50 Overseas Travel Tips - official forum discussion

If you are going on a hiking holiday, you get (up to, and usually 50% off accommodation) in any alpine association's mountain huts. Most associations are federated, giving reciprocal rights. I have an Italian membership, but have used my card in Spain and Austria, to get the same rights and prices as the locals. There may be other more modest membership discounts on food and chairlifts etc.

NB there are some private huts that do not offer any discounts, but you can often find a route to avoid staying in these - I never have stayed in any.

You can join the British branch of the Austrian Alpine Club http://aacuk.org.uk/

Or it's slightly cheaper to join the Club Alpino Italiano (Lugo) http://www.cailugo.it/Default.cfm?lingua=EN

The Italian option is more complicated, as you have to pay in euros. Although it might not be recommended, I've successfully sent (well-packaged) cash (euros) to them for the past several years. There was a link for cheap (99p) on-line transfers, but it now comes up as an untrusted site.

Membership usually pays for itself after four-five nights in mountain huts. Standards of accommodation vary as do prices (I've paid as little as six and as much as 13 euros). It's worth familiarising yourself with the rules. Huts are often like hostels (but much friendlier and cosier), and the higher up, generally the more spartan.

Wardens will generally try to allocate the maximum degree of privacy, so if they can offer you a room to yourselves, they will. Very occasionally they ask a small supplement ( in my case, once only, two euros). Many refuges have some two bedroom rooms. Travelling in September I've very often had a dormitory to myself.

To conclude, hikers abroad are often very social, and I have enjoyed "adoption" by groups of Spaniards, Italians, Germans and Austrians. This has involved being invited to eat with them, swapping of hints on routes and b & bs; and lifts in their hired coaches. English is widely spoken, but even a basic knowledge of the language will pay unexpected dividends. The best times I've experienced were in populated/crowded refuges rather than empty ones.

Hope someone out there finds this useful. Mark

I guess this is in some ways a money saving tip... while I agree that buying travel adapters at airports is a waste of money, quite frankly the ones for use in the US that I have got in the past are woefully inadequate and should be avoided at all costs.

By way of an explanation, these things come with two thin and flimsy metal pins, sometimes they're adjustable so they can be used in other countries, and they are so flimsy that when used with a regular UK wall plug they hang loose in the socket (leaving the metal pins exposed) or just fall out.

My advice... wait and buy one in the USA. They may not have a plethora of EU approvals stamped on them but they are generally quite solid and sturdy and feature the earth pin which is often missing from some of the cheap adapters you get over here (and that also helps hold the weighty over-engineered UK plug in place).

Sometimes safety outweighs savings.

Wildly enthusiastic about Navfree, I went off to install it, but Google Play says it cannot be downloaded in the UK

sarahemmm wrote: »

Wildly enthusiastic about Navfree, I went off to install it, but Google Play says it cannot be downloaded in the UK

Strange. I was able to download UK/Ireland, Switzerland and South Africa to my Android phone. They even added a UK postcode finder.