Customer Reviews

Let's Go 2006 Britain (Let's Go: Britain)

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This encyclopedic guide to low-budget travel in the United Kingdom will have a broad appeal to students, backpackers, hitchhikers, and your average working-class Anglophile. It has guides to hostels and hotels so you have a roof over your head, restaurants and pubs so you never get hungry or run dry, sights you can see while you're in town, and even ideas for volunteering you can do and short-term jobs you can use to finance your peregrinations.

And perhaps most important, it recognizes that its target audience isn't exactly rolling in dough. There are pointers on where you can get a good meal for five pounds, and the book gauges the value of hostel rooms. The writers direct you to where you can find theatre tickets on the cheap, and they inform you of which airlines will get you from London to Edinburgh or Cardiff for ten quid. Though the editors discourage hitching, they offer pointers on how to find cheap, high-quality tours by bus, train, bicycle, and even shouldering your pack and walking.

Not so long ago, the instructions in this book would have been the exclusive territory of hairy bohemians and college students on holiday. But these days, when it's not all that notable to see backpackers on self-guided tours well into their fifties and sixties, this book will be handy for a broad and diverse constituency that wants to see the UK on a thin budget.

Most large cities have maps in this book. The maps are of the downtown and the visitor-oriented areas, of course--the whole of London gets a map hit, for instance, but if you're trying to find your way around the Bayswater neighborhood, you'll need to buy the Michelin map. But because the maps point out the best accomodations, sights, and pubs, they are just what you need when you're planning your itinerary. And if you need to buy a second map, what the heck, they're not that expensive.

This book covers the whole of the UK, including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and just to round out the interest of the world traveler, it dips down into the Irish Republic to touch on Dublin. And therein lies its greatest problem. Like most encyclopedic texts, this one has to touch on each subject very fleetingly. If you intend to see the whole UK, or even a section of if, this is your book. If you intend to focus on London, this publisher has a better book for you. And if you want to see Glasgow or Liverpool on a budget? Well, there must be books for you.

Still, from planning what you want to see on your trip to deciding how to get there and how to make your way around the country, this is a good book. It can help you both before and during your travel, and it recognizes the fact that you're making your way on a shoestring. Chances are, unless you're independently rich or on an expense account, this is the book you need, the best book you can come up with, and the one that will answer any question you might have.

I'm going to Britain this summer for a few weeks. I have read through this book and found it very informative. This book is perfect for college students and travelers in their 20's. It gives the traveler ideas of what to do in Britain when you have a limited supply of money. Overall it is a great buy for the young traveler.