posted
I'm going to England for my vacation this spring/summer (I'm not sure of the date yet). My guide book recommends Haggis Adventures as a good backpacking tour and I'm trying to decide if I want to join a tour group or just head out on my own. Has anyone here used Haggis Adventures? Did you have a good time. Were there any other groups that people have used and liked? Thanks for the help!
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can’t help you with any tour group recommendations, but if you looking to travel independently I’m sure there are a few people here (I live in York) who could help.
Do you have any idea where you want to go?
I’m confused by a company called Haggis Adventures (Haggis being a Scottish dish) doing tours of England.
Posts: 169 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Try finding some backpacker/hosteller message boards on google. They're normally pretty good with what is good and what isn't, and they get pretty specific with their reasons.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I’ve been thinking about what general advice I can give.
If you are looking for free things to do, all the national museums are free. This includes the well known ones in London, such as the Natural History and Science museums, but also various other ones round the country (for example the National Railway museum in York).
If you decide to travel independently you can get to most places by public transport. Trains tend to be expensive, but there are (or at least were, and probably still are) special passes for visitors. There are also coaches between many towns and cities.
If you are a member of hostelling international you can use all the YHA hostels – these are a mixture of city centre hostels and countryside ones (including some that are pretty remote. I haven’t stayed in one for a few years, but the standard is usually pretty good).
If you go for the tour option, if you post where you will have spare time and what you like, I might be able to give some more specific suggestions.
Posts: 169 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I haven't gone on a Haggis tour, but I have gone on two 3-day tours of Ireland with two different companies. The first was with Paddywagon, and the second was with Shamrocker, which is a sister company to the Haggis branch. I've also been on a couple tours of parts of continental Europe - the names of the companies escape me at the moment, but I'll dig them up later because IMO, they're ones to avoid. (I found one - Trafalgar Tours. Avoid them!)
In my experience, tours have good and bad points to them. On the good side, you can pack in a lot of sightseeing in a fairly short amount of time and have someone else take care of the messy details of travel and accomodation arrangements, the tour guide can and does tell you a lot of entertaining facts about where you're going, and you're never really all by yourself. On the bad side, you're never really all by yourself ( ), what you see is largely predetermined by the company, as are when and for how long you see it and also where you stay, you usually have to wake up at an ungodly hour, and sometimes your tour guide will be actively trying to sell you "optionals" - e.g. extra experiences that usually cost a lot of extra money, and that the guides may also get commission on. (That last happened on the Trafalgar tour, but it isn't the case for Haggis/Shamrocker.)
Haggis/Shamrocker is aimed primarily at the student crowd, so most of the people on it will be college-aged. The price you pay for the tour only includes your transportation, tour guide, and your hostel arrangements (but not the hostels themselves!) - you pay for your accomodation in cash each night when you arrive at the hostel, and you also pay for admissions to sites separately as well. The only meals that are included in the tour price are the breakfasts that most hostels include in their fees.
On the tour I took, we were always up and on the bus by 8am (except for the one morning our bus broke down), which led to a good deal of sleeping on the bus as we'd usually not get back to the hostel until midnight-ish, and they keep you running pretty much all day long. It's possible that the longer tours may give you one morning to sleep in, but it's not likely as a lot of hostels have lock-out periods beginning at 10am-ish. You'd be staying in co-ed dorm rooms that hold about 8-12 people, but single/double rooms may be available for a higher price.
I had a lot of fun on the tour, but I was in a state of perpetual exhaustion almost the whole time, and that was only a 3-day one. I loved seeing so much stuff in so short a time, but I didn't like having set limits on my time at the sites, and I also didn't like having to skip things just because they weren't on the itinerary. I'm not good at letting my guard down with a busload of total strangers, but the bus experience was still fun despite my shyness, and the guides/drivers with these companies have a lot of personality, so they're very entertaining.
Personally though, I'd prefer traveling independently now that I've gotten my feet wet. But as far as tours in general go, Shamrocker was pretty good, and from what I can tell, it operates in much the same way as Haggis. I'd probably be willing to take a day tour with them, but a longer one would likely be more than I could tolerate. If my time was really limited, though, I might consider them, but I'd probably rather go with a hop-on-hop-off company like Busabout (also run by the Haggis folk) (which apparently only does continental Europe, hmm...).
I also lurk on a couple of those backpacker forums FlyingCow mentions. Eurotrek has a lot of good info already posted and a lot of people willing to help with advice and answers. Eurotrek is a spinoff site from the Eurotrip forums (no relation to the movie), and there's tons of good info in Eurotrip's archives, too. You also might want to check out Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forums. If you do a search on any of these, you'll probably find more than enough info.
Out of jealousy, do you know yet how long your trip will be?
Edit: This was a lot longer than I thought it would be, sorry!
posted
*Doesn't know of any tour groups, but is shocked to find that there's a Hatracker in York*
Dude, I lived there for the last three years and as soon as I move away I discover there was someone else from Hatrack there too. Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
At this point how long I'm there and when depends (at least in part) on whether I get offered a job with a different company than I am with now. If I stay where I am, I expect to go be in England somewhere between 10 and 14 days probably early to mid-May. Although the May option might change since I'm also up for a training opportunity where I am, which lasts for 4 months.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
), what you see is largely predetermined by the company, as are when and for how long you see it and also where you stay, you usually have to wake up at an ungodly hour, and sometimes your tour guide will be actively trying to sell you "optionals" - e.g. extra experiences that usually cost a lot of extra money, and that the guides may also get commission on. (That last happened on the Trafalgar tour, but it isn't the case for Haggis/Shamrocker.)![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
