About ReidsEngland.com
This guide to London and the best of England is designed, written, and maintained by the award-winning guidebook author and travel writer Reid Bramblett
ReidsEngland.com is a trip-planning site with everything you need to know to plan the perfect vacation to London and the best of England, brought to you by award-winning guidebook author and travel writer Reid Bramblett.
It is filled with with recommendations on sights, activities, hotels, restaurants, how to get there and get around, and all the little nuances of travel that can help make your next trip to the U.K. the vacation of a lifetime.
What makes ReidsEngland.com different?
There are a lot of travel information sites out there, and many guidebook publishers have heaved their entire catalog of travel guides onto the virtual shelf, but ReidsEngland.com is different.
There is an entire page devoted to the ReidsEngland.com difference. But in brief: For one thing, unlike at the big corporate sites, the publisher here also happens to be the same guy who wrote every word on this site: Reid Bramblett.
Yep, ReidsEngland.com is a one-man show: Entirely written, designed, illustrated, coded, and maintained by veteran guidebook author, travel editor, and adventure columnist Reid Bramblett.
(My office assistant, Chuck Prince-Lynn, would like to take this occasion to point out "Hey...!" His help is invaluable, not the least in doing the thankless work of keeping the information on this site as up to date as possible.)
What's more, the all the information here is based on the kind of personal experience you can get only from having lived in Europe as a child, and the expert advice from someone who has written guidebooks and magazine articles about the region for more than 20 years.
Add to that ReidsBritain.com's patented detailed itineraries, tons of trip-planning tips, and advice, on everything from alternative lodging options to sightseeing, that goes beyond the obvious—and beyond vacations.
What do I mean by Travel Beyond Vacations™?
You could spend your vacation in the deepest rut of the tried-and-true tourist path and have a fabulous time doing so, returning home with great snapshots of all the glorious sights. Or you could get out of those ruts and out of your comfort zone, get insights into the local culture, try something new, and end up having the trip of a lifetime.
Yes, this site will cover all the famous sights, top hotels, and renowned pubs in London, Oxford, Bath, and beyond. However, it will also combine tips, tools, advice, and resources to explore alternatives to the traditional in every aspect of travel, from lodging and transportation to sightseeing and experiences.
ReidsEngland.com aims to bring true adventure—whether cultural or physical, cerebral or culinary—back to the art of travel so that we can each return home from vacation with a richer, deeper understanding of wherever our travels take us.
What you'll find on ReidsEngland.com
ReidsEngland.com is focused on planning that trip to the U.K., with emphases on money-saving tips and alternatives to traditional travel techniques, such as no-frills airlines, sightseeing for free, and lodging options beyond hotels (farm stays, bed and breakfasts, cottage rentals, castles, university housing, campgrounds, apartments, and more).
I also cover all the other traditional aspects of British travel, outlining everything you need to know about trains and railpasses, rental cars and cruises, passports and packing, tours and travelers checks, itineraries and ATMs, safety and tourist offices, mobile phones and health concerns.
And, yes, we'll cover good old-fashioned hotels, airfares, and sightseeing.
What's more, there are guides to all the major destinations—London, Bath, Oxford, etc. More will be added as the site develops.
For each city or town, these guides cover the top sights, hotels, activities, restaurants, and practical information on getting information and getting around—everything you need to know to have a fabulous time there.
ReidsEngland.com is still in beta
Note that this website is a work in progress and is still in larval form.
We are experimenting with an entirely new structure and background code for our travel sites, so there may be some kinks yet to work out. If you run across an error, or it crashes, please be so kind as to report it to feedback@reidsengland.com so we can fix it. Thanks.
And then there are the bits that aren't yet finished. Yes, we're trying to get to it all, but it takes time, and we are just one person. (Plus Chuck.)
(Speaking of which, for the record, "TK" is the shorthand we journalists insert in unfinished spaces to indicate that there is text yet "to come"...and yes, we realize the irony that writers, who really should know how to spell, have chosen to abbreviate "to come" as "TK." The reason for this is the same as the reason we spell a top-level heading "hed," a secondary one "dek," a lead sentence "lede" and a paragraph "graf." It is because these misspellings are easy to spot in a layout, which means they can be zeroed in on and fixed/changed—also, in this age of computers and search-and-replace, the letters "TK" rarely occur right next to each other like that in an English word, making them easy to single out.)
However, since there's still perfectly good info in here, I decided to make each page live as it gets finished (or at least partially finished). This way, you all get to share in the building of this site, and are welcome to make recommendations and suggestions of your own along the way by emailing to feedback@reidsengland.com.
This site also cleverly crafted to look homemade through the widespread use of typos. (I prefer to view this as a shrewd marketing move rather than accept the truth that I just might be the World's Worst Typist, which is doubly embarrassing, considering that I'm a writer—and to make it truly pathetic, my handwriting is even worse. I do actually know how to spell; it's just that my fingers don't always hit the keys in the right order. For example: number of typos in that last sentence before I went back and fixed them? Six. Sorry.)