Out the Window

Exploring England #40

Even with careful research and diligent attention to the details on booking websites, there’s no guarantee that what you see is what you will get when it comes to accommodation. On our journey around England, we stayed in eight different places and fortunately all were exactly what we expected. What we usually didn’t expect was the wonderful view we had out the windows of our vacation homes.

Our first night in England was spent in a small family-run guest house in Cranford, a few kilometres from Heathrow. The building was surrounded by a pretty cottage garden, filled with late summer flowers and apple trees laden with ripening fruit.

The only hotel we stayed in was in Portsmouth. As its name implies, the Royal Beach Hotel is located on the seafront. From the top of the shingle beach we could see across the Solent to the Isle of Wight.

Our Airbnb studio near Bridport was the top floor of a converted barn, on farmland owned by the same family for more than a century. The walk up Colmer’s Hill was tempting, but we couldn’t fit it in this time.

We knew from the photos on the website this Airbnb apartment in Falmouth had wonderful views. That was partly why we chose it and we weren’t disappointed. Looking out over the waters of Carrick Roads to the village of Flushing, we were intrigued by the constantly changing colours before us. We weren’t the only ones enjoying the view one morning!

We knew our Airbnb apartment in Manchester would have neither rural nor ocean views, but we weren’t expecting to see a worksite. From our living room we looked into the backyards of the Victorian terraces in the next street. We were fascinated by the renovations over the fence and wondered what the final outcome would be.

Every morning we watched the antics of this hungry little fellow, who helped himself to breakfast from a bird feeder in a tree.

Our next Airbnb home was in Holme Mills, just outside the Lake District. Once again we had beautiful rural views, this time accompanied by the rich rural aroma only cows can provide. The millpond lay behind our cottage and, at the top of the hill, was Lancaster Canal.

On the outskirts of York, our Airbnb cottage was a one in a modern complex located in the grounds of a plant nursery, so it wasn’t a surprise to find a beautifully landscaped formal garden on our doorstep.

While we admired the carefully tended garden beds, it was the local birds who kept us entertained every morning.

In London, we were back in familiar territory. From our studio in Cartwright Gardens, we could see the top of BT Tower above the neighbouring apartment block and, if we looked down, the tiny patch of lawn behind our building.

It would have been tempting to stay home all day in every place we stayed, but after travelling more than 15,000 km to get there we had more to do than look out the window!

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58 thoughts on “Out the Window

  1. I think they are all beautiful or interesting. It’s a pity you had to beetle off to go touristing! 🙂 My best hotel view was in Melbourne when I was woken one morning by a whooshing sound I didn’t recognise and looked out the window of my 15th story room to see a couple of hot air balloons making their way past, so close I could wave to the occupants!

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  2. You did good! I have been to most of these places (not Cranford, though I know Heathrow very well), though not always to stay. Love the misty Lake District photo, and yes that rural smell that only cows can provide is very evident around here today!! Some noisy boys arrived yesterday…

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    • Thanks Judy. It all comes down to careful research before booking. We have a system. I look and find a few choices and send the links to MR ET. He double checks to make sure they have the facilities we want and then he looks on Google Earth to check the location. He looks for things like proximity to public transport and shops. I always make sure each place has a kitchen, washing machine, wifi and, if we have a car, dedicated parking. We make a good team. 🙂

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  3. What fun to see the very, very different views from the windows of the the places you stayed. By the way, I had my little “Birds of Europe” guide next to me as I just identified a bird we saw today in Portugal – so I confirmed that the birds you saw were great tits (upper photo) and a European Robin (lower photo) – but I bet you already knew that!

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  4. It’s great that all the accommodation was up to expectation. Your research paid off but it’s also good to know that people care about providing good accommodation; truth in advertising etc.

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  5. What a trip you made. I didn’t know what Airbnb was so I looked it up. this is not something for me at all. That building site view was bad but other views were great! Cool trip!

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  6. How wonderful to have such views in every place you stayed. I love them all. The converted upper floor of the barn sounds particularly appealing. So most of your trip you used Airbnb? We hadn’t used it much before, but we ended up loving our Airbnb apartments in Budapest and Prague. I’m going to try to use them more in future trips.

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    • We used five Airbnb places on this trip and loved them all. The secret, as with anything booked online, is to read everything carefully and study the photographs to check for details. We’ve been using Airbnb for years and have only ever had one place that wasn’t as advertised and Airbnb was very responsive to our comments.

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