02/12/2015

Travelling with the kids in the U.K part 1 (bukan trip orang bujang :))

hana | 19:44 | 2 Comments |
On the last week of spring-summer holiday, we took the chances to plan a quick hop in hop off holiday all the way to Edinburgh -the capital city of Scotland.

You know when you have kids you have to have some kind of plan- to make them interested in joining u on the trip.:).And of course, they have no other choice kut!

Since we have no car here, we opted to rent a car to travel all around. With the stroller, bags, and all the essential stuff it is good to rent a car to explore all around.

 {You can bring along with the whole house if you can...… but limit your clothes as you can shop anywhere here with reasonable price.. :)).

If I'm not mistaken, we can use our country driving license to drive here. Unless you are residing in the U.K for more than a year.It is advisable to take its international license. We already have a letter from JPJ in Malaysia for license purposes just in case. But some Malaysian here said it is not necessary to have it if you are not residing more than a year in this country. But you can check it with JPJ after all.

We rented a car for this trip because it is more economical and easy to mingle around with a group of families. It is cheaper if you are going with a crowd and considering four of us, of course, it is worth it if you compare using the bus or train or even flight. Plus it’s an excellent adventure and valuable experience driving all the way around though. Plus when the kids or we need a break for long hours of travelling, and so on so forth. So it is better for you to decide what type of transportation that you are going to use for travelling in the U.K. If you like to choose the flight or train the earlier, your book, the cheaper you get. But that is rarely happening where the plan to go for a trip sometimes might be changed if you have a bunch of people to travel around with.hehe...

From our experience, British people seem to be quiet people while they are in public transport compare to us in Malaysia, But in my opinion Japanese more 'quitenessstest' than them I think. You can hear a pin drop although the train is full of people! Seriously man...

Ok, now the Things to do before travelling by car/van, Bear in mind...,

  • Book early- the earlier you book, the cheaper you get.
  • Plan ahead, Need to know when are you going to travel. This basically if you care about the budget! But if the program doesn't work at least, you know where you are heading.
  • Consider taking the advice on insurance if you are driving all around the city in the U.K or even in Europe. They have choices from the lowest guarantee until the highest price of insurance.
  • Consider what season you are planning to have the trip. The best time to travel is during summer, spring, where daytime is more prolonged, while in the winter the day time will be shorter and basically at 4 pm already maghrib and night time and all the shops, will be closing at 5 pm except a few types of shops.
  • Best to drive is during day time. If you can avoid night time driving.
  • Ensure you have your GPS all time while driving if you are not familiar with the place and direction board.
others tips for travelling with children you can read this website 50 top tips for travelling with kids
Below is the recommended website of the rental car companies.

1.BudgetUK


2.Enterprise



If you can plan earlier for your accommodation, it is much better. There are plenty of ways you can find one either you want to stay with your friend (if you have any available one), hotels or homestay/bnb. In our case, we book the accommodation while we are on the trip. (Because we think we can stop where we feel it is suitable to hang on to have a rest with the kids.) and sometimes things happen not according to the initial plan..:) o yea and this Bukan trip orang bujang …hehehe

No..not to mention parents with kids don't do their research before they travel. But we have to anticipate things might not follow or slip a bit from the original plan. Lessen your stress and feel the adventure yourself.

Before we did that we have already browsing around) this you can Ask Mr Google J

To name every single web that provided the the accommodation is quite extensive so I just listed out a few that we use to browse.
There is some local homestay that you can choose but as far as our experience some hosts hardly to accept a family with children.If you found one and cheap.Lucky you!! And if the host provided you to use the kitchen, it’s a bonus, and you can cook your family meal. Jimat sikit?There are also some Malaysian that do this homestay service.

For this trip we choose Travelodge. Go and check their webpage https://www.travelodge.co.uk/. Now they have to invest a new look in their rooms. I can rate it 10 Twinkling star for the accommodation. Especially with the group of family. It is so travelodgical!! But you have to make some study on the car park because some of the Travelodge do charge their parking at a specific rate an hour and some are free of charge!


Besides Travelodge, we do choose Ibis In Birmingham. It is quite a reasonable price. It's a bit small, but enough space to sleep. But it is acceptable if you are already tired and all you want to do is sleep.:) ZZZZZzzzzz...

Among city that we choose to stop from Wales
  • Birmingham
  • Liverpool
  • Manchester
  • Edinburgh
  • Newcastle
Oh, ye...Jangan risau tempt solat..each city basically ada surau/masjid...we even pray beside the highway pun...and if you are on the road during summer lagi senang as the time is longer for prayer.

Propose days you can stay probably one or two days in each city. The most nights we spent overnight is in Liverpool and Edinburgh. And the most exciting places in those cities is Edinburgh. Basically, each city is famous for its heritage building, castle, church, beaches, museum and beautiful scenery. Starting from the magnificent scenery of the driving journey and the town itself it is so worth all the driving trip. The view is same plus more breath-taking As in the desktop of your computer. You know the picture of the green field with the flower. Beautiful indeed!

Other advice that we can give is if you can avoid driving at night, please do that. Sometimes the highway or the road is closed for maintenance, and you need to find another diversion road in the middle of the night. I bet you don't want to end up in somebody farm or bump into some kind of animal or maybe people!!....( because we have experienced that and luckily nothing wrong happened)Alhamdulillah...I nearly type that we bumped into a ghost, lol... we can't imagine what type of English ghost... haha.

so people try to plan your journey ..avoid night driving.

you can search top ten places to go through trip advisor and any other webpage for each city you wanted to go to.

so here I share some of the pictures from the trip ..if you have any question just leave the comment I'll try to answer in my own capability to help you... :)

for those who worried about food, I mean halal food.

p/s: there is no need to worried if you are in this country. They are easily found in merely every side of the city.

 Birmingham


  Birmingham

  Birmingham

  Birmingham

  Birmingham

  Birmingham

 Birmingham


 Liverpool

 Liverpool

 Liverpool

 Liverpool



Liverpool
 Liverpool

Liverpool

 Liverpool

 Liverpool

 Liverpool

Liverpool