car to your starting point, useful for exploring in one area but not so good for moving on to another area.
The buses tend to be local, around Staffordshire it's Arriva, York has First and there's Stagecoach as well. And those are all big companies, other companies will only be running one or two routes. This site will give you more idea about buses. Longer distance you need National Express coaches.
The problem with canal boats for a single person is the locks. It's a lot easier to have one person on the boat while the other opens and closes the lock gates. I expect it's possible but it's rarely done. And some canals have a lot of locks.
If you've got a credit card and driving licence renting cars in Britain is pretty easy. Best to shop around as prices vary a lot. Some of the big rental companies allow return to another office than the one you collected from.
Trains and buses outaide London are very variable. Some apparently obscure places are cheap and easy to get to while others are nearly impossible. You've really got to research individual places and routes to decide whether a particular journey is practical. In some places there are multi-journey tickets which reduce the cost significantly.
Outaide London most towns and cities have pretty good access to nearby rural areas. It's quite viable to be stay in say Manchester and take day trips out walking in the Pennines or Cheshire.
I was just wondering what sort of buses you're referring to? I mean - if there's a name for the particular service you mentioned there, sort of like how America has Greyhound buses. Depending on the routes, I think my character might well turn to them for longer trips. Also, I did not know that about cheap Ryan air flights, so thanks for pointing that out - going to go check out more flight details now. =D
The biggest inter-city coach company is National Express (and there's a song about it by The Divine Comedy). I have to say my first thought if I wanted to get away from London and didn't much care where would be to get a train, (say, to Glasgow from King's Cross, just because that's a really long way) and then maybe walk around/get local buses/rent a car when you got there, rather than go to the Victoria coach station and get a long-distance bus somewhere, because the coach station is grim, and the coaches take ages and make me carsick. And I prefer looking at the views you get on trains, which tend to be of nice countryside and the interesting back bits of towns, rather than just motorways. But the coaches are cheaper.
I think I used: http://www.stagecoachbus.com/ to get from London to Cambridge, and was considering using it to get to another few places, too.
But as mentioned by the other poster, it's not particularly cheap, and there are usually only a few buses per day. (Also, most of them are centered in London. So while it would probably be possible to go from city A to city B, if one of those cities isn't London, you may have to take a side trip.) It's not super convenient, but it's still *probably* the best alternative for a poor tourist.
The Ryan air flights are awesome from London. I got some for like...10 pounds. (And the buses to them leave all the time.) It was kind of weird in that, from London, it was often easier to get to say, Krakov, Poland than it was to get to Manchester. (And Paris is quite an easy trip, due to the super fast train.)
Seconding (thirding?) canals. You can go from 19th century industrial to reclaimed rural in very little time. I'm lucky; I live 5 minutes walk from a stretch of canal that, when I was born, was derelict Victorian buildings and is now grass and trees, There's a farm tucked down there, and a plaque that commemorates David Livingstone's mother-in-law who lived on that farm (she's described as being an "inspiration" to him, but the word is that the chief inspiration she was, was for her daughter and son-in-law to put as much of Africa as possible between them).
This is all on the Eastern fringe of Greater Manchester, with a tributary of the Mersey running below the canal, on the fringes of the Pennines. I still find it hilarious to live in a Metropolitan Borough that has a Countryside Unit.. A few years ago some friends of mine passed through; they were walking from Land's End to John O'Groats, as much as possible along canal towpaths.
Oh, I love that - and now I'm totally going to be trying to find a way to fit that little factoid about David Livingstone's mother-in-law into my fic. *laughs* Thank you! The canals definitely look like a good idea - I'm off to find out more about them now. =D
And if he's cycling and wants to strike off away from the canals, there are good routes along disused railways as well.
If he makes it up to County Durham, there's also the Coast-to-Coast route, and he could stop off at Beamish Open Air Museum, which has a very nice pub if you don't mind paying the museum's entrabce fee first (a lot of locals have season tickets to the museum partly because they like the pub). Bear in mind that I've been in the pub a lot more recently than I've used the cycle route to get there, but the part by my old house also looked in good repair at that time).
The Museum looks absolutely fascinating. Forget my character - I want to go there now! But yeah, it's on the list of strong possibilities now... I have a sneaking suspicion it might be useful for a Plot Point, actually. Thank you very much! =D
No worries. One thing to bear in mind with public transport, especially trains, is that while a lot of routes are expensive and inconvenient for commuters, there are cheap fares available if you don't mind when you leave and/or arrive. Getting from the South Coast up to North Derbyshire of South Yorkshire can cost me anything from 30-something to a hundred and twenty-odd pounds depending on the time of dsy and the route. So if I decide to go on a long journey, I'll generally walk to the station at a quiet time the day before and ask what the cheapest fare is likely to be. station staff are pretty helpful when they aren't stressed.
These are the canal a couple of kilometres out from Gas Street.
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It's also worth considering transportation. I lived in London for a bit, but found it somewhat difficult to get into rural England as I didn't have a car. Buses, though, are fairly nice and often inexpensive if they're along regularly frequented routes. (Cambridge to London was around 10 pounds, I think? And it was a nice bus, with wifi!) But they only go to certain places, and only at certain times. Trains are also an option, but they seemed to be both more expensive and less convenient than the bus routes.
In many ways, it was actually easier to get to other major cities in Europe than to rural England, based on how there were lots of cheap Ryan air flights out of London.
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This is very true, and a very important point for those writing UK-set stories. Write about Birmingham, or even more so Bristol as though it were London, and locals will simply boggle at you. (I know Bristol very well: it's a nice city, but public transport is appalling for a place of its size.)
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If I've got this right - renting a car's probably the easiest way to get around the area, and public transport outside of London tends to get expensive and/or inconvenient? How easy is it to rent a car, in that case? I'm just trying to figure out how he'd get around each place now, and from place to place...
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The buses tend to be local, around Staffordshire it's Arriva, York has First and there's Stagecoach as well. And those are all big companies, other companies will only be running one or two routes. This site will give you more idea about buses. Longer distance you need National Express coaches.
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If you've got a credit card and driving licence renting cars in Britain is pretty easy. Best to shop around as prices vary a lot. Some of the big rental companies allow return to another office than the one you collected from.
Trains and buses outaide London are very variable. Some apparently obscure places are cheap and easy to get to while others are nearly impossible. You've really got to research individual places and routes to decide whether a particular journey is practical. In some places there are multi-journey tickets which reduce the cost significantly.
Outaide London most towns and cities have pretty good access to nearby rural areas. It's quite viable to be stay in say Manchester and take day trips out walking in the Pennines or Cheshire.
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Though cycling along the towpaths, perhaps carrying lightweight camping gear, could work. Or using a canoe that can be carried around the locks.
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I think I used: http://www.stagecoachbus.com/ to get from London to Cambridge, and was considering using it to get to another few places, too.
But as mentioned by the other poster, it's not particularly cheap, and there are usually only a few buses per day. (Also, most of them are centered in London. So while it would probably be possible to go from city A to city B, if one of those cities isn't London, you may have to take a side trip.) It's not super convenient, but it's still *probably* the best alternative for a poor tourist.
The Ryan air flights are awesome from London. I got some for like...10 pounds. (And the buses to them leave all the time.) It was kind of weird in that, from London, it was often easier to get to say, Krakov, Poland than it was to get to Manchester. (And Paris is quite an easy trip, due to the super fast train.)
ETA: For wrong bus company. :(
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This is all on the Eastern fringe of Greater Manchester, with a tributary of the Mersey running below the canal, on the fringes of the Pennines. I still find it hilarious to live in a Metropolitan Borough that has a Countryside Unit.. A few years ago some friends of mine passed through; they were walking from Land's End to John O'Groats, as much as possible along canal towpaths.
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If he makes it up to County Durham, there's also the Coast-to-Coast route, and he could stop off at Beamish Open Air Museum, which has a very nice pub if you don't mind paying the museum's entrabce fee first (a lot of locals have season tickets to the museum partly because they like the pub). Bear in mind that I've been in the pub a lot more recently than I've used the cycle route to get there, but the part by my old house also looked in good repair at that time).
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