England and Wales Trip Report with UK Travel Planning’s Tracy Collins – Episode 326 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

This episode is a joyful collaboration with Tracy of the UK Travel Podcast.

When one of your best friends invites you to his wedding in the Lake District in England, you say yes!

We first met Cham in Cambodia – back in Episode 114 – and we’ve holidayed with him across Asia ever since, but meeting up in the UK to celebrate his wedding was our most exciting adventure together yet. My 14-year-old son and I took the opportunity to explore some more of north-west England and northern Wales while we were there, taking in Manchester, Liverpool, the Lake District, and northern Wales, including Wrexham and Llangollen.

In this collab with the UK Travel Podcast, Tracy interviews me about my UK experience and I describe it through a thoughtful travel lens, from our planning, our experiences and then our post-trip reflection. There’s also some unexpected sandwich chat!

Links:

• Tracy Collins – UK Travel Planning
• And, Tracy’s Global Travel Planning 
• Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Sign up for the Thoughtful Travellers newsletter at Substack

Episode Transcript

Amanda Kendle
Hello and welcome to episode 326, of the thoughtful travel podcast. It is my UK trip report, and it is a special episode because I have done this in conjunction with the fabulous Tracy Collins, and it’s also being released on her UK travel planning podcast. So I would encourage all of you who are interested in UK travel to head over to UK travel planning. You can find it on all the podcast apps or at UK travel planning.com because you’ll get all kinds of info there and some great stories about traveling in the UK. But thank you so much Tracy for interviewing me for this particular episode, and it’s been, yeah, it’s a good chance to collaborate. I know I’ve been a little bit absent from podcast land the last few months. It has been a tricky year, after losing my mum and all kinds of other things that come along with that, but it was a great chance to report back on my very, very special trip to England and Wales earlier this year. So without further ado, I will let you have a listen to that recording. This

Tracy Collins 1:28
week, I had the pleasure of welcoming friend and fellow podcaster Amanda Kendle, to chat with me all about her recent UK trip and to reflect on how being a thoughtful traveler enhanced her experiences before, during and after her trip. So without further ado, let’s hear Amanda’s UK trip report.

Amanda Kendle 1:46
Thanks for having me, Tracy, it is lovely to be here. I’m Amanda Kendle from the thoughtful travel podcast, and I was lucky enough to be in the UK a couple of months back earlier this year in April. And as a whole, our trip was centered on going to a dear friend’s wedding, which was to take place in the Lake District. So as soon as we got this invitation, first of all, a very close friend, and second of all, like, how exciting to be able to go to a wedding in the Lake District. And we looked up the venue, and it’s like, looks like a little castle of a hotel on the water, like this is just so perfect. So that was the reason, the impetus for that trip. I was traveling with my son, who’s 14, and a mad keen footballer slash soccer player. And so we knew we were going to start in Manchester, where he had actually been last year for soccer, soccer trip. And he had some ideas. He wanted to do some more soccer tourism, let’s call it. So we started in Manchester, a few days there, a few days in Liverpool, and then we spent about a week with our friends a little bit further north and around the Lake District, celebrated the wedding and had an absolute blast. Came back down to Northern Wales for a few days, also because we wanted to go to Wrexham, because football, and then back to Manchester for a few more days. And so that was it so fairly, fairly small kind of footprint of area where we covered, okay,

Tracy Collins 3:14
perfect. Yeah, and I was following along when you were traveling, which is really fantastic. One thing I wanted to talk to you about which I think is really important. And IF listeners have listened to the global travel plan and podcast initial episode, you will recognize Amanda’s voice because she does an introduction, in fact, a whole episode about thoughtful travel. So this episode would be totally remiss of me to talk to Amanda without asking her to explain and what thoughtful travel involves, and to talk about how that impacted her when she planned her trip, during her trip and after her trip, because I think it’s probably a great way to kind of structure it that way. Amanda, so would you like to just kind of give us an overview of what is involved in thoughtful travel?

Amanda Kendle 3:58
I would absolutely love to So, and it’s really cool to be able to do it in the context of one specific trip. So I’m very excited to talk about this. So when I think about thoughtful travel, I mean, there’s no single definition of thoughtful travel, but let’s just say it’s making our decisions more intentionally, thinking about what we want to get out of a trip, how we can do it so it’s good for us and good for the world, so to speak. So that’s kind of thoughtful travel in a nutshell. And then when I try to break it down, I always think about how we can be thoughtful about our trip, before, during and after the trip. So I’m happy to talk to that if you like Tracy, Oh

Tracy Collins 4:36
yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s really funny, because we did a massive trip last year to five destinations, six destinations around the world, and we’re actually sitting now with the after trying to be thoughtful about it, going through all of those things, thinking about because it’s so easy. Now we’re planning another trip to forget about that so true and so and I know in my Facebook group, I’m always, constantly asking people. Share the your best memory from your trip, share your favorite photo from your trip, and it’s about that kind of reminder. So let’s talk about, then, how you kind of were thoughtful in your planning before you went to the UK. Yes,

Amanda Kendle 5:12
absolutely. So a precursor is perhaps I try not to do much planning. So I know some people like to have, like, day to day, every part planned, and I don’t, but I have accepted that in the modern world, it is more important to have more things planned than, like, 10 or 20 years ago. So I, you know, I do a bit of both. But first of all, I did a bit of brainstorming with my son. You know, what? What do we want to see? We know we’re going to fly into Manchester, and we know we have the wedding up at the Lake District. What’s nearby? What can we do? And it was great because he was there last year when he was 13, so he already had some ideas about what he wanted to show me that he’d seen and what he had missed out on. So that was really fun to be able to have his total buy in from the start. So we did actually do some bookings related to that, because he convinced me, and probably it’s also it’s true, that some of the stadium tours would be booked out if we didn’t book in advance. So I reluctantly locked those in and then locked in accommodation kind of connected to that in Manchester and Liverpool for the first, our first stint in Manchester, and our second student liveable. So I did that. And then the other thing I usually do before a trip is lots of reading and watching, but not of like, Where will I go and what will we do, but stuff that’s just connected, like stuff that’s set in those destinations, or movies, you know, Netflix series travel logs, or just novels or whatever. Because I really feel that gives a like, you know, it just gives you a taste of it. Yeah,

Tracy Collins 6:48
absolutely different, different perspective than kind of, I mean, you can go on YouTube and watch somebody walk around it and do and, you know, do those sorts of things. And I get that, but, yeah, I totally am with you about reading a book set in that area. Look at, and there’s so many fantastic UK TV series that you could watch absolutely, yeah, you know. And that really gives you kind of the the feel for an area and the nitty gritty of an area as well. Because it’s not pretty fired up, is it?

Amanda Kendle 7:12
Yeah, it’s like real life, yeah, but yeah, and it’s not from a travel perspective necessarily, which I really like as well. So I didn’t do as much as usual, I must say, partly, perhaps also, usually, I do a lot of language learning, but I thought I’d probably be okay with these guys, the odd accent, you know, notwithstanding, but so I didn’t know any language learning this time and life had been a bit hectic, so I didn’t do as much research. But I did happen to have a fabulous guest on my podcast not long before we left, who is kind of an expert in Wales, although she’s American, she spent lots of time in Wales. So have a fabulous book, which I’ll mention again later in my in my during the trip phase. So we’ve done all of that and just got some more ideas together about the kinds of things we wanted to end make contact with friends who we knew lived in the area, which is one of my very, very favorite things about travel is, and also the podcast and the blog is that I’ve made friends all over the world, and so I knew who I could talk to, that we could meet up with. And, you know, just get the insider perspective of, you know, where do you shop, where do you live, what do you do every day? What’s this city like from your perspective? Which I, you know, I think is so special that’s always

Tracy Collins 8:21
such a privilege, I think, being able to do that, and we’re doing the same. We’re planning a trip to America in September, and I’m reaching out to all my friends in America going. So we’re coming to Chicago, so we’re coming to New York, so potentially do this, and now everybody’s going to meet up with us and show us around. So it’s really excited about that. Absolutely,

Amanda Kendle 8:36
it’s just the best. So that’s about all I did. I didn’t. So we had a whole week or so in the middle maybe, maybe 10 days where I didn’t have solid plans. I did rent a car because we realized we needed to kind of get to our friend’s parents place in Wigan and from here to there, and a bunch of places it was just going to be, I much prefer public transport, but I realized it was just going to be quite restrictive if we did that. And so then I thought, once we got a car, I’m not booking the rest of the accommodation, because it means we can go anywhere. We can decide a day before, a couple of days before, we’ll just kind of follow our noses a bit. And I had checked it wasn’t like massive school holiday time or anything. So I thought, we’ll be fine. I know some people freak out at that. I had a friend who actually volunteered. She said, look, I’ve got some spare time. I could book your accommodation for you, Amanda. And I’m like, No, I could do it’s not the point. I’m okay, thanks, though she was so stressed by it.

Tracy Collins 9:30
I know you, you asked in our Facebook group about that and and I think I did say to you as well, that obviously depended on time of year. And I do say, like, if you go into London at Christmas, like you need accommodation if you’re going to even the Lake District in August, June’s like you’re going to struggle, because it’s super popular. Cornwall, super popular. Those sky whenever you want to go to Isla sky, it seems to be booked up forever. So those sort of places, you really have to be thinking ahead. But Doug and I used to jump on trains at weekends, and we would depend. Know what the weather was like, we might get somewhere and go, not so great. Oh, just jump on another train and go somewhere else. And we’d do that, and then we’d book accommodation. I’d get on my phone and I book accommodation at five and stay in a, b and b and it was great. And I knew, because the time of year you were doing it, that you you would be absolutely fine to do that, and you want to stay in the B and B’s and kind of again, experience that kind of accommodation that I love to

Amanda Kendle 10:21
do, yeah, yeah. And I’m not into, like, the luxury hotel experience, you know, at the end of the day, if it’s just a bed, that’s all I need. And then if it’s a bit quirkier or more interesting, then that’s a bonus. So yeah, so I love that. So that’s all I did before the trip. Not much, really,

Tracy Collins 10:35
no, no, no. Compared to sometimes some of the preparation, if you go into a country where you don’t speak the language and that sort of, there’s a lot more involved in that. So tell me about during then. How began did you have that kind of thoughtful travel mindset when you were there

Amanda Kendle 10:50
so many ways. So probably my favorite way was catching up with friends, one of my long term blogging podcasting buddies, the Barefoot backpacker, recently moved to Manchester, and I was, Oh, that’s great. I can catch up with them. So we did a fabulous walking tour. Well, not, not a formal one, but we spent hours wandering Manchester. We went to Affleck. We did all sorts of, like, just the nitty gritty walk down to where they live. And, like, just, you know, when you got a friend there, it’s so nice to know, you know, what’s their everyday thing? So we did that kind of thing. And obviously we also hung out with our friends whose wedding we were going to, and got to see so our friend was marrying a man who grew up in that area. So we got to say, Well, we went to his childhood home where his parents still live. And you know, that kind of stuff was just beautiful. And his parents were so welcoming. And that was so lots of, lots of local people, which was, you know, I know not, you can’t always do that, but we made the most of our opportunities there. So that was one way. Another way was, I always try and keep some kind of travel journal when I travel, because I think it helps me to stop and reflect each day. When I was, like, younger, my journals were so boring. They were just like, detailed dot points or detailed, boring sentences of every place we went, you know, we did this, we ate this, we, you know, and like, I’ve learned that that’s, I mean, I still keep that information, but just quick dot points, because I often do want to refer back to that, but I try and focus more on, like, the things I remembered the most of the day. Like, you know, I saw, like a funny dog walking along and, you know, like something about, you know, something that’s like, we were staying in this place in Wales where they had a suspension bridge, and they were doing some work on it. And it was just fascinating to watch. Like there was these people that were, that were, you know, in harnesses, hanging on the underside of the bridge, working on it, and like, this is terrifying, and there’s this river rushing below them. And also, like, just little things. So those kind of things go into my journal, and any feelings or, you know, things that I’ve learned, curious things. Often, I’ll make a list of my Google searches from the day, because inevitably, when I’m traveling, especially if I’m traveling with my teenage son, there’s so many questions like, Why do they do this? What’s this? What’s that mean? And we’ll Google stuff. And so I keep a list of that, just out of curiosity the weird things we’ve looked up. So, yeah, journaling and this time was good because I was traveling with my teenager, I actually had plenty of downtime most days, you know, because a teenager, modern teenager, needs time to just be on their phone or whatever, apparently. So so it’s good, because sometimes I travel with, like, with my good friends, and then we’re spending all our time, spare time talking, and I don’t do my journaling. So that was nice. I did that. Yeah, what else was a during thing? Oh, well, as I kind of foreshadowed in that before, but reading stuff said in those places. So I had this fabulous book by Pamela Petro called the long field, which is about her time in Wales and connection with Wales over the years. So she went to study her Masters in Wales, kind of by accident. You know, one of those didn’t even know anything about it turned up there, fell in love with it. And so that was a really interesting perspective. It got me so interested in Wales, you know, sitting in this little hotel in in cling, I can’t pronounce that well, but that’s my attempt. Um, it looked like the langelon to me.

Speaker 2 14:13
I can’t pronounce it either.

Amanda Kendle 14:16
But, you know, reading about her experiences and it just, you know, because I hadn’t known much about, you know, Welsh culture and Welsh language, and just learning more about that in this, you know, fascinating book, I loved that. And then I could, kind of, when I bumped into people, ask them little questions to, you know, to learn even a little bit more. What else do we do? That was thoughtful. During the trip, I kind of mentioned that we would always spend several nights in every place. So I’d never want to stay somewhere just one night, unless it’s like a very good reason, but usually two or three nights, even on this trip, just, you know, just to get to know the rhythm of a place a little bit. You know, I’m in a perfect world. I would stay everywhere for weeks at a time. Sadly, life prevents that,

Tracy Collins 14:58
wouldn’t we? Or I have to ask you, because you know something, we were a bit remiss here, because we talked about language learning and you were in Wales.

Amanda Kendle 15:05
That’s true. Actually, I should have learned some Welsh. Well, the

Tracy Collins 15:09
reason I’m saying that is because Doug spent some time in north Wales last year, doing some research, and he came back with with a full vocabulary I was quite proud of. He actually learned some before he went, and he practiced it when he was there, and he came back, and I was like, wow, yes, yeah. So, yeah, that would be so that’s something I was thinking about only that because I’d love to read that book, because I was on that same podcast episode, on your podcast, that’s why, yeah, talking about language learning. So, and I was fascinated because Wales. I was like, wow, that’s, that’s so unusual, yeah? So, yes, I want, I’d like to read that book for

Amanda Kendle 15:41
sure. Yeah, right. And I, in hindsight, I wish I had done more of that and like and since we came home, one of the youtubers that my son follows, actually, I didn’t even know. I thought he was English. Turns out he’s Welsh, sorry. And there’s, he had this series of videos where he went to, or now, somewhere in South America, I’m not sure now, Argentina, somewhere where there’s a big Welsh community somewhere in South America, yeah, maybe it’s more East anyway, somewhere, some country in South America, I’m so sorry, where there’s a really significant Welsh community. And he went there on these series of videos we watched, and he’d found all these people he could speak Welsh with in the you know. And I was like, oh, there’s just so much more to this culture than I knew about. So now I just want to go back again to be honest. So I would have to learn some more. I

Tracy Collins 16:28
think you should and a little bit of Welsh. Well, yes, both and a little bit of Welsh next time before. I’m not sure when I’m going to Wales next, but yes, that, that after, after Doug kind of showed me up with his excellent Welsh. I was like, I want him, yeah. I was very

Amanda Kendle 16:42
absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, that is very impressive. So yeah, I was remiss there, yeah. What else did I do? I guess the other thoughtful thing was just having in mind my kind of thoughtful travel principles, wherever I am and where, you know, where whatever I’m seeing and following my nose, following rabbit holes. And just, I try not to be a ticker box. I have to I’m here, so I have to see X, Y and Z sites. Kind of traveler, I prefer to, you know, just see what’s around. And often just take, like, take what’s in front of me. So on our last few days in Manchester before we flew out, so we had another few days there, and by this time, we’d actually both got a bit sick, so we were taking things fairly slowly. And we ended up in a hotel directly opposite the art gallery, the main Manchester art gallery. And my son was particularly not, you know, fairly unwell that day. You know, he didn’t need supervision, but he didn’t want to go out. So okay, well, I’m going to the art gallery. He was he was very happy to stay in the hotel room. And I really just went because it was there. But then I got inside, I was like, Oh, this is, like, the most thoughtful Art Gallery I’ve ever seen. And they’d done all these really interesting things just in the last two or three years, mostly where they’d, like, re curated some of their exhibitions through like modern, very thoughtful lenses, like colonialism. So they got a bunch of paintings that were basically kind of really like, hey, look, we’re the great Colonials. And they’d reinterpreted them and put really interesting captions next to them to say, Hey, this is what was it like at the time. And now we think this and that kind of thing. And then there was one gallery where they reinterpreted kind of climate change issues, but just using their old collection, like paintings they’d had for 50, 100 years, and then put this other lens on. It was so interesting. And then one more where they had actually got collected everything that the curators had put together to put this exhibition on, including the post it notes and the drawings and the sketches and the like, some transcriptions from the discussions they’d had, and put that as part of the exhibition as well. So that was super fascinating and really, really thoughtful. So big tick to the Manchester outgoing

Tracy Collins 18:51
that sounds that’s does sound amazing as well. And I also love the fact that, you know, sometimes you you can have your plans, if that’s travel, and you, know, and I’m very much a I like to know what I’m going to see. So I kind of travel with that gun. I really would like to go and see X, Y and Z. But also have the flexibility to if something crops up, I can go actually. I want to spend some more time here, or I want to go and have a look at that particular place, or this looks interesting. I’m going to wander into this church, or whatever, having the ability to do that, I think it is important. And also, like you say, just what you discovered by kind of wandering across the road. It was like, you know, I told the gem that you didn’t expect,

Amanda Kendle 19:32
yeah, and it didn’t say that online, anywhere, that it was this amazing place, you know, I just looked it up, and it’s just an art gallery. But actually it was way more. So I’ve been telling everyone about that that’s, like, probably my, my biggest tip that I’ve been giving people is, oh, you have to go to the majest art gallery. It’s amazing. And maybe it’s just very specific to me that I would like it like that. But I loved it. It was amazing. So,

Tracy Collins 19:53
no, no, it’s great. We all, we all like different things, and we all look for different things, and, you know, and that’s great as well. And. And so I actually want to ask about your son as well. How was he during the trip? I know he’d been there last year because he went on a football trip. I can’t say soccer, because Doug would tell me football trip, even though soccer is an English word, British word, whatever it was, it did actually come from. We invented it and but now it’s all football. But anyway, so what? How did he enjoy it? What was his like experience of the trip. His last year, he went with some with a team. Yes, this year, went with his mom. Yes. I

Amanda Kendle 20:29
know how embarrassing, right? Was that? No, no, I think. I mean, you know, a teenager doesn’t always want to hang out with their mum the whole time, but the friends that we caught up with, he got along really well, some of them he knew, some he didn’t. He got along really well with all of them. And I think he’s always, he’s, I mean, he’s been raised a traveler. He’s a very curious teenager, and loves to meet all kinds of different people. And, you know, learn from them, I think, and just, you know, see how people live. So, so those parts especially were good. And I was very careful to make sure that we had a fairly heavy soccer slash football rating in some of the things we were doing the rest of the time. And I found them interesting too, like so he would enjoy a stadium tour for different reasons. To me. For me, like often in their museums or in the guides would be these old guys who’d been, you know, attending matches there since they were five years old, or probably before and stuff. And they would have amazing stories. So I loved hearing all of that. And he was probably less interested in that and more in, you know, getting down near the pitch or whatever, you know, seeing his idols big, you know, pictures of his idols or whatever. So yeah, I think that kind of compromise approach worked really well. And yeah, and he had a great trip at the wedding. He was on the dance floor till midnight, so I reckon he was having a good time.

Tracy Collins 21:46
Sounds like it? So since you’d be back, so it was, it was April, May, that you were there, wasn’t it? Yeah. So, so since you’ve been back, how have you used the kind of thoughtful travel ideas to be thoughtful when you’re reflecting back on your dream?

Amanda Kendle 21:59
So I think one of the things about being thoughtful after your trip, or one of, for me, them, one of the most important things is extending the memory of it, I suppose. So, you know, obviously, because we live together, and the two of us went, we often will talk back about, you know, oh, remember we did this. I remember we did that, and I love being able to do that. I’ve also got a good chunk of friends who are always really keen to hear about my trips. You know, plenty of people don’t want to hear that’s totally fine, but there are some who will be and I was like, Yes, look at this. And here’s what we did. And we’ve got photos pinned up, you know, print some photos. We don’t do that often enough these days, but I love to do that because they’re just, you know, you walk past them on the wall, and yes, you’re, you know, transported back there. I haven’t done this yet, but I’m intending it to give it to my teenager for a school holiday task. This this week is we’ll often make a photo book so we’ve got, you know, it’s like a physical book we can look back on and enjoy that. And I’ve just been doing a lot more reading and research, like I mentioned. We went deep into this YouTubers Welsh background and videos and things like that. And I actually just yesterday got Pamela Petros second book in the mail, because she did a really interesting world trip, including, like the to South America and some half a dozen other places around the world where there are Welsh speaking communities. And so she Yeah, quite a few years ago, did this trip, I know, like quite a cool way to plan a trip. So she went to speak Welsh all around the world, which is, like, you know, so unique. So I’m looking forward to reading that, and, you know, learning more about the Welsh cultural side of things. So, yeah, just

Tracy Collins 23:33
love that. I have to say, Amanda, I absolutely love that. I just love that. It’s just fabulous, absolutely fabulous. Well, I need to read. I need to read the first book before I got the second one. But I’m already hooked. Just that, the idea of it is just, it’s just fabulous.

Amanda Kendle 23:47
I know, fabulous. Yeah,

Tracy Collins 23:49
I mean, like, I just, I’m also curious now to know how many Welsh speaking communities there are around the world,

Amanda Kendle 23:54
right? Who knew? I did not know so

Tracy Collins 23:58
Exactly. And that’s what, isn’t it? That’s the thing with travel, is it kind of opens up a Pandora’s box of just like amazingness that you just do not necessarily, you might plan and ship, go and think and this, I’m going to do A, B, C, and I’m going to go to D, whatever. And then along the way, you meet people, you talk to people, you have experiences that you don’t necessarily, you can’t plan for. They just happen when you’re, you know, the pre planning phase, I know, in our Facebook group, and we help people with consults, like we make friends with people. We just, we just love it. It’s fantastic, you know. And then when the travel and sharing those memories, talking about what’s happening and then, and I guess I’m facilitating that through the podcast as well, because we have so many guests that come on and do their trip reports. And we’ve been said, we’ve actually been told, and it’s lovely for a lot of guests who’ve been on podcasts, like I have this in perpetuity now, isn’t it? It’s yeah, I can listen to it when I want. I’ve got this. And it’s, you know? And it’s, yeah, I love being able, yeah. It is so special. And it’s, it’s just so lovely to hear about your about. Trip. Amanda, honestly, it was, it was so good following you when you were doing the trip, but I knew that there would be so much more to talk to you about. Oh,

Amanda Kendle 25:07
for me, a trip lasts forever, and like, when I’m when I’m traveling, for example, I’ll post on Instagram stories a lot, but I don’t post, like, proper Instagram pictures, and I do all of that when I’m home. And I’ve only just last week or so got to the end of my UK trip on Instagram, and so then, you know, I’ll just do, you know, three or four a week, and just the process of, like, kind of distill down what were the most important moments and then try and be thoughtful in my caption. And you know, like, I love that process as well. It’s kind of, you know, it’s reliving it, but it’s also making me think a bit more deeply about it, which I, you know, I love doing. So, yeah, yeah,

Tracy Collins 25:44
no, absolutely. It’s, it’s fantastic. So do you want to just share with our listeners about where we can find your podcast? And obviously, you’ve got a website, and you, you do have a Facebook group, and you, actually, I’ve just joined yesterday, you’ve got a LinkedIn group for anybody who’s interested in there. But obviously, just just it kind of introduced that

Amanda Kendle 26:04
Yes. So you can find the thoughtful travel podcast in all the podcast apps, Spotify Apple podcasts and all of the little ones. And you’ll find out more about it at my website, which is not a ballerina.com and yeah, As Tracy mentioned, there’s Facebook group thoughtful travelers and a LinkedIn group thoughtful travelers. If you search for them, you’ll find my podcast logo there. So there’s lots of fun to be had in there and lots of thoughtfulness. And I’m Amanda Kendle on Instagram.

Tracy Collins 26:35
Yeah, you are, and I follow you on all of those and thoroughly enjoy it. So it’s always good to speak to you, Amanda. It really is. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing about your trip. And I’m hoping, if you’re listening to this podcast, thinking about how you can kind of use some of those things that Amanda thought through when she was planning a trip and during a trip and after a trip to kind of make the trip just that little bit more thoughtful.

Amanda Kendle 27:00
And can I add Yes, just, just to reiterate, perhaps a bit, but because a lot of people are like, No, I want to Travel my way. I want to plan everything. I want to do this or whatever. And you it’s totally fine, but I challenge people just to think about one way they might be able to make their trip a bit more thoughtful, even if it’s just to watch a TV series before they go. That’s it, there, or, you know something like to not plan a couple of days and spontaneously book when you’re there. You know caveats above included, but just try. You can do it as small as you want, just to see if that traveling style suits you more.

Tracy Collins 27:33
So Amanda always ends this podcast with exactly the same question as all our listeners know, and they’re all poised because they know exactly what I’m going to ask you. So what was your one tip that you would share with anyone planning a trip to the UK?

Amanda Kendle 27:49
Well, I feel like I have just given like 1000 ideas that are big ideas. So I have a very, very simple and selfish idea. Well, selfish for my stomach. So what I discovered in the UK was that supermarket sandwiches are delicious. And I don’t know if anyone’s already given that tip, and I’m so sorry if they have but especially at Tesco, I checked back on my photographs to tell you this Tracy very important miso chicken and pickled slaw sandwich the best. I had 330, I had one three days in a row because they were so good. And I wish I discovered them earlier in my trip. I would have eaten miso chicken and pickled slaw Tesco sandwiches every day. So yeah, like I in Australia, I would never go to the supermarket to get lunch, but ever. But I discovered that that was fantastic, and that keep us going, and we only had to have a one meal a day. So and I love going supermarkets, it’s a thoughtful thing to do, to explore supermarkets. So yeah, this is

Tracy Collins 28:44
one of my favorite things to do, and that’s a great tip, because going into supermarkets again, if you’re on a budget, it’s fantastic, because you can go and buy a meal, Deal, Sandwich, drink, pack the crisp, piece of fruit, piece of chocolate, something healthy, whatever you want to go with it, but you usually get the three items. I have a personal favorite, which is the Marks and Spencers kind of, it’s, it’s like a luxury prawn sandwich. And I ate so many last time that I just couldn’t eat anymore after a while. But I think I’m ready for a prawn sandwich and Marks and Spencer. So that’s what I could do when I get backing. So it’s good to know. I will try. I will try one of the Tell me again, which I know

Amanda Kendle 29:17
it’s very specific, miso chicken and pickled slaw sandwich. Pesco,

Tracy Collins 29:22
I will make a note. Amanda, please try and let me know. Oh,

Amanda Kendle 29:26
just thinking about those sandwiches again gives me such a craving. Honestly. I tell you, they were great. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to episode 326, of the thoughtful travel podcast. Thanks again to Tracy Collins of UK travel planning and global travel planning for having the giving me the opportunity to have such a lovely chat and reminisce about that very special trip in the UK. Don’t forget, you can join my Facebook or LinkedIn groups for thoughtful travelers. Just search for thoughtful travelers on either of those platforms and you’ll find me and. You can sign up for the thoughtful travelers newsletter at sub stack by going to thoughtful travel dot sub stack.com. The show notes for this episode, where I’m going to put up a few photos of parts of our UK trip that I mentioned will be at not a ballerina.com/ 326, as always. Thank you so much for listening.