Epsom is in Zone 9. If a sitter were on a tight budget and wanted a 7-day travelcard to get into London Zone 1, they may not be prepared for the cost.
It’s £100.20, just for the record!
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Even when selecting City of London in the drop-down menu (as opposed to just ‘London’ or ‘Greater London’) sits appear that are in no way City of London - St Albans and Colchester for example. Each time it is necessary to re-adjust the map to exclude these. Surely if there is a City of London featured in the drop-down menu the map should reflect the geography of this city centre area?
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I feel the exact same way you do. I will not be a TH member for much longer. They also clearly dont reall care how much its ruined it for us regulars. Even the owners tell me that all they’re getting are brand new people with no reviews or young kids trying to avoid paying rent who aren’t really there for their pets.
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Some of the problem of ‘where have london housesits gone’ comes from different definitions of London’ ‘City of London’ means, to Londoners, the ancient square mile called ‘the City’.
London for many like myself means Greater London, where frequent tubes and trains go to and fro from the centre, and that means including parts of surrounding counties.
Anything that falls into a ‘Fare Zone’ is London, for those of us travelling around the city regularly.
Croxley Green is an old suburb of London. It doesn’t matter if it’s technically in another shire. It’s on the old Metropolitan Line that defined Metro-Land, in Fare Zone 7.
No Londoner depends on the tiny tube-map that shows a small part of London: that’s for visitors. Londoners use a map including Fare Zones put out by Transport for London, TfL:
THS uses a search-machine that gathers in towns existing in their own right which no one considers to be part of London - High Wycombe, St Albans.
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@Lauraa Perhaps they could implement a zone classification so members who want to visit London while housesitting could search for London Z1, Z2, Z3 etc. Just a thought.
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Google searches are really all about cars, it’s even hard to find out the name of main streets in London on google maps, because they use the automobile route-number. But I like your idea.
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@Lauraa We take public transport or ride our bicycles when sitting in London. But just because of the cost wouldn’t sit any further out than Zone 3. It would be great to exclude anything outside of that when searching.
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Zone 1 is where the cost is. If you travel from one side of London to the other without passing through Zone 1 you don’t pay a lot. London uses penalty and congestion charges to keep traffic down in the centre.
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It’s funny that I only found out about the zone-based system last year, after many visits to London, only because I have become more budget-conscious. It’s a steep learning curve trying to plan non-zone 1 travel.
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London authorities expect and want tourists to stay in the West End, with visits to a few non-central mainstream sights like Greenwich. This is why they continue to publish that cute little tube map no one uses. If you travel on the Overground you can cross Greater London’s whole width for £2.
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The problem with this zonal system is that you will get charged for even passing through zone 1. Actually it was quite shocking for me to find out. I had never come across a public transport fare system like this anywhere before.
I had to use buses and the Overground a lot to avoid touching zone 1 in any way.
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That’s the point of it, that’s the money-maker. And it does keep a lot of people out of the centre, which has awful air and awful amounts of traffic, crowds, sightseers.
A lot of Londoners avoid going there.
Public transport in London wasn’t made to make things nice for users.
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338 house sits in London at the moment am I missing something.?
@Genevere many, many, are not that close to the city center. Some people want to stay in the City of London to use public transportation and walk. One says London but goes on to say 40 min away and pup can’t be left more than 6 hrs. That’s fine but not if you want to spend much time in the city.
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Having used the public transport in London surely makes me appreciate the public transport in cities like Paris much more!
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I wouldn’t leave animals alone for 6 hours anyway. And tube is very quick into city centre from places I have been. Yes it definitely depends which part of London your are staying in .next sit I’m in have lovely neighbours who will step in if I need to explore for a day. Been before to this sit and they were super helpful. But wouldn’t abuse that either. My parents were in London during the blitz so I have a strong affinity to london
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@Genevere -
Yes, 339 listings come up if you search for London (United Kingdom) which THS has tagged “city.”
Here are the first 6 of those listings:
Maidstone (40 miles from actual London)
Braintree (56 mi)
Buntingford (51 mi)
West Clandon (28 mi)
Liphook (47 mi)
Farnham (45 mi)
Of those 339 listings, only 13 homeowners actually list their own location as “London.”
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Yes a lot of lovely places near London to stay in.
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