London: Smart NHS Russell Square Hostel

The Smart NHS hostel is near the British Museum, with its fab new rotunda! Photo copyright Margaret Sharrow 2009

You're looking for somewhere cheap to stay in London. You want it to be central, and easy to get to. You want a bit of privacy, but you don't mind going down the corridor to the loo. You want clean, and well-organised. You want 24 hour access.

What you don't want is a 24 hour party.

Roll up to the Smart NHS Russell Square Hostel. For the older traveller, or qualified health professionals looking for work in London, it's a dream come true. Just around the corner from Russell Square, it means you can get the tube from Heathrow without changing lines, and take advantage of the lift at the tube station (there are a small number of stairs to negotiate with luggage).

You will be sleeping in bunks, but they are hospital-clean (you have to do your own hospital corners, but they provide the sheets), and best of all, have curtains, so you can sleep, read and change in privacy.

All the showers are together in the basement (gents' & ladies' separate), saving water and annoyance ('Who's STILL in the bathroom?!'), and although you have to keep pushing the button to keep the water flowing, it is HOT HOT HOT in a very nice way. And in the ladies', there is a locker room outside with free use of hair dryers. There's even a diffuser (for the hair inept, this is an add on gizmo that distributes warm air over a larger surface area, to what effect I know not, being one of the hair inept myself).

In the morning, there is free tea and coffee (instant), and the inevitable toast conveyor belt experience - place two slices on the ramp at one end, and wait for them to trundle slowly through, and pop out on the slide at the other end. The conveyor belt isn't actually inevitable - I've stayed at some hostels where they have normal home toasters, and after the French girl ahead of you has popped the maximum four (or two!) slices down, you have no choice but to stand and wait... not great when fifty plus people are trying to breakfast simultaneously. So at Smart NHS I was extremely grateful. And nobody else wanted the crusts, so it was pretty easy to tell which toast was mine.

Another great feature of this hostel is the sense of security. You need a £10 cash deposit for your key card, which you need to get past the 24 hour reception room, and into your own room (from 4 to 24 beds, depending on price). Furthermore, for around £1.50 per day, you can pay to have your card activate your own security drawer below your bunk, where you can safely store your goodies. For extra large items, or to have a look round the day you leave without trailing your wheelie luggage everywhere, you can leave them in the storage room for £1.50 per item per day. However, unlike other hostels that leave you to fetch your items yourself, giving you a key attached to something improbable like a cricket bat (a veritable passport to theft), the Smart NHS staff accompany you to the room, to make sure that you only take your own ticketed items. Brilliant! Why doesn't everyone do this?

Best of all, there are no unaccompanied under 16s allowed, and aside from the odd school group booked into their own room, there are very few under-18s here. The large number of job-seeking nurses, medical technicians, etc. means that you are far more likely to see people spending their evenings glued to the free wifi access on their laptops (you can pay 50p per 15 minutes to use their computers, too) than wanting to have a singsong in the common room. And there are always a number of mature backpackers lurking about, on the Ikea sofas in front of the two televisions.

In fact, the only drawback of the place is that you just might end up on the top bunk... of three! But the ceilings are high enough that I didn't bash my head when sitting up, and I kind of got used to it - thank heavens for the secure bars on the exit side, or I would have spent the nights in a state of vertigo.

N.b.: 10% deposit payable online at time of booking. To pay the balance on arrival, it's best to have cash, as they don't take UK debit cards, and credit cards have a 5% processing fee. You also need £10 refundable key deposit. Laundry: £4 wash, £2 dry (ouch!)

HSBC cash machine is down the street from Russell Square tube station, and 24 hour Tesco Express across the street from the station. To reach Smart NHS, turn left out of the station, left again at the corner by the newsagents, and left again on the next proper street, opposite the President Hotel. Smart NHS is on your left, not tremendously signposted but with signs asking you to be quiet and considerate, a good omen...

Smart NHS Russell Square Hostel

Address: 70-72 Guilford St, United Kingdom, London, WC1N 1DF

WebSite: http://smartbackpackers.com
Email: srsbookings@smartbackpackers.com
Phone # : +44(0) 20 7833 8818
Fax # : +44(0) 20 7221 9444

Information correct as of 8 September 2009.

Lincolnshire: It all comes out in The Wash

I suppose that pun is completely overused if you live in Lincolnshire. The Wash, for those who don’t know, is much more than an inlet. On the map, it is a square chunk taken out of the east of England, above the rumpy bulge of Norfolk and Suffolk. On the road atlas, it seems quite far from Boston on the west to King’s Lynn at the southeast corner, up to Hunstanton at the northeast corner. But on the ground, when you actually see it, the Wash is vast. You think you are seeing across it, and then realise that you are just seeing one small corner of it. It is big sky, over a big, big, big inland sea. Giant tankers loaded with stacks of cargo boxes disappear into it like gnats into the night sky / a football stadium.

Oddly enough, going to the Wash was the one thing I definitely wanted to do when I was in Lincolnshire. ‘You must go to the cathedral,’ said my friend from Lincolnshire, meaning of course the one in Lincoln, where I never set foot. No, for me, as usual, it was the tiny village, the road to nowhere, the non-event, the empty stretch of beach that drew me. Lincolnshire is not exactly busting with attractions, not ones that you might have heard of if you happen to live outside of Lincolnshire, anyway. And I avoided them all. The cathedral, the galleries, the industrial heritage museums, Scarborough, and a country park lake that all signs and brochures seemed to point to, promising walks, cycle paths, canoeing and a limitless variety of other water sports, teahouses, ice cream, parking, and of course, endless crowds. No, I was to be found in a hostel that has barely survived, in a village that didn’t stock any Ordnance Survey maps in the local shop but was staffed by an owner who wondered why I had the temerity, or indeed the need, to ask for one, in a region so flat as to be ideal for cycling but boasting no cycle rentals for a good twenty five miles. Having found an excellent cycle shop and purchased their cheapest folding cycle, I set off down dead end lanes passing between endless rows of electric yellow rape, the sweet scent drifting on the wind, and ended up hearing the cuckoo call from amidst a thicket of trees at the base of the raised dam flanking a canal, now the MacMillan Cancer Walk heading off to the horizon.

It was nice to be under such an open sky.

Northumberland: England's Wyoming

Let's be honest, I had wanted to go to Holy Island for about four years. So when I had the opportunity to stay with friends near Newcastle for a week, it seemed the perfect opportunity to add on a few days exploring northern Northumbria.

I stayed at Chatton Park Bunkhouse, on Chatton Park Farm near Wooler. Having forgotten to pack my sleeping bag meant £3 extra per night, so £18 per night in total (price on the website is not current). However, I had the place to myself, and it is brand new as of conversion in 2007, very clean, and Jane and Duncan are very friendly and caring. Generally the place is booked by groups, so do phone ahead especially if planning to visit at the weekend. I think it would be pretty difficult to visit here if you didn't have your own transport, either two or four wheeled. The setting is lovely, the cat and dogs friendly, and the kitchen has a lovely woodburning stove that would be extremely cosy in winter. (No microwave, though, so it's a good time to go back to making real porridge and real pasta instead of ping! meals. Got delicious Northumberland sausage from the butcher in Wooler...)

For those who prefer the YHA, the hostel at Wooler has an interesting history as a bunkhouse for land girls during World War II. It was chockablock for the dates I wanted, but then I am usually a very last minute planner (read: spontaneous!) and it seemed nice enough, bursting with tourist brochures. Speaking of which, the Cheviot Centre in Wooler contains not just an excellent tourist info centre but is a community centre with endless activities, groups and meetings, as well as being the best place for the visitor to Wooler to use the internet. For £1.50 you can use up to the minute computers for as long as they're open (10-4:30 seven days a week), versus the public library, open erratic hours (closed Tuesdays, and was it Thursdays?) and although very friendly, costing £1 per half hour for non-Northumberland residents, and 20p per sheet to print versus 10p per sheet at the Cheviot Centre.

Enough of the practicalities - what of the place? The landscape has a spacious feeling generally absent in small-scale Wales (except for inland Pembrokeshire), plus the wonderful northern Baltic light that has a more blue quality than the grey-green light of Wales. Don't get me wrong, I love Wales, but I was open to appreciating the differences. I began to think of Northumberland as England's Wyoming, a big sky country but also with a great coast (obviously there are no endless sandy beaches in landlocked Wyoming!)

What I was after was my usual range of apparently doing nothing, in the landscape, interspersed with mooching lazily around the hostel, and lurking in cafes. I found a good one in Wooler...

The surprise discovery was that Northumberland, like other places I enjoy (including areas of Scotland such as the drive through Kilmartin), is rich in prehistoric rock art, in particular the so-called ring and cup marked rocks. These are large boulders, usually exposed level with the earth, glacial probably but I am no geologist, that have been carved with indentations, usually around an inch or two in diameter, that collect the rain ('cups'), and/or Celtic-looking designs of concentric circles. They date (without me checking references) between 1500 to 3000 years ago, and as usual archaeologists can only speculate as to their purpose. It is always a big thrill for me to locate these, as they tend not to be very well signposted. In Kilmartin there is a fairly well, if understatedly, marked chain of these. In Northumberland, there can be no marking whatsoever... an Ordnance Survey map is essential. I found them at two locations... and then there was Holy Island, best left for another article.

Lincolnshire: cycling for softies

Lincolnshire road. Photo copyright Margaret Sharrow 2009

Sometimes you just need a change of scene. I live among the constantly altering hills and mountains of Wales, where every road bends and every turn reveals a new pattern of green hills, hedgerows, sea and sky, houses and farms in pale pastels and sombre stone. I grew up in a place that was relentlessly flat, endless suburban strip malls and tarmac, eight lanes of traffic slowed to a crawl by traffic lights on a four-minute cycle. So I treasure my mountains. But just sometimes, I need a change.

So that was why I decided to take my post-Easter break in Lincolnshire. I craved big sky country. Not the big sky country of Montana, where a hundred miles or more takes you to the next sleepy town, but a British version. The closest thing Wales has to big sky country is Pembrokeshire, but even here the terrain is challenging for a long-dormant and easily exhausted former cyclist whose bike rusted beyond repair and was then stolen. So I chose Lincolnshire deliberately, because it is flat, and I haven't been there, and I wanted to start cycling again. Also, I had previously enjoyed Norfolk, but Lincolnshire was that little bit closer...

As usual I was looking for the cheapest, most out of the way hostel, and I found it. YHA Thurlby is tucked away in a part of Lincolnshire so little visited that they haven't cottoned on to the idea of bicycle rental as a tourist service. Very pleasant back garden, immaculate kitchen, friendly and helpful wardens, and I met some great people there. Oh, and because it was after the Easter holiday rush, I had a room to myself.

The main purpose of my trip was to get a folding bicycle, and use it to cycle to nowhere in particular, preferably across the fens. Now I used to have an amazing folding mountain bicycle, a Dahon, but as my car is quite small it was a bit of a squeeze to get it into the boot (hatchback). I settled on the cheapest folding townie bike, unfortunately steel not aluminium frame so kind of heavy, but very well made, folds like a dream and fits easily in the car. (Yes, I will check the make and post it here!) Also the cycle shop tuned it up for me, while I waited amongst the titanium greyhounds that I could lift with one finger and cost more than three times the price of my car. They were ever so nice and it is really worth going to talk to professionals about what you want. For the handlebar bag I copped out and went to the cheap chain shop where they knew very little about bicycles but were willing to sell me a child's rucksack that fit perfectly over the handlebars, for only £8.50.

So I was off! Too cheap to buy the local Ordnance Survey map (well, I did try but the local shop in Thurlby didn't stock them, again highlighting its non-touristy credentials) I just followed my nose, down farm lanes, discovering woodland/wetland walks, passing canals and distant wind farms, and a surprising number of recycling plants. Eventually I realised that my second unspoken goal was to visit the Wash, the huge square bite taken out of southeast England, that represents a vast inland sea between Boston and Hunstanton.

The Wash is immense. It is hard to realise just how big until you are actually there. Looking across from the downriver-from-King's Lynn corner, I thought I was seeing Norfolk in the distance. I was, but not the north coast, as I imagined - only the bit as far as Heacham, and certainly not around the corner to the north coast where I stayed a few years ago. Big sky, big wetland, and an enormous grassy dyke to push the bike along, never seeming to get any closer to the point in the distance where the sea wall bent to the right. It was tempting to go on and on, but it would be dusk, so I turned round, and stared across the rivermouth at the opposite of a pair of twin lighthouses before starting the car for a late night drive back to Wales.