Finishing year 13 in 2017 part 2

Haha, bit like the postcards arriving after the sender gets home!

My mum went senior inter railing. She is hopeless with her phone and we got all her messages when she returned home.

That did make me stone circle!

I remember being in Jordan and arranging to meet a friend (who was in Sicily) in Egypt - all by snail mail. We met up, on the agreed day, at the Grand Hotel, Cairo.

It was all very Agatha Christie.

Indeed Horsemad! I can hardly move my back after a night on my Tempur mattress. I'd need to be stretchered off the train after a night on the floor in a sleeping bag!

Interailing is still very much a thing! DS2 has just spent a month criss crossing Europe with mates, along with it seems just about every other 18 year old from the UK. In my day we did it the proper way sleeping in stations and under bridges without planning ahead and using trains as our overnight accommodation. Now they all book hostels (softies!) and go on bar crawls. Still, many 'learning experiences' were achieved on ds's trip!

ROFL at 'Senior' Interrail

There's a senior interrail card!

www.myinterrail.co.uk/interrail-passes/

And yes Peace - the big timetable! We used to take turns carrying it in our rucksacks. Amazing to think you can now find all that information on your phone!

My sister said to me the other day that she'd been having a clear out and came across a collection of postcards I'd sent her whilst interailing. Imagine if our darlings went off travelling and we had no means of contacting them and we only knew where they'd been once a postcard turned up probably a week after they'd left!!

My mum had zero faith in me but was happy for me to go with my best friend as she thought she was very sensible (little did she know ...).

Loving the excuse to mentally revisit my interail experience, I am sure it is different now but really once a young person has decided how long they can afford to spend travelling how hard can it be?
Those of us who did this 30 + years ago had no credit or debit cards, mobile phones or internet. Our timetable was a massive book containg all the train services, it was our bible.

I think you now need to plan an interrailing trip as the more days you travel the more it costs. In our day you just had a month's pass.

I honestly didn't realise interrailing still existed - I want to do that!

DS is off to see his older sister next week who is 'interesting' (ie lives near London) which will draw him away from the PS4.

Peace - I was interailing in1979! Our only plan was to get the train to Greece (best part of 3 days) and then work out back via whatever route took our fancy. Lots of nights sleeping on trains - great fun. I didn't realise you could still get Interail cards.

From my ancient interailing experience, c.1986, the beauty os that you dont plan! We based our trip on zigzagging all over the place, taking overnight trains to save on the cost of youth hostels. Of course thing may be different now....

*interrailing!! Blimmin' autocorrect

I quite fancy interesting, how does it work - do you buy a 'rover' ticket or just purchase each stage as you decide where to go?

ono
My DD is off interrailing tomorrow at 5am, and has she finished planning her trip?
No, she's sleeping 😎

haha.

If he's off interaling he'd best get used to being organised, or stuff gets lost.

Quick poll. If you were off interrailing tomorrow at 6am for three weeks would you now be:

1. Packing OR
2. Registering with your chosen uni OR
3. Playing on the PS4

I'll let you decide which one DS is doing....

I've just been relieved of a £200 deposit for accommodation but DS got his first choice and is v happy. He's sharing a purpose built house with 11 others, good size study/bedroom, shared kitchen and living area. He has a 43 week contract too so we don't have to clear his room at Christmas and Easter. He can cook so won't starve but it'll be a learning curve juggling cooking, laundry etc alongside socialising and studying of course

Still waiting for accommodation from Southampton here. Their website just says they allocate from mid Aug - early Sept. early days yet I know, but surprised so many on here are already sorted with accommodation. We had a long long wait to hear from Exeter a couple of years ago for ds2. Application was in on time, and it was his firm but they went beyond their stated deadline and then it wasn't really what he wanted.

All adds to the stress!

Sidney 2 years ago my dd missed her firm & went to Leeds. At the time she was gutted to miss her firm by something like 0.5% but loved Leeds immediately. I don't think she has ever had any regrets & the bigger city probably suits her better.

How difficult/expensive wouid it be to go by train? If it was feasible could your ds take the basics that way & you go up a couple of weeks later with the rest of his stuff?

Accommodation already sorted here as DS's insurance was the 4 year version of his first choice so he knows which halls and which flat and even which room he's in. A Facebook group has been started for the flat specifically and the halls generally and he's slowly finding more people getting added to it. So at least he'll feel like he knows them before he moves in. Fingers crossed still for everyone else