Hello everyone!
Travel is part of the deal, whether you’re heading to a new sit or taking a well-earned break while someone else looks after your pet.
How do you like to get around? Maybe you’re a fan of road trips with your dog, or maybe you prefer a scenic train route? Maybe you like slow travel, or perhaps you like to get to your destination as quickly as possible?
We’d love to hear how you travel, so please let us know how and why in the comments! Bonus points for any funny travel stories!
Jenny
4 Likes
To stay somewhere long enough to feel like a temporary native. Eat where the locals eat, not the tourist. Live in the neighborhoods that tourists never see. See things through a locals eye and not a tour guides perception who never spent any time outside the tourist sights. Many different ways of travel offers that including TH.
8 Likes
We moved to Portugal after living in Asia for 10 years (Philippines) to explore Europe. Mostly we drive as it gives us independence and flexibility. Saying that though we also fly if a sit takes our fancy.
Two years in and we are having an amazing adventure.
6 Likes
It’s not the getting there that matters which way you travel air rail or car.. it’s how you move about once there.
I want to make a stand for on two feet. I like walking about everywhere to explore, not always with a dog in tow, however whenever possible with the dog too.
As EM Forster wrote in his short story “ The Machine Stops”. “ Man is the measure.”
My wife heads for the cafe whilst I traipse about having to explore everything like a Border Collie! Just how it always is!
5 Likes
I don’t have a favorite — depends on where I’m going. Sometimes flying makes sense, sometimes cruising, sometimes road tripping, sometimes taking trains. Or maybe a combo.
I love road tripping, because you can go entirely on your own schedule, but we can go only so many places by driving, whether in our cars or RV.
5 Likes
I have a friend who always buys a motorcycle when he arrives in a new region, then sells it when he leaves (he stays for several months, maybe over a year, traveling from city to city or country to country within a particular part of the world). He has never had trouble selling it at the end of his stay. He sells at a slight loss, but the cost is very reasonable for the amount of use he gets out of it. It gives him tons of freedom to move around and explore.
I don’t yet have a motorcycle license, but his approach appeals to me!
6 Likes
I’m toying with the idea of getting an electric bike. Where I live in The Cotswolds a bike would make some of these isolated villages more accessible.. I’m trying out the buses at the moment, but an electric bike in my Campervan would give me more options. I do feel more vulnerable on a bike although I have quite good balance, my hearing isn’t great and my vision is impaired too..
8 Likes
Solo roadtrips to the coast where I stay in one location and do short daytrips combined with daily long walks and stretches of reading time.
6 Likes
I love the «living like a local», as I’ve done home exchanging before and now petsitting.
When it comes to the actual transport, I like to be able to see the scenery, towns, people I’m passing. I do have a preference for trains - but some buses can give some of the same facilities (especially an upstairs and front seat of a doubledecker! 
).
For shorter distances - a good, old bicycle. Then you really get in touch with your surroundings. The dew in a cobweb early in the morning, the scents, the wind blowing gently in the leaves… or the rain in your face or the sun in your neck. Then you really feel you are travelling.
7 Likes
@Highfive this service could be useful to get to some of the more isolated parts of the Cotswolds.
https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/transport/the-robin/
3 Likes
We did a London sit recently. Although we were close to an underground station, we found that we preferred taking a little longer when we had the time and using buses so we could see more of the areas we passed through.
The following week I was chatting to one of our lovely volunteers who comes in one day a week to help in a class at the school where I work and to help them in the pool. It turned out that she was from London originally and had lived close to our housesit and in many other areas we had visited or passed through by bus! I would have only known a couple of the places she mentioned if we had only used the underground.
Outside of London, we like to drive to sits to give us flexibility to explore different villages where there may not be a regular bus service. I have enjoyed road trips in the past where we booked a few key stopovers and winged it in between - a great way of seeing different places.
Although I am a really poor sailor, I do enjoy travelling by boat when not crossing oceans, so we enjoy taking ferry services instead of road or rail transport where possible.
Our main way of exploring during a sit is almost always by walking.
2 Likes
I’m a sailing fanatic but road trips are good as well.
4 Likes
