Very excited that one of our airlines has brought back direct flights from here (St. John's, NL, Canada) to Dublin, London, and Paris for the spring/summer/fall season. Promptly booked tickets to London and back for a trip this May ... really don't know where we're going or what we're doing; we'll figure all that out later.
UK friends, what kind of weather can we expect in May? After years as a teacher, I am only recently enjoying the freedom of travelling in months other than July or August. Last time we were in the UK was late Sept/early October 2022, and the weather (in London and on the Welsh border) was exactly what I would have expected at home at that time of year. But I can't imagine anywhere on earth can have May weather as bad as ours (cold, foggy, rainy, possible late snowfall, endless whining about whether spring will ever arrive!).
From a "what to see" perspective, our goals are to spend some time in places other than just London (basically we have only ever stayed in London or once in Bristol, unless we've been on a canal, which we won't be doing this trip). I'm also currently doing some research (for fiction writing, not scholarly research) on the English civil war, so any interesting sites related to that would be good to see if people have any to recommend (and, who knows, might allow me to write off a small portion of the trip as a business expense!).
UK friends, what kind of weather can we expect in May? After years as a teacher, I am only recently enjoying the freedom of travelling in months other than June or July. Last time we were in the UK was late Sept/early October 2022, and the weather (in London and on the Welsh border) was exactly what I would have expected at home at that time of year. But I can't imagine anywhere on earth can have May weather as bad as ours (cold, foggy, rainy, possible late snowfall, endless whining about whether spring will ever arrive!)
It'll be a lot greener than what you are leaving. I remember flying to Canada about that time of year and it was as if the calendar had gone back a month. I would expect Spring to be in full cry here - leaves, blossoms, flowers, the works. Time was you could expect the best weather of the year late May in Scotland, but that is largely buggered by climate change - last year was cold and wet and chancy. But green, still green.
I'm looking forward to visiting Norwich after a long absence (I was an archaeologist there for two years). Most of the trip will be in a hotel at the edge of the city, at a filkcon - so lots of science fiction folk music - and then I'm taking a couple of days to revisit old haunts. For instance, I used to worship at St Julian's.
That will be the only SF con I go to in 2025 - I can't get to EasterCon or WorldCon this year.
I'm also in the process of planning a few days in Oxford for the museums.
@Trudy, I was in London, Paris and Berlin in May 2016, and the weather was mostly fine. Definitely still spring, so I had long sleeves and a cardigan most days, but was pleasant to be outside. As I live just outside the Australian city which has the coldest winter days, I do have experience of cooler as well as hotter weather. We were a bit lucky as it was raining in London the week we were in Paris, and in Paris the week we were in London.
Cathedral visits with my choir this year include Chichester, Lichfield, Salisbury and Rochester. For our holiday this year, we are going abroad (Wales)
One of the joys of the British climate is you never really know. Mays in the past few years have involved scorching temperatures, serious rainfall, snow (not all the same May admittedly). Your best bet (as they say on the Tripadvisor England forum) is wait until about ten days before arrival and ask again.
You’ll thereby get a better quality of total guess…
Still a little up in the air right now but we’d like to do a trip to Paris in May - a better time of year than our trips to date have been (either August or Jan/Feb). Throwing in Cologne and Aachen for good measure - it seems to be not too difficult to get there by train from CDG.
The UK is really not a country with weather patterns you can set your calendar by (and tbh that was pretty true before climate change came along, so it’s not a new development really). The types, timings, occurrences of certain weather are new, but it’s never been a place where you can say with any confidence ‘in X month it’ll be Y’
Cathedral visits with my choir this year include Chichester, Lichfield, Salisbury and Rochester. For our holiday this year, we are going abroad (Wales)
Only thing planned is a trip to Finland to ask Santa who has been naughty and who has been nice. You know which one you are.
Hi @Quizmaster!
I assume you're going to Rovaniemi? Santa is amazing! When I was there, there were people from all around the world and Santa spoke to everyone in their own language. He's the Real Deal! ™
Perhaps that is something I should add to my bucket list, @jedijudy! Cheery husband and I have never travelled out of Oz, and hope to do so in retirement. I have a hankering for the UK and Japan, he thinks he could find things of interest anywhere, which I agree with, but I tend to cross off my list, places which might be more unsafe than others.
I'm going to start narrowing down the places I'd like to visit, he says he'll work around me, but I'd like to get something more definite out of him!!
Cathedral visits with my choir this year include Chichester, Lichfield, Salisbury and Rochester. For our holiday this year, we are going abroad (Wales)
Have you got your Cathedral Passport? Every cathedral you visit should have its own individual stamp.
We are booked on a Mediterranean cruise in September. Barcelona to Rome, with stops primarily in Greece and Turkey. It will be our first visit to all those places.
@Trudy. May can be lovely with the hawthorn and blackthorn blooming in the hedges, the cow-parsley etc.
As for Civil War sites and connections. There are the battlefields of course, Edgehill, Naseby and Newark has a very good example of a 'sconce' from the siege there. It also has a Civil War museum. So does Worcester at 'The Commandery'. It was the site of the last battle of the Civil Wars.
Chester has its walls and some towers, artillery emplacements and so on connected with its siege. Raglan Castle in South Wales is well worth a visit. One of the last Royalist strongholds to surrender in the first Civil War. Likewise Pendennis in Cornwall
It depends on what your interest is and what line of enquiry you are following. You can PM me if you wish.
But other than 'slighted' castles and some lumps and bumps don't expect to see a great deal of 'physical evidence' of the Civil Wars.
If I were coming to the UK in May, rather than living here all year round, I think I'd head off the beaten track. Down some bosky lanes in the Welsh Marches perhaps.
Two coach trips booked this morning.
The Isle of Bute at the end of April, and the Lake District in early October. On the waiting list for Cornwall in June.
Bookings open for choral holidays on Thursday. No instant answer as they need to have a balanced choir for each.
I have ( so far) decided not to go abroad.
I'm heading for what for me will be pastures new at the end of May: Scottish Voices have been invited to sing in Madrid, and I've now got the time booked off from work.
I've never been to Spain at all, and I'm hoping it won't be too hot; I'm really no good at heat, but a little sunshine won't do any harm. 🙂
That sounds wonderful @Piglet, especially nice to go with a group if you've never been there before. I hope too that the singing will be wonderful fun for both singers and audiences
I'm heading for what for me will be pastures new at the end of May: Scottish Voices have been invited to sing in Madrid, and I've now got the time booked off from work.
I've never been to Spain at all, and I'm hoping it won't be too hot; I'm really no good at heat, but a little sunshine won't do any harm. 🙂
We really enjoyed Spain when we were there, albeit in February (in 2020 just before Covid), so the weather may be a little different.
Make sure to make time for the Prado when you’re in Madrid. We ended up spending a lot of time there.
Definitely the Prado - but remember to bring your passport, if you want the Senior Discount. I didn't have mine, so the woman on the desk asked me to write my birth date on a piece of paper - whereupon she issued the ticket.
I think I'll probably be carrying my passport about my person all the time - I'd be so worried about losing it.
I'm not really much of a traveller (and a nervous one at that); the only major journeys I've done since David died were coming over to Scotland for that first Christmas and New Year, and then coming back for good.
But I have a horrid new blue passport (😠), and will probably be travelling with a friend from the choir, so hopefully it shouldn't be too scary.
I have just made plans for a week in Ohio in April, with a friend, to visit friends for Passover. And while I'm there hopefully have a chance to see another friend/ex-lover.
I've been saying I want to go to Oxford to do the museums for ages - and yesterday I booked a guesthouse for a few days in March. It's the Mad Hatters Guestrooms, not too far from the centre of town, so I'm expecting an Alice in Wonderland theme.
Just back this evening from a few days visiting younger brother-in-law in Pensacola, Florida. A charming (mostly) old town, with good beaches, if you like beaches, and the most magnificent Naval Aviation Museum (https://navalaviationmuseum.org).
Taking daughter to Zip World in Eryri at the end of March. I was going to climb some surrounding mountains but unfortunately I'm likely to be limited to a hobble around Llyn Tanygrisiau.
Revisiting some old connections in Sussex in the Summer.
We have booked to go to the Hamamatsu Kite Festival in May. The city districts each have a float and a kite. Families can have their infants' name on their district's kite. This year, our one-year-old grandson's Japanese grandparents have paid for his name to be on the kite.
I've just booked flights tonight for a city break in Krakow with my sister and nephew ... but not until October half term. Never been to Poland before.
Nearer home, I'm visiting friends in Birmingham and Nottingham in a couple of weeks, and have a 3 generation family holiday booked for May half term near Stratford on Avon.
So that's all the half term holidays for this year filled with plans!
Hope to do something in the summer also, possibly with a friend from church, who is also on her own having been widowed few years ago.
So we had been thinking of doing a bit of Germany and a lot of Paris this Spring but for various reasons we’re now thinking a lot of Belgium and a bit of Paris.
I’ve never been to Belgium and have a list of things I’ve always wanted to see (particularly art and architecture, focusing on Brussels and Bruges)… but interested in anything that stands out for others who have been there.
I have an interesting trip tomorrow. Over the tops to Huddersfield on a double-deck bus. I gather the views of the moors are quite amazing.
Huddersfield boasts a rare, surviving Wimpy restaurant. I want to visit it purely for the nostalgia. The last time I was in a Wimpy was in London, 1976!
I don't know why planning has become so difficult in my advancing years. Perhaps partly because my Dear Wife likes to keep on the move and not stay long anywhere, and partly because we have so many people and places we need to squeeze into a couple of weeks. But we shall stagger off a plane in Glasgow in a month, and one way or another, we'll see bits of Scotland and lots of people, as well as a side trip across Hadrian's wall to rendezvous with oldest friends in York to see a certain museum and probably a well-known big church as well.
I just got back from Oxford - I've been wanting to go for years, after a day trip with the local history group to the Ashmolean. On my own, I could take more time to see the things I wanted to see - like the throne (replica) from Knossos, and the Greek and Roman galleries. I had lunch at the roof-top restaurant, which was lovely!
And I got to see the Pitt-Rivers, and Natural History museums, and the Museum of History of Science, and exhibitions on the Magna Carta and Omens and Oracles at the Weston Library, and the guided tour of the Bodleian Library, and I climbed the Saxon tower of St Michael at the North Gate, which has the door of Archbishop Cranmer's cell propped up against the wall half way up - and later I found the cross in the ground on Broad Street where he was burned at the stake, and I wandered round Balliol College and All Souls, and walked past the place where Lord Peter Wimsey hired a punt with Harriet Vane in Gaudy Night, at one side of the Magdalen Bridge, and went in Blackwells, and ate breakfast at the First Coffee House in England (1654).
I had a brilliant time!
What a lovely time, Eigon. We went a couple of months ago. Didn’t get to St Michael’s though, maybe another time.
The first coffee house in England is a debatable issue, some historians claim it was the Pasqua Rosee in Cornhill, London, probably in 1652, certainly by 1654. The Angel Coaching Inn in Oxford has sometimes been claimed for 1650-1651 but this dates to a later editing of Anthony Wood’s diary and it is more likely to be 1654. (I have just written an essay which discusses the influence of seventeenth century coffee houses on public discourse!).
Comments
2026 will probably see us in Hawaii.
2027 just may see us in Africa, if our health holds out.
UK friends, what kind of weather can we expect in May? After years as a teacher, I am only recently enjoying the freedom of travelling in months other than July or August. Last time we were in the UK was late Sept/early October 2022, and the weather (in London and on the Welsh border) was exactly what I would have expected at home at that time of year. But I can't imagine anywhere on earth can have May weather as bad as ours (cold, foggy, rainy, possible late snowfall, endless whining about whether spring will ever arrive!).
From a "what to see" perspective, our goals are to spend some time in places other than just London (basically we have only ever stayed in London or once in Bristol, unless we've been on a canal, which we won't be doing this trip). I'm also currently doing some research (for fiction writing, not scholarly research) on the English civil war, so any interesting sites related to that would be good to see if people have any to recommend (and, who knows, might allow me to write off a small portion of the trip as a business expense!).
It'll be a lot greener than what you are leaving. I remember flying to Canada about that time of year and it was as if the calendar had gone back a month. I would expect Spring to be in full cry here - leaves, blossoms, flowers, the works. Time was you could expect the best weather of the year late May in Scotland, but that is largely buggered by climate change - last year was cold and wet and chancy. But green, still green.
That will be the only SF con I go to in 2025 - I can't get to EasterCon or WorldCon this year.
I'm also in the process of planning a few days in Oxford for the museums.
You’ll thereby get a better quality of total guess…
Chichester Cathedral is my church- So welcome!
Hi @Quizmaster!
I assume you're going to Rovaniemi? Santa is amazing! When I was there, there were people from all around the world and Santa spoke to everyone in their own language. He's the Real Deal! ™
I'm going to start narrowing down the places I'd like to visit, he says he'll work around me, but I'd like to get something more definite out of him!!
Try the 2025 City of Culture next door instead. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Have you got your Cathedral Passport? Every cathedral you visit should have its own individual stamp.
As for Civil War sites and connections. There are the battlefields of course, Edgehill, Naseby and Newark has a very good example of a 'sconce' from the siege there. It also has a Civil War museum. So does Worcester at 'The Commandery'. It was the site of the last battle of the Civil Wars.
Chester has its walls and some towers, artillery emplacements and so on connected with its siege. Raglan Castle in South Wales is well worth a visit. One of the last Royalist strongholds to surrender in the first Civil War. Likewise Pendennis in Cornwall
It depends on what your interest is and what line of enquiry you are following. You can PM me if you wish.
But other than 'slighted' castles and some lumps and bumps don't expect to see a great deal of 'physical evidence' of the Civil Wars.
If I were coming to the UK in May, rather than living here all year round, I think I'd head off the beaten track. Down some bosky lanes in the Welsh Marches perhaps.
The Isle of Bute at the end of April, and the Lake District in early October. On the waiting list for Cornwall in June.
Bookings open for choral holidays on Thursday. No instant answer as they need to have a balanced choir for each.
I have ( so far) decided not to go abroad.
Me too! Not been in ages. Used to go often. It’s very underrated as a city.
I've never been to Spain at all, and I'm hoping it won't be too hot; I'm really no good at heat, but a little sunshine won't do any harm. 🙂
We really enjoyed Spain when we were there, albeit in February (in 2020 just before Covid), so the weather may be a little different.
Make sure to make time for the Prado when you’re in Madrid. We ended up spending a lot of time there.
She won’t be able to get there without a passport.
I'm not really much of a traveller (and a nervous one at that); the only major journeys I've done since David died were coming over to Scotland for that first Christmas and New Year, and then coming back for good.
But I have a horrid new blue passport (😠), and will probably be travelling with a friend from the choir, so hopefully it shouldn't be too scary.
I went once to study the large selection of actual back to back houses. I haven't seen much of the city centre.
Revisiting some old connections in Sussex in the Summer.
Nearer home, I'm visiting friends in Birmingham and Nottingham in a couple of weeks, and have a 3 generation family holiday booked for May half term near Stratford on Avon.
So that's all the half term holidays for this year filled with plans!
Hope to do something in the summer also, possibly with a friend from church, who is also on her own having been widowed few years ago.
I’ve never been to Belgium and have a list of things I’ve always wanted to see (particularly art and architecture, focusing on Brussels and Bruges)… but interested in anything that stands out for others who have been there.
Huddersfield boasts a rare, surviving Wimpy restaurant. I want to visit it purely for the nostalgia. The last time I was in a Wimpy was in London, 1976!
And I got to see the Pitt-Rivers, and Natural History museums, and the Museum of History of Science, and exhibitions on the Magna Carta and Omens and Oracles at the Weston Library, and the guided tour of the Bodleian Library, and I climbed the Saxon tower of St Michael at the North Gate, which has the door of Archbishop Cranmer's cell propped up against the wall half way up - and later I found the cross in the ground on Broad Street where he was burned at the stake, and I wandered round Balliol College and All Souls, and walked past the place where Lord Peter Wimsey hired a punt with Harriet Vane in Gaudy Night, at one side of the Magdalen Bridge, and went in Blackwells, and ate breakfast at the First Coffee House in England (1654).
I had a brilliant time!
The first coffee house in England is a debatable issue, some historians claim it was the Pasqua Rosee in Cornhill, London, probably in 1652, certainly by 1654. The Angel Coaching Inn in Oxford has sometimes been claimed for 1650-1651 but this dates to a later editing of Anthony Wood’s diary and it is more likely to be 1654. (I have just written an essay which discusses the influence of seventeenth century coffee houses on public discourse!).