My Adventures Across the UK

Helloooo all my lovely readers!

Travelling with a friend is honestly one of the most fun experiences you can ever have. It doesn’t have to be an expensive or lavish holiday – you could just visit some nearby cities near you if that’s what’s in your budget but the fun of having a holiday with a friend is something you just can’t replicate. I know I’ve been talking a lot about this holiday I had with my friend but honestly, it was a really great experience. After over a year of not being able to travel, and nine months of not seeing my university friends, can you blame me though??

Right, so before I can truly stop annoying you all with my summer tales, I thought I’d share a little summary of our holiday (and because I only really talked about the London parts loads I don’t feel that annoying for my oversharing hehe). Maybe you can find some inspiration for a holiday with your best friend from our escapades?

London

Our trip started in London and let me tell you it was the busiest three days I’ve had in a long time. We tried to give our trip a bit of a theme to make it interesting, so where we could we tried to put a Harry Potter twist on our summer holiday. I think we must have walked over 12km every day just exploring London, checking out Harry Potter film locations and wandering about. I’m not going to go through everything we did in London, as most of it I covered in my post The Ultimate Harry Potter Holiday – must-see sites and activities in London. You can also check out my post and some photos of our fun time visiting the Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio tour here. But just in case you thought we spent the whole time doing Harry Potter things, we also visited Southbank market a few times, had some amazing Italian food, and circumnavigated Hyde Park. We also watched a lot of Harry Potter movies in the evening because after a day of walking, your poor feet do need a night off.

Oxford

Part of the reason we wanted to go to Oxford is because it has loads of Harry Potter sites, but also because we were meant to work in Oxford over the summer so sadly due to COVID we couldn’t …

Anywhooo (I’m totally not bitter or sad about it), Oxford was only a step down in terms of busyness form London. We did a Harry Potter (and other things such as Lewis Carroll and Tolkien) walking tour around the city and learnt a ton of fun facts about the series. We did an Alice in Wonderland themed escape room and broke the current record, escaping in a whopping 42min 17 seconds! We went ice skating… or more accurately Emma was ice skating and I was trying not to fall over and kill myself. I am very literally Bambi on Ice.

We played junkyard mini golf, did a little bit of shopping and ate some absolutely phenomenal food! We went to another mixologist cocktail bar to test out and let me tell you I never knew you could have such crazy drinks that look like science experiments but still taste great. And we finished watching all the Harry Potter movies so that’s an accomplishment! All in all, I would definitely count Oxford as a fun and successful stop.

You can also read more about fun things to do in Oxford by checking out a previous blog post I wrote during my gap year here!

Dorset

I’ve never been to Dorset, but that’s where my friend lives and because I am always excited to see places I’ve never been, I thought it would be a great chance to have a more chilled segment of our holiday, and meet her family. There was this stunning Georgian estate we visited, but spent the rest of the time relaxing. I finally got to show her some of the Disney classic films, because she’s never watched most of them (I know!! How shocking?!), we strolled the really pretty rolling hills and if I’m going to be honest, one of my favourite parts was watching all the cows walk up the road to and from their barn to the big fields. I know that’s super touristy of me but it really made me feel like I was living in an Enid Blyton novel and I can’t tell you how much joy that gave my 8-year-old self.

Bath

Our final destination was Bath, Emma’s favourite place. I’ve only ever been to Bath once before to visit a family friend so I really loved getting to see the city itself more. We did another walking tour (can you tell we like walking tours??), visited the Fashion Museum, and played some more mini golf. I am the reigning champ so far mwahahah!

We discovered a digital historical scavenger hunt we could complete by checking historical sites around the city and let me tell you, it was probably the coolest thing we did. Not only was it a chance to see the gorgeous history of Bath, but we also had to solve puzzles and clues to figure out where to walk next and some of them were really challenging so that was great fun. I also had my very first ‘afternoon tea’ and it was a delight! What could be better than an afternoon sipping tea and eating little pies, finger sandwiches, scones and cake??

Anywho, that brings me to the end of my adventure! It was such a great holiday to have after being trapped for my hotel quarantine for so long, and it was perfect catching up with my friend and exploring a bit of England before I went back to campus for work. I hope you enjoyed reading about my little holiday – have you ever done a holiday like this with a friend? Or been to any of these locations! Please share your experiences if you’re happy to and I would love to chat with you about it!

Lots of Love

Blondey on a Mission xxx