Its been a month since my United Kingdom trip and I have finally come to settling down and writing about my travel experience there. It's been quite an interesting and fulfilling trip since I travelled with my classmates (since it was a study trip). We were to travel to Preston, Manchester, Edinburgh and London.
Since there were 5 of us and each of us had our own preference for airline, we actually flew on separate airlines and only meeting at Heathrow, the more popular airlines being British Airways, Emirates and Qatar. 2 of my friends flew via Emirates since they were extending their trip after our study stint in UK, whilst another friend managed to secure a great deal with British Airways for a direct flight from SIN to LHR for only 1.3k and me on the other hand travelled with another friend of mine via Qatar.
Prior to flying we had to find our own flight there and lodging in our university's town of Preston, so as any typical traveller on a budget we turned to Airbnb for a place to stay (since there were 5 of us).
What we found apparently that suited our needs was a large loft/studio apartment near Central Preston, with it being shared amongst the 5 of us, we only had to pay about SGD35 each, pretty decent since we could cook and wash our clothes for the duration we were there.
Since both my friend and I flew by Qatar, we had to transit via Doha before reaching London.
Honestly, the transit area in Qatar was ridiculously long, we practically walked from 1 end to another to get to our gate so we walked about I guess 15 minutes even with the help of travellators.
The image above is Doha's famous giant teddy bear, I cant really understand what was the purpose of it other then filling up the space. Transit security was a pain in the neck with the long snaking queues and even though the security there seemed really slack (they weren't even looking at the screen when bags passed the X-Ray), it was still slow.
But nevertheless after another 7hour flight from Doha we finally reached Heathrow Terminal 4 around 6am, it's been a year since I've experience winter, living in sunny Singapore it really was relaxing to have cold winds around you. I practically walked around outside in just T-shirt and pants to enjoy the 1 degree temperature.
Heathrow Terminal 4
Some images from Heathrow, unfortunately it was not snowing despite the temperature, but I was sort of prepared since I spent a week in Korea with -7 degree temperature and now even a single drop of snow appeared.
Since it was a study trip, the school organised all our transportation, so we only had to settle our flight tickets and lodging in our main residing city.
The man above is our Korean professor, really appreciated his funny and ridiculous antics during the trip, he carried himself more like a student then a professor.
So here's the apartment we stayed in, and when we arrived it is quite true to it's picture. The host was kind enough to show us around the house and let us know of how we can go to buy groceries, since we reached our Airbnb around 5pm, quite a number of stores were closed, and our host was kind enough to give us a ride to a Tesco outlet in town to let us get some food.
We had to get to class the very next day and we were really jetlagged, since I was a light sleeper I got hit really bad, not sleeping for the 15 hour flight and the 5 hour bus ride to Preston and I practically stayed up for 10 hours during our first night in Preston.
So when we got to class we found out our first field trip was to travel to Grizdale park just on the outskirts of Preston. However, on our way there via bus, the driver apparently got lost and almost drove us to Scotland instead, what was supposed to be a 1 and 1/2 hour ride became a 4 hour nightmare.
So we had to make a pitstop somewhere to get lunch, and we arrived at an arthouse. It was quite an interesting place with awesome landscapes that you rarely get to see in Singapore.
Yes that's how tired my lecturer was.
But nevertheless we eventually reached Grizdale park and only managed to walk for about 1 hour, so its almost a full day ride with 1 hour of visiting. So I had nothing much to share about the place except these photos.
To be honest, Preston was a very quite and gloomy town, mainly since it was November and it rained practically everyday. There's not much to shop around and we just commute to school and back, for entertainment we just stayed in our apartment and watched shows on our laptops. Hoping the next part of our trip in Manchester would be more interesting.
We spent quite a number of days in Preston, but I shall not bore you with my school work so stay tuned for the Manchester part of the trip.
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