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Virgin Weekend First

19/3/2017

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Whenever I'm in England I invariably travel from London to Wigan on Virgin Trains. I always try to make one of the travel days a weekend, solely because of the £20 upgrade ticket that's available: The Train Fare Formerly Known As Weekend First.

(Disclaimer: I know that £20 is a lot of money to a lot of people. I also know that some people probably feel they've already paid enough money for their Standard ticket, and I'm not saying that those people are dummies for not doing it.)

I remember the first time I heard about it, in the late 1990s, when it was just £15. I was living in The North and my friend Dom was a trainee solicitor in London and he'd come home and regale us all with tales of the exoticism of traveling first class. Weekend Foist, we called it, for little or no apparent reason. I don't think it's even called Weekend First now, so the name is even more tenuous. 

When I moved to London, I'd use it on a Sunday any time I'd come home and I use it today whenever I'm back. I'm sitting in Foist Class now, in an empty, quiet carriage at 2pm on a Sunday, going from London to Wigan. My point is, I can't believe everyone I didn't except in the disclaimer who has £20 to spend and more than an hour on the train isn't doing it.

You arrive at the station. You find an unreserved seat in First Class (which is most of them). You plonk yourself down, pay £20 when the ticket machine person (CONDUCTOR, Paul, use your words) comes round and Bob's your mum's cool brother delivering you a host of free gifts.

To whit: Free wifi of mainly acceptable speed (£5 in Standard Class, it drops out occasionally but it does where I live in New Orleans, so nbd). Free tea, coffee and water (as much as you can drink, though I have never tested the upper limits, should they exist). Free food/meal pack: see the above picture: a nice tomato and egg sandwich, pretzels, a biscuit and a chocolate (two sandwich options, I BET you could ask for one of each). Free calm, civilised, roomy, comfortable carriage with actual places for luggage even if you turn up late, power points at every seat and a range of cultural lectures given on the hour. OK, not that last bit but it's (IMHO) more than a £20 world away from Standard. I mean, I have crowding issues, but still.

Anyway. Bully for me, I know. But it's a rare Shandy Pockets recommendation: Book early, get a cheap seat, make one of your travel days a weekend, and it more than pays for itself.

More info: www.virgintrains.co.uk
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Essential Travel Hacks

15/11/2016

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Essential Travel Hacks
Shandypockets is excited to announce a new publication. Essential Travel Hacks is a round up of over 200 ways to stack the odds in your favour when you travel. The book will help you put yourself ahead of the crowds, from when to book to how to make your hotel room more luxurious to negotiating airports with maximum comfort and efficiency. Buy it and be in the know whether you're at the beach, on the ski slopes or out in a tent in the wilderness. These essential, easy-to-follow hacks will help you no matter what your travel plans are.

Available online in paperback and for Kindle right now! 

In the USA: 
Kindle version
Paperback version

In the UK
Kindle version
Paperback version
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Parks not wrecked

10/5/2016

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Yosemite National Park (Photo via CC. Credit: Heiko von Raußendorff)
The world groaned a collective sigh of disapproval when it was announced last year that our beloved National Geographic was going to be subsumed by the Fox-tainted grubbiness of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Hearing such calumny was like being told that Sir David Attenborough was retraining as a mime artist – first of all it feels a bit weird and then it’s just super depressing.

It’s all TV nowadays, with even the head of programming at Nat Geo saying there’s “just no need” for those endlessly reassuring yellow-rimmed magazines that we all grew up with.

So. That sucks.

However, there are some glimmers of NG hope, and some of their publications are still as welcome as a sane guest on the Sean Hannity show.

The National Geographic Guide to the National Parks of the United States is one such delight. Now on its 8th edition, this million-copy-selling guide book hits the shelves just in time for the centenary year of the National Parks Service. Yes, that’s 100 years of helping us, the curious-but-not-always-sure-where-we’re-going public, see the natural glory of these jewels in America’s crown. Yes, I realise it’s a Republic. Whatever Republics wear on their heads, then.

Divided into eight geographic regions, the guide brings the colours, sites, wildlife and adventure of the parks to life. There’s spectacular photography, real in-depth detail about how you can go and explore them and a wealth of information for lovers of flora, fauna, and everything in between. Fluna? Whatever.

A team of park experts have brought their knowledge to bear, so that over breakfast, you can hike the Rocky Mountains, kayak across crater lakes and look out over volcanoes. Which isn’t a bad way to start the day, though it may make the laundry and grocery shopping feel extra mundane.

There’s just something so refreshing and optimistic about the National Parks, like even a Trump presidency couldn’t tarnish their outstanding beauty, let alone Murdoch’s craven mitts.

Bask in the glory of these pages, and plan your escape. Oh, and if you’re travelling with children, a handy National Geographic Kids Guide has come out at the same time to complement the grown-up book, and it’s an equally handsome publication.

An singular treat for both armchair and actual adventurers.

The National Geographic Guide to National Parks of the United States is published by National Geographic and priced at $28.00. National Geographic Kids National Parks Guide U.S.A. is also published by National Geographic and is priced $14.99.
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The recline of western civilisation

27/8/2014

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Forget the sweary ice bucket challenge toddler and mind-traumatising ISIS war terrors, the news story that matters today is the one of the United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver, which was diverted after two passengers got into a real, physical altercation on a loaded plane.

In case you’ve been asleep or working as a living statue for 22 hours straight, what happened was that one passenger (a man) was using his laptop computer for an unspecified activity, and had employed a crafty device called The Knee Defender. This accessory attaches to the tray table and stops the seat in front reclining. Passenger two (a woman), tried to recline, spotted his subterfuge and got a flight attendant to ask him to remove it.

The man refused, the woman threw a glass of water over him, and they were both taken to Chicago, where they were ejected from the flight and left there to think about what they’d done. Reports that the incident sparked an unlikely but passionate romance are yet to surface, but wouldn’t that be cool?

The Right to Recline debate has spectacularly sidetracked the internet. Should anyone on a plane be allowed to recline their seat and just sprawl out like we’re in our third hour at a Chinese opium den? Or should we all sit as God intended, straight-backed and with heads held high, so as to be closer to heaven? 

Shandy Pockets are at last plunging into the debate, having weighed up the arguments for literally an amount of time. And we come down heavily (just like the back of our seats onto an unsuspecting pensioner) on the RIGHT TO RECLINE.

Listen, sonny Jim, we’ve (usually) paid for that seat, so damn skippy we’re going to use it to its full potential, and manipulate the full range of kinetic variables at our whim, come hell or holy water. And there ain’t no computer nerd going to get in our way with their gadget sneakery. So we get into a fist fight and are ejected from the plane? Well, jokes on you, knee boy, because I DON’T HAVE A PROPER JOB AND I CAN GET THROWN OFF AS MANY PLANES AS YOU CARE TO BE STUBBORN ON.

And the moral objections to reclining your seat? There’s a tall guy behind you: listen bud, all the women on the dating sites I frequent all want men over 6’3”, so you win some, you lose some, and it’s time for your chin to reacquaint itself with your knees. Small child or, say, a Peruvian dwarf behind you? Reclining your seat puts otherwise unreachable items – the tray table, the touch screen entertainment centre – right into their sweaty grasps and they should be thankful. Let’s cut the bullroar and just cut to the quick: it doesn’t matter who’s behind you, because the beauty is that THEY CAN ALSO JUST RECLINE THEIR SEAT and we can all fly together in a semi-recumbent orgy of slouch, no water, laptops or unlikely romances necessary.

Just back that thing back up when we’re all eating. It gets messy and consuming food while not bolt upright is a bit, you know, continental for our taste.


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Ours is not to question wi-fi

3/6/2014

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The internet is a-buzz with talk about the internet, and some of it about how expensive it is to SEE the internet in certain hotel chains. Among the lead accusers is the champion of hotel consumers, Hotel Chatter, who publish an annual list of which hotel chains charge the most for wi-fi and why (fhy).
    This fiscal outrage is all well and good, and the more hotels that let us download illegal copies of current cinema releases, the better for everyone, n'est-ce pas? Only a layman and a communist would argue FOR hotel internet charges.
So, please step forward one Daniel Edward Craig, a hotelier of unknown repute, who puts forward a case for the daylight robbery of his long-suffering clientele. Get ready to froth at the mouth like an in-room cappucino as he, er, sets out a pretty sensible defence of the whole thing, actually. Some of the arguments are a bit, "Well, we're not as bad as airlines!" but on the whole you can kind of see his point. See what I mean HERE. Marriott can probably still go suck it, though.

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Your flying hotel room, sir/madam

5/5/2014

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The trouble with the elite level of first class cabins is that they're just a bit POKEY, right? I mean, all you get is some sumptuously luxurious pod away from the grinding of teeth in Economy and that's all well and good, but it's hardly SPACIOUS, is it?
Well, if you're a space-loving, globe-hopping Emir who lives in Abu Dhabi but likes to do his weekly shop at Harrods, then don't worry, Etihad Airways has your back. Their new A380 has this cabin called The Residence, and it's essentially a swanky apartment on a plane.
Forget sharing a cabin, even if it is with other wealthy Emirs shopping at Harrods. Who wants to have to sit with THEM? For a mere (a mere/emir, geddit?) $20,000 for an eight hour flight (for now, it's just the Abu Dhabi-London route), you can have a living room, bedroom, and a private bathroom with a shower, measuring a total of 125 square feet. The Residences also have a private butler, specially trained by Savoy Hotels. IN THE SKY.
You can't upgrade, use reward miles or blackmail the cabin crew. The only way to get into this space is to pay cold, hard currency. Hello, incomprehensibly wealthy sheiks and Kanye West. If you care to see what it looks like and never fly again out of crippling envy and status anxiety, then feel free to peruse the gallery (butler - artist's impression):

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Build your customised world travel map

23/4/2014

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Much as we're anti lists on SP, we do sometimes get overwhelmed by the urge to catalogue, so imagine our delight this morning on logging onto The Guardian website, where a new toy awaited to help us with our morning's displacement activities. Their widget allows you to tally up your total visits to each country (we just put 100 for the country we live in - the UK for this exercise) and then it creates a colour-and-size coded globe to produce a quantitative map. GO HERE to try it yourself. Ours looked like this: 

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Wanted: Flight tag prints

2/2/2014

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You know us here at Shandy Pockets. We're not materialistic. But we'd sell our own (insert relative worth about £30/$50) to get our hands on these retro Flight Tag art prints by Neil Stevens. If we had an office, we'd definitely be buying these up to line the walls with. You can see the full range HERE,  and join us in wondering why poor Montreal is the only one that's being discounted at the moment...

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There's a map for that

9/10/2013

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It's a little early to be hinting at Christmas gifts, but that's not going to stop us lusting after this print of a vintage air routes map (a steal at only $25?), which comes to us via the amazing David Rumsey Map Collection (www.davidrumsey.com).

Click on the image for the full size.

Its description reads: "Map in full color with drawings of interesting features in the United States. Below the main map is an elevation profile with lines leading up to the point along the route noted below. The profile delineates the states, mileage and the height of the features on the profile. The route of the airplane is shown in blue and includes an airplane making the trip. Surround the map and profile are drawings of natural features and cities throughout the United States."

The map also shows that "Mason Menefee made the trip starting April 25, 1930, from Los Angeles to St. Louis."

Sorry if you're a map lover and that website just claimed your day...

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