There's still so much to see

This list on Buzzfeed is a brilliant collection of beautiful places in England and Wales that make great day trips from London.
It makes me equal parts sad and excited though - sad that I didn't get to see even a quarter of the places while living there, but excited to be able to go back at some point and check them all out!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chelseypippin/25-wanderlust-worthy-day-trips-from-london?utm_term=4bljv2v#43rbvue

It got me to thinking about my time in London and the rest of England and how much of the country I really did see despite what lists like this make me think. I feel like it wasn't until I had been in Edinburgh for awhile that I really threw myself into researching sights and becoming addicted to day trips, driving my workmates mad talking about various train journeys and castles (see my post on Scottish Castles!).

In nine months of living in London I got to Cardiff in Wales for two nights; a day trip to Brighton and two trips to Oxford to catch up with Louis and Claire. Given how ridiculously easy, convenient and cheap short train journeys are from London (especially given my central location), looking back I really could have made more of an effort and ticked off some more beautiful places. However, London really is so massive that it's almost like its own country, so I saw a lot of the city instead - checking out all the museums, markets, neighbourhoods, events and attractions on my days off. I saw even more when out with my lovely friends too, and finding time to spend with them was really more important in a city where everyone is always busy.

In Hamley's toy store in central London

I knew on leaving London that I was going to do a few Help Exchanges as well, so knew that I would be seeing all sorts of random corners of the country with that. I guess that took the pressure off of doing trips out of London. I saw an incredible amount of England and Wales, even just through the train windows on the way to the next place (see my posts on my Help Exchanges). I know that there are hundreds of places still to check out whenever I get back to the UK (which I will!), but I'm definitely happy with how much I really did squeeze in.

Rhossili Bay, Wales

After going back through my blog, right from the start, I'm also reminded of how completely crap I was/am at posting about all my English exploits in this blog, so purely in the interests of keeping my memories for the future I will try to remedy this!