Limefitt Park - Two Hours Away

Two hours Away

So you left home for your holiday two hours ago and what are you doing now.....?

Maybe you have braved the airport car park and are enjoying the relaxing atmosphere of the queue for the airport security scanners - getting ready to remove your shoes, belt and jacket prior to being frisked by a bored looking security guard..... or, if you are more fortunate, you might have thought about having a holiday in England this year.

If you did, where would you be? Sitting on the balcony listening to the bird song, drinking a cup of tea or a pint of local beer and wondering where all that extra time just came from and where the pressure disappeared to.

No long flight, no queues, no transfers at the other end, just a relaxing drive through some beautiful countryside and a tranquil and luxurious setting for your holiday.

Move your mouse over the pictures to see a better alternative!

But what about the shops? Have you really missed the chance to stare into them as you shuffle along wishing you were somewhere else? Do you think that maybe you have missed out on an important part of the holiday experience. Well don’t worry ! Maybe these people didn’t realise that there’s a Monsoon/ Accessorize in Kendall along with just about every other major retail chain that matters! To find it just go to the Elephant Yard shopping centre.

Now how many airport malls are named after an seventeenth century inn? The land on which Elephant Yard stands was once the property of cloth merchant Thomas Sandes who also owned Grandy Nook on Low Fellside, and built the Sandes Almshouses in Highgate. After his death in 1681 his house of Stricklandgate became the Elephant Inn. It was rebuilt circa 1820 with a dining room seating 100, and with stabling for 25 horses. In the 1800's around 60 people lived in the yard behind the inn, which closed in 1909.

Of course , if you’d still really spend the first and last days of your holiday travelling with a budget airline to an airport miles from the city whose name it has borrowed, then here’s a link to a site with details of all the major budget airlines. (Well the ones that haven't gone bust yet anyway!)

You can always visit Windermere Lodge to recover afterwards!

... and it’s not just me who thinks that a UK holiday beats the stress and strain of flying away hands down! Victoria Summerley writing in the Independent on August 15th 2007 says:

“What the tour operators, the airlines and the airport authorities don't seem to realise is that the experience of going on holiday abroad has become just like the experience of going to work - beset by transport problems, overcrowding, and that sensation that your head is going to explode by the time you reach your destination.

For them, the task of processing thousands of passengers is all in a day's work. But for many of those passengers, the chore of passing through an airport is all in a day's holiday. If you're really unlucky, it can involve up to 24 hours or more - precious free time that is being squandered in an environment that could not be more inimical to civilised life if it tried.”

There’s also an interesting article on the BBC news web site for 17th May 2008. Amongst other things it points out that:

"Leo Hickman, the Guardian's green guru, has just written a book, the Last Call, questioning if our love of travel can be sustained. Predicting that surging oil prices might put paid to budget flights anyway, he advocates a "Goldilocks approach" to tourism: a three-year cycle of - flight one year, Europe overland the next, and holidaying in Britain the next."

2 Hours Away

Two hours Away