Travel Maven Blog ...... David Molyneaux posts from TheTravelMavens.com

UK Sleeping at less than $100 a night

Thousands of lodgings in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales cost less than $100 a night, including breakfast. That's what they say at Visit Britain, the useful and efficient tourism office for the United Kingdom.

Anyone who has tried to book a room in London may find that hard to believe, as everything in the UK seems to cost twice as much as in the United States. That image is not improved by the cost of one English pound at about $2, lowest value for the U.S. dollar in 15 years.

The secret to saving money is to get out of London. It helps to travel outside the summer season.

In October, before and after a convention of the Society of American Travel Writers in Manchester, England, where the top hotels charge several hundred dollars a night for a room, I tested the $100-a-night promise on my own.

True enough, for three nights' lodgings I found nice accommodations at $100 or less each night, including a full English breakfast of eggs and bacon, sausage and tomato (that's tuh-mah-toe), mushrooms and toast, juice and coffee. Huge breakfasts saved me lunch money, as my appetite didn't return until late afternoon, just in time for tea and something sweet.

Thanks to the Internet, my quest for reasonable lodgings was successful in Manchester, which is a cosmopolitan, bustling city designed for walking, shopping and dining at sophisticated restaurants such as the two winners I tried, Simply Heathcotes and Room. Other local restaurants.

After luxurious days at the posh Radisson Edwardian, I moved to the Britannia Sachas, a tourist hotel only a few blocks away and still in the center of Manchester. Before leaving the United States, I found and reserved the hotel at Booking.com. The Website, a smooth operation, sent me an e-mail confirming my reservation and another after my stay to see whether everything went well. It did.

Britannia Sachas Hotel, at 98 English pounds for two nights, was clean and well managed. My room, 624, was bright and airy, with windows toward the morning sun, which Manchester, not known for its sunshine, provided for me both days. The hotel was an easy walk to restaurants and to the train, which I used for the 38-minute journey to Liverpool, a city preparing for a 2008 tourism onslaught as Europe's Capital of Culture for the year.

My other lodgings find was unplanned and unreserved. Earlier in the trip, I was driving south toward Manchester. Tired and thirsty about 6 p.m., I exited off the M6 Motorway toward the Lake District. I pulled off the 4-lane exit highway at the first town I liked the sound of -- Grange-over-Sands -- and stopped at the first inn offering accommodations.

  The Lindale Inn in tiny Lindale, Cumbria, next to Grange-over-Sands, was a perfect one-night stop, with a clean room and bath for 38 pounds, about $76 for bed and breakfast. Downstairs was an inviting local pub for cold beer on tap and dinner of lamb chops. Total dinner bill, including beer: 14 pounds. Telephone 44-15395-32416.

I would recommend both of these lodgings, especially at less than $100 a night.

David Molyneaux is editor of TravelMavens.net

Driving on the left at $8 a gallon for gas

In Edinburgh, Scotland, I bought my first $80 tank of gasoline. Or almost a tank. I only pumped  about 10 gallons, but when the meter on the pump ticked 40 English pounds (about $80), my fingers instinctively let loose of the trigger. At about 1 pound (or $2) per liter, I paid almost $8 a gallon for gas to power my little English rental car whose name I could never figure out.

The car got more than 40 miles per gallon, which I earned by driving slowly and favoring 5th gear.  When gas is measured in quantities the size of a whiskey bottle, every jigger counts.

The train from Edinburgh to Liverpool, England, would have been cheaper and quicker than renting a car, even for the day. But I had always wanted to see Hadrian's Wall and the Roman fortifications that stretch east-west 73 miles across northern England. The impressive stone wall, built nearly 1,900 years ago along a ridge to protect Rome's Britannia from invading armies in the north, was well worth the journey.  Motorists will find travel markers and display museums that explain Roman life. At many points, you can get out of your car for a short trek up to and along the wall. I spent more than an hour on a nice afternoon wall walk near the rural town of Bidoswald in Cumbria. With the new Hadrian's Wall National Trail, you can walk end-to-end for the first time in 1,600 years. Check out the short video and plan your visit.

The drive south from Edinburgh also took me through Scotland's Borders area, where I could imagine the great military battles of Scotland's past. The land is wild and open with grazing sheep and twisting country roads that seem too thin for two cars to pass at 50 or 60 miles an hour.

Driving in the United Kingdom is always an adventure unless you are alone on the road.   The British system of placing the steering wheel on the right side of the car instead of the left, so you can pilot your vehicle on the left side of the road instead of the right, takes some practice and occasional rubbing of tires against curbs on the left. Driving on the left is not all that difficult, but it is complicated by maddening signage at frequent circles called roundabouts that rob you of any sense of direction. Moreover, the American instinct in an emergency is to veer right. In the UK, right would take you into oncoming traffic. The key move is left, always left. Left around circles (clockwise). Left lane when turning right. But look right first, because at an intersection, cars arriving from the right will be in the closest lane, and if they are in the roundabout, they have the right (left) away.

Be prepared also for two-handed driving. Your right hand is busy with the wheel, while your left hand is needed on the gear shift, as most rental cars are standard shift, and you would pay a heavy premium for automatic transmission. Two handed driving means no time for taking a sip of water or coffee. That's the reason English cars have no cup holders; you don't have a free hand to grab a cup.

I rented my car on the Internet from 1car1, because a convention I attended in Manchester, England, offered a special rate of 99 English pounds per week. When compared with other rental car companies, 1car1 was competitive or lower, even on non-convention rates. But be aware: 1car1 rental sites tend to be off-the-beaten track in cities, and 1car1 offers no refund if you bring the car back early. I rented a car for 11 days, taking it back three days early, but had to pay for all 11 days. Also, parking charges in cities are exorbitant, as much as $30 a day, so you don't want to drive into a city and let the car sit.

David Molyneaux is editor of TravelMavens.net

Sitting, fuming on the runway

The route from the United States to St. Andrews, Scotland's ancient home of the game of golf, is a long but  simple path east across the Atlantic and a dogleg north at London. A few planes, a train, and you're lined up for a vigorous round on one of the dozens of courses that draw thousands of golfers each year to Scotland.

Sounds easy. But not in 2007, the year that airplanes leave airport gates but never take off, that flights are canceled because of problems with "air traffic control" and passengers' itineraries often are more wish lists than probabilities. So far this year, one in four U.S. flights has not arrived at its destination on time.

As President Bush acknowledged last week, air travel in the United States is not working. He could have called me. On my flights last week toward St. Andrews, twice I boarded airplanes in Cleveland, Ohio, only to return to the terminal after the pilot announced that we couldn't take off. He said he did not have clearance to land at JFK Airport in New York.

At least, American Airlines didn't leave us on the tarmac, where 159 flights spent at least three hours waiting to take off from U.S. airports in August. Instead, I lolled away seven hours in the airport terminal, almost enough time to drive to New York, while my scheduled flight left JFK and headed across the Atlantic without me. Eventually, Delta Airlines found a window of opportunity, and I landed at JFK just 40 minutes before the last flight of the night to London.

Just when you believe that things are not possible but that you may as well give them a try, doors may open.

When I located my luggage from the Delta flight at Terminal 2, the time was 9:55 p.m. British Airways leaves from Terminal 7 at 10:30 p.m., and I would need to board an airport train to switch terminals.

Outside Terminal 2 I found train signs and followed them across a road, along a concrete path, into a building, up an elevator and onto a train that made two stops before we got to a nearly empty Terminal 7 at 10:10.

There were no passengers in sight. Behind the counter was one agent. He clicked some computer keys, saw the re-booking for me that my wife had accomplished with helpful British Airways agents by phone from Cleveland, and said into his phone, "I've got one more. Open it back up and let him on." The agent told me not to hurry, because this plane was going to leave at least 20 minutes late.

And of course, once we boarded we waited nearly an hour before we could take off for London. "There are at least 25 planes ahead of us," said the pilot.

With too many airplanes headed for the same places, airport tarmacs are full of tales of woe from missed flights, altered vacations and lost luggage. In St. Andrews, Scotland, at the impressive Fairmont golf resort, I met Carolyn Slatter, who still is awaiting July's luggage from its trip across the Atlantic. She expresses little hope she will ever see her clothes again.

In my case, I arrived in St. Andrews with my luggage, only three hours later than  planned. In 2007, that is a travel success story.

David Molyneaux is editor of TravelMavens.net