How to do London without spending too much money

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South Bank

Though Christine and I are not badly off financially, we’re still in a situation where we really want to save money where possible, and this includes holidays. Despite this, we went to London a few weeks ago for a long weekend, which is probably one of the most expensive cities in the world. But it doesn’t have to cost the earth and I’m going to go through some of the things we did, or could have done, to keep costs down.

1. Don’t stay in a hotel in Central London

As a general rule, the closer you are to central London, the more expensive your hotel will be. Go a little further afield and you will find some good value hotels, many of which are close to Tube stations. And you’ll probably find that the money saved by going for a cheaper hotel further out of London is more than the cost of travelling into central London on the Tube. The only disadvantage is the extra travelling time to get out there, so it’s harder to drop by your hotel room on an evening before going out, for example.

2. Consider a budget hotel

Whilst it’s nice to stay in hotel that offers everything, sometimes all you need is a bed for the night. I’ve stayed in a couple of good budget hotels – Holiday Inn Express at Royal Docks and Premier Inn at Collier’s Wood – both of which were very good value. if you don’t mind sharing a room, a hostel may be even cheaper.

3. Skip hotel meals

Budget hotels often unbundle meals from the price – this makes the headline price of the room cheaper, but means you may be paying as much as £8 per person, per day for breakfast. If you don’t need an all you can eat breakfast every day, skip it – you’ll be able to get something cheaper from a supermarket or a café. You can even save time by eating it on the Tube on your way in to London, if you’re staying in the suburbs.

4. Get an Oyster card

If you’re following my advice and staying outside central London, you’re likely to be using public transport a lot. An Oyster card will not only save you money, but will also mean you won’t need to have change for bus or Tube fares. Fares are as much as 50% cheaper with an Oyster card than without, and fares are capped at the price of a one-day travelcard, so if you do lots of journeys you won’t end up paying a fortune. Say you’re staying in a hotel near a Tube station in zone 3,and travel in and around central London a lot on one day during off-peak hours – you will not pay more than £7.30 that day, regardless of how may tube journeys you do in zones 1-3. Because it’s a top-up card, you just need to top it up at a machine each time the balance gets low (and they take cards). You can pick them up from major Tube stations for around £5, which includes £2 of credit, or order them online; unused credit doesn’t expire and you can register the card online to protect your balance in case the card is lost. It’s accepted on all Tube trains, plus all buses and mainline rail services within London zones 1-9.

5. Don’t go to restaurants on main streets

Restaurants in more prestigious locations will be more expensive. Go a little off the beaten track and you can find some nice places that don’t cost too much. TripAdvisor is your friend here, as are local guidebooks or recommendations. If necessary, stick with a chain restaurant that you know, like Pizza Hut or Nando’s – it’s your call whether you want something cheap and familiar or want to push the boat out a bit.

6. Look for special deals and vouchers

I often mention Money Saving Expert and there’s a good reason for it – the site is huge and is full of really good, impartial advice about saving money in all aspects of life, and this includes going out and holidays. You may find that some attractions will offer you two tickets for the price of one, simply by printing a voucher off their web site, or a restaurant will allow your kids to eat free, and Money Saving Expert gathers many of these in its Deals section. Also, have a look at sites like Groupon, Living Social and Keynoir for deals in London, which may include cheap accommodation, reduced price restaurant meals or cheaper entry into attractions, although be aware that they usually ask you to pay up front for a voucher so make sure you use it so you don’t waste money.

7. Visit free attractions

London is home to quite a few national collections like the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, which are both free, enough to fill a full day and great for people of all ages, including kids. But there are also plenty of other free attractions and once again Money Saving Expert has a list of some of them. Of course, if you don’t want to spend any money you can just walk around and see the sights, eschewing the sometimes expensive open top sightseeing buses.

8. Consider buying a London Pass

If you’re spending a few days in London, and want to visit a number of attractions that charge for entry, you may wish to consider buying a London Pass. The price varies depending on how long you want it for, starting at £44 per person for a one day pass to £95 per person for a 6 day pass, which at £15.83 per day isn’t too expensive. Again, you’re paying up front, so unless you’re sure you’ll visit enough attractions for it to be worth it, don’t get it.

9. Book in advance

This applies not just to your travel and accommodation – some attractions offer a discount if you book ahead. Usually it’s only a modest 10%, but everything helps. If you’re going to London by train, remember that the cheapest tickets tend to be released around 3 months in advance, so order them at least 2 months in advance to get the best deal. Avoid sites like thetrainline, who charge a booking fee, and go directly to one of the train operators – it doesn’t necessarily have to be the one you are travelling with. See my Buying rail tickets guide for more details. Similarly some budget hotels have room sales with some very cheap rooms available if you’re quick enough to blag them.

10. Use the bus, or walk

The Tube is popular with visitors to London as it’s easy to follow, with each line having its own name and colour, and Tube stations are plentiful and located in useful places. But it’s not the only way to get around. London also has plenty of buses, and with an Oyster card, a single bus fare is only £1.30; and, like with Tube fares, they’re capped at £4 per day – this compares favourably with the Tube where a single fare in zone 1 is £1.90 with Oyster, rising to £2.90 if you’re travelling from zones 1-3. Also, because buses are above ground, they’re sometimes quicker than the Tube as you don’t need to spend as long as 5 minutes walking from the street to the platform, and they stop at more places. Use TfL’s Journey Planner to work out if there’s a bus you can catch. Alternatively, it may be quicker to walk, and there’s a handy map showing where walking between Tube stations would be quicker than actually taking the Tube (although the map is from five years ago so is a little out of date – it doesn’t include the Overground).

If you want more information, as well as the aforementioned web sites have a look at Money Saving London and London for Free for some ideas for free or cheap things to do.

Back from the wilderness

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South Bank

I’m back from my weekend away in the Wilderness – we stayed in a bunk barn in Dentdale, and out of the 10 of us no-one had a mobile signal for most of the time we were there. Considering it’s very, very sparsely populated this is not particularly surprising but slightly annoying when you briefly get enough signal to receive a text message saying you have a voicemail message but not enough to be able to access your messages to find out who called you…

It would also explain why no-one has ever checked in at Dent station on Foursquare. Although only around 8,000 tickets were sold to it last year so it’s not exactly a hive of activity.

Despite the not so brilliant weather, I managed to take a few pictures which will be uploaded to Flickr later this week. We didn’t get back until late last night, so I couldn’t do them then, and tonight I’m off to see Avenue Q at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford (which I saw in the West End in London in 2007). I haven’t even seen this week’s Doctor Who yet…

You will also have noticed that I’m now posting my Delicious links here in a weekly digest, on a Saturday. I’m trying to get more of my stuff on other sites available here without overloading the blog with endless posts consisting of single images from Flickr or links. I’ll see what I can do other the next few weeks.

Goodbye Melody, Hello WordPress

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Leeds Station

It is with something of a heavy heart that I’ve decided to abandon Melody and move the blog to WordPress.

Long time readers will find this as a surprise – in the past, I’ve defended Movable Type when I’ve felt it under attack from WordPress ‘zealots’. Back then, WordPress was the new kid on the block, whilst Movable Type was much more established. Today, however, the situation has changed, and this is why I’ve made the change.

Movable Type

I left Movable Type earlier this year for a few reasons. Firstly, after trying Movable Type 5, I found it was aimed at large, professional blogs and not personal blogs like mine. The 4.3x line is still being maintained with security updates – MT 4.36 came out last week – but not with new features.

Melody

I hoped that Melody would provide a good continuation of MT 4.3x. Unfortunately I’m not that impressed – whilst it has improved some aspects of Movable Type, it hasn’t been the major step forward that I’d hoped it be. Furthermore, a number of plug-ins that I found really useful in MT didn’t work properly (or at all) in Melody, and as some of them were several years old and seemingly abandoned by their authors there was a slim chance of this happening.

It’s well known that the past few years has seen Movable Type stagnate. When I first started using it in 2002, there was a very active community developing plug-ins and themes for the platform. But this community has all but died out, and despite the best intentions of the Open Melody group it hasn’t re-ignited. The MT community is, basically, dead.

WordPress is where the community is. Whilst blogging in general is past its prime, WordPress still has a large number of themes and plug-ins which work with the latest version, plus active support forums. The documentation has even improved.

I’ve also changed. I don’t revel in spending all night adding new features and installing plug-ins. I want a blogging system that just works.

WordPress

What made me choose WordPress is taking over administration for the web site for one of the student groups that some friends are involved in. This previously used WordPress, and rather than try to shoe-horn it into Melody, I decided to stick with it. The system proved to much easier, more manageable and more slick than MT or Melody ever was. Upgrades, in particular, were very easy. So having used it for a while, a few hours ago I decided to migrate this blog too.

Getting the blog up and running in WordPress has been pretty easy. The import process from Melody was quite straightforward, and worked fine. I’ve then spent no more than a couple of hours trying some themes and getting the configuration in place. Despite being a completely different system, migrating from Melody to WordPress has taken about the same time as Movable Type to Melody.

The current theme is somewhat temporary – I haven’t yet decided on a final one. In the meantime I’d welcome any comments you may have.

Flat-warmed

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Lloyds TSB

At the weekend we had a flat-warming party, barely 3 months after the last one in the previous flat. Hopefully it’ll be the last one for a while.

Now that spring is here, Sowerby Bridge is lovely – there are plenty of trees and the view across the valley from our balcony is now very lush and green. There’s also a number of ducklings and goslings on the rivers that run through the town.

On Friday night we went to see Uncaged Monkeys in Manchester – it’s roughly equal parts stand-up comedy and science lecture, and was very good. Speakers included Professor Brian Cox (whose wife I met a few years ago), Dr Ben Goldacre, Dr Simon Singh and a few others. It was at the O2 Apollo theatre near the university campus, and was a sell-out – full of several hundred geeks who were happy to spend their Friday night being lectured about the silliness of homoeopathy, our tiny insignificance in the universe and why we’re fortunate that we’re not male anglerfish.

At the university the exams have started, which means that I’ll be invigilating a couple of them. Five years ago, I was the one sitting them, and whilst invigilation isn’t the most interesting of tasks, I’d rather be doing that then having to do the exams again.

This weekend sees us at a friends’ house in Leeds to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. It’s always good fun to watch as a group, especially when there’s some alcohol involved.

Why I’ve voted Yes

by
Shark Statue

Today I sent off my postal vote, with a ‘Yes’ vote for the referendum on the voting system which takes place on the 5th May. I’d like to take a little bit of your time to explain why I voted yes, and why I hope you will do too.

Before I go into my own personal reasons, have a look at the Why Vote Yes? pages on the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, and in particular the AV myths page.

I’ve had personal experience with the AV system whilst studying as a student, as we have used the system effectively for the student union elections for some years now. In particular, I’ve been involved with the counting of votes, and it really isn’t a difficult system. If you’ve watched the ‘No’ campaign’s referendum broadcast, they would have you think that it’s really complicated – trust me, it isn’t. It’s the No campaign telling you that you’re not intelligent enough to do simple maths, which is rather insulting. Jessica Hynes, the actress who appeared in that advert, should be ashamed of herself.

I also feel that the AV system is better than the First Past The Post (FPTP) system we have right now. At present, a candidate can be elected with less than half of the votes cast; in other words, a majority of the electorate did not support them but they were still elected. AV will mean that candidates will have to gain wider support in order to be elected.

It’ll also mean the end of tactical voting. Under FPTP, if you support a party that is likely to come third, you may wish to vote for a different party that you don’t really agree with (but has more support), to prevent a third party from being elected that you don’t want. This is because FPTP does not allow you to select second or third preferences; AV does, so you could put your favoured candidate first and then another candidate second if you wish, in case your first choice is eliminated.

It will hopefully spell the end for extremist parties like the BNP. Despite the ‘No’ campaign saying that AV will help the BNP (without really explaining how…), the BNP are actively campaigning for a ‘no’ vote themselves. Under FPTP, a candidate can win if a significant minority support them (which is true of the BNP), but under AV, a candidate needs to be able to appeal to a majority of voters. Most people find the BNP abhorrent, so under AV, their chances of being elected are further diminished.

View post on imgur.com

And my final reason is because of the negativity and outright lies of the No campaign. There is a very good takedown of their leaflet here, for example their claim that AV will cost £250 million – it won’t. Part of that is the cost of the referendum which is happening anyway and will be spent regardless of the result, some of it is for electronic voting machines, which aren’t planned to be used, and at least £3 million of that isn’t even substantiated. Pure scaremongering and lies.

I care about this country and want our political leaders to put this country and its people – all of them – first. First Past The Post is not allowing enough people sufficient say in who gets elected to run our country and our local authorities. It may have suited us fine when we only had 2 major political parties – we have 3 now and parties like the Green Party, with its first MP, and UKIP are also on the rise. Our voting system therefore needs to change, so that more people can get more say in how our country is run.

Please vote ‘Yes’ to AV on May 5th.

30 Day Song Challenge Day 30

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It’s the final day! Apart from one day earlier in the week, I’ve managed to post something every day for the past 30 days, and I’m feeling quite impressed with myself.

So, day 30 of the 30 Day Song Challenge is a song that makes you want to help the world, help the environment, end poverty, help society…. Frankly, I couldn’t think of one, and as it’s such a nice, warm, sunny spring day, I’ve chosen “Hard To Beat” by Hard-Fi which suits the mood, I think. It’s from their album Stars of CCTV, which available from iTunes and Amazon.

I’ll try to stay in the habit of posting stuff regularly on this blog, although I can’t guarantee a post every day like there has been for the past month. Still, I hope you enjoyed this small insight into my musical tastes!

A rant about BT

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Communication

Earlier this week I said that our flat move had gone well and in particular that our phone line would be activated on Thursday, i.e. yesterday. It hasn’t.

Christine got a voicemail message from BT (with whom we have our phone and broadband) asking her to ring them. After being on hold for quite a while, someone finally answered, but initially didn’t know why we ringing. Eventually, we were told that there was a problem with the phone line and that the activation would have to be put back. We could have a working phone by Friday (today), but with a different telephone number, and that the broadband wouldn’t be working until Thursday next week – a week later than we’d been told originally.

To make it worse, we’re not receiving a discount on the monthly bill for the time (nearly 2 weeks) when we’ve been unable to use our phone line or broadband, so we’re effectively paying for a service that we aren’t getting.

Initially I had praise for the way BT handled our move – our first call to them assured us that it would be a quick, simple process which would allow us to keep our number. A few days without phone and internet access would be inconvenient but understandable. But having no internet for the best part of two weeks seems excessive, especially as there’s no financial compensation. And really, does it take a whole week for someone to drive over to our local exchange and press a few buttons?

The problem isn’t necessarily with BT Retail, with whom we pay the contract with, but seemingly with BT Openreach, the subsidiary of BT which owns and operates the telephone lines and exchanges in the UK. To me, they seem to be a very expensive and inefficient outfit which only serves its own shareholders, i.e. the BT Group. Although it’s regulated by Ofcom, other parties have very little say in how it’s run.

In Britain, we don’t have that many alternatives to broadband via phone lines. Virgin Media’s cable network is good, but generally limited to large towns and cities – no good for my small town. Wireless broadband over 3G mobile networks is an option: prices are coming down to be comparable with fixed-line internet, there’s no need to install anything apart from plugging in a Mifi router and they can even be bought on pay-as-you-go contracts. But wireless suffers from latency issues, making it poor for use in online gaming, and again, it’s not always available. We’re also some years away from better and faster 4G networks.

Maybe it’s high time for the ownership of Openreach to change; its shares could be split amongst the other large ISPs in the UK (Sky, Talktalk, Orange, Virgin Media etc.) so that all have a say in how its run; it could be made a not-for-dividend company answerable to Ofcom like Network Rail for the railways; or completely re-nationalised. The last one is a long-shot, but any of those should improve accountability to its direct customers (the ISPs) and regular home users.

In the meantime, I’ve paid for an extra 2 GB of data to be added on to my mobile contract with 3 for this month. Thankfully it only costs £5, and 3 don’t charge extra for internet tethering or using your phone as a personal hotspot, so I’m only partially out of pocket. I’ll still be pointing this out to BT in a letter.

In an age when I can order a book at half 4 in the afternoon, and have it on my desk at work at half 9 the following morning, how does it take so long for phone lines to be connected? Is BT’s equipment really that old and archaic, or is their lack of accountability and need to shore up profit margins the driving force here?

I Like To Move It Move It

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Rochdale Canal

As you may recall, Christine and I moved to Sowerby Bridge just over 4 months ago, at the end of November last year, and we settled into a nice flat in a mill conversion. Unfortunately, during our tenancy, some issues arose with the flat, and so we’ve now moved again.

We’re now in another flat in the other wing of the same mill, with the same landlord. The flat is quite a bit bigger, especially in the bedrooms, and features a balcony – we’re on the third floor so there’s a nice view right across the valley from there. It also has gas central heating, rather than electric, so although the rent is higher the lower energy costs will more than compensate, which should mean it is cheaper on the whole. And it means we get to stay in Sowerby Bridge, which we’ve really come to like since moving here – the picture at the top of this post is just one reason why we like living here.

Moving wasn’t exactly straightforward, even though we had planned it to be. The two wings are separate; there’s no link between them, which meant moving all of our possessions down to the ground floor, across and then up to the third floor. And the removal company that we had hired really let us down – despite us paying over £300 for them to move our belongings and furniture, they turned up almost 2 hours late, and then told us they had another job to go to in the afternoon and could only do around 2 hours work for us. Consequently, only the heavy and bulky furniture got moved, which meant us and a few of our friends were left to move everything else; we didn’t finish until 7:30pm the following day. I’ll be writing a letter of complaint about it.

Anyhow, we’re in the new flat, and due to surrender the old keys today. Other aspects of the move have gone better; our phone and broadband is being moved over at no extra cost, although it won’t be activated until Thursday and we have to renew the contract for 12 months. In the meantime, I’m taking advantage of the fact that 3 allow mobile data tethering at no extra cost and using my iPhone as a modem, although with a 1 GB monthly limit I’m being careful not to abuse it. Similarly, our home contents insurer, Endsleigh, charged a £20 administration fee but other than that have been really helpful, as have British Gas and Yorkshire Water.
Moving at this time has also meant completing the Census twice – in full for our old flat, as we were there on the 27th, and again for the new flat to say that it was vacant, which thankfully is much quicker, although even then filling out the Census in full takes all of 10 minutes online.

We still have a lot of unpacking to do over the next couple of weeks, and while moving has been a faff, ultimately we’ve ended up with a nicer flat that better suits our needs.

Brain transplant

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IDE #0 ERROR

Christine’s laptop has been a bit poorly lately. Before Christmas, it wouldn’t boot up – the ‘Starting Windows’ graphic would show and then it’d stop at BSOD with ‘Unmountable Boot Volume’ as the error. I was able to fix it by starting the computer in Windows Recovery Mode, opening a Command Prompt and using CHKDSK to sort out errors on the hard drive. That did the trick.

But this happened again last week. I did the same thing, but this time CHKDSK found a whole host of bad sectors. While Windows would then boot up afterwards, it was rather slow, and a white flag appeared in the bottom left of the screen, telling me that Windows was having problems with the disk. Not good.

Rather than risk any further disk problems, and Christine losing all of her files, I bought a new hard disk to replace the old one. I took the old disk out (thankfully not too difficult a task with her laptop – an Acer), and put the new disk in, then put the old disk in a USB enclosure. Next, I downloaded CloneZilla and burnt it to a blank CD, then booted the computer up using the CD and had it clone the old drive onto the new drive. I had to run it in ‘–rescue’ mode, as when I tried it with the default settings it failed when it hit the bad sectors. Copying the data took around 6 hours, as this was a 640 GB hard drive.

Thankfully, it was a success, and the computer now boots up and runs fine. The new disk is a 5400rpm 640 GB Samsung drive, which is of the same specification as the old disk – a Western Digital Scorpio Blue (which apparently isn’t very good). I did look at a 7200rpm drive, but would have needed to wait longer for it to be delivered – this drive was available immediately.

Having suffered from a major disk failure back in October 2004 (when some irreplaceable data was lost forever), I’m keen not to replicate the experience in a hurry.

30 Day Song Challenge Day 1: Your Favourite Song

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Monty Picon

I’m going to give the 30 Day Song Challenge a go. You’re asked to post a different song each day – your favourite, least favourite, guilty pleasure, or that best describes you. I’ll try to embed YouTube videos where possible so that you can listen to them yourself, but as some of the official videos have embedding blocked I won’t always be able to do this. This will mean a lot of extra posts, but it’s only for a month if you don’t care for it…

Day 1 is your favourite song. This is rather difficult, as I don’t have an all-time favourite song. Instead, I’m going to choose a song that has been one of my favourites for over 15 years, and I still enjoy listening to today: “Set You Free” by N-Trance. Even though it’s been around a long time, it has aged well and as far as I’m aware it still gets played at nightclubs quite a bit (I wouldn’t know for sure because I haven’t been clubbing in ages…).