Top Activities for Expats in the UK

Once you’ve finished moving abroad and have happily settled in the UK, your first leave from work shouldn’t be an excuse to head back home – or to escape on a last-minute holiday to the beaches of the Mediterranean. Expats living in the UK should rather take the opportunity to explore the great leisure opportunities their new home has to offer.

If you associate holidays in the United Kingdom mainly with rainy weather and crowded piers in seaside resorts, you couldn’t be more wrong. There’s something for every taste, with a wide range of activities to satisfy all expatriates – from the young and trendy post-grad to the well-off mature couple.

Here are our top five tips for new resident from overseas keen on exploring Britain’s beauty.

Heritage tourism is the perfect choice for the traditional Anglophile in love with stately homes and well-groomed gardens. The go-to address for all fans of historic estates is, of course, the National Trust. The famous conservation organization offers annual memberships that will grant you free access to plenty of their most popular properties: e.g. Hardwick Hall, an iconic Elizabethan manor built and managed by a formidable 16th-century noblewoman; the Georgian water gardens at Fountains Abbey, or Lyme Park near Manchester, whose lavish grounds served as Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When you stroll through Lyme’s deer park, you will indeed feel just like a Jane Austen heroine! But regardless of the nostalgia inspired by so much past splendor, the National Trust also provides you with all the conveniences of 21st-century technology: Get their mobile apps that guide you through their estates and gardens.  

Those who like their outdoor activities less sedate should also feel right at home in the UK. While the Scottish Highlands or Snowdonia in Wales cannot quite compete with the European Alps, that’s absolutely no reason to run off to Mont Blanc. The Snowdon National Park in northern Wales is one of the country’s “activity capitals” and a paradise for outdoorsy folks. After all, Mount Snowdon was used by Sir Edmund Hilary as training for his ascent to Mount Everest. You can climb the mountain on the Miner’s track, the most challenging route, or visit other scenic spots in the area for bouldering, tree-climbing, and Europe’s longest zip-wire ride. Have we already mentioned whitewater rafting on the River Tryweryn, wakeboarding on the Ll?n Peninsula, or spelunking in an abandoned slate mine near Betws y Coed? For those who prefer Indiana Jones to Jane Austen, a trip to Wales it is!

The UK’s summer music festivals are a different kind of extreme sport. Younger expats appreciate the typical festival experience in Glastonbury. In 1970, when British glam rockers T-Rex were the first to headline the nascent festival, 1,500 visitors camped on Somerset’s fields, for exactly one quid (worth £12 in 2013). Today, you have to invest £200 to see a wrinkled and wizened Mick Jagger live – and share your place in the mud with 135,000 festival-goers. If that doesn’t faze you, pack your wellies and off you go! Music lovers of the high-brow kind opt for the BBC proms instead. Hard-core “Prommers” buy a full season ticket for 100 or more classical concerts in the Royal Albert Hall and London’s parks. This pass earns you admission to the Last Night spectacle. The 2013 Last Night welcomes its first female conductor with Marin Alsop – which definitely deserves three cheers: Hip hip hooray!

There are various festivals for about everything in the UK: music, arts – and let’s not forget about food! Foodie expatriates should let go of preconceived notions about the allegedly dismal state of British cuisine. Rather take the time to savour the country’s regional specialties. Some have even earned “protected geographical status”, like Stilton Cheese or Whitstable Oysters. An annual festival in the Kentish coastal town celebrates the seafood that has made its local fishing industry famous. During those nine days in July, you can try fish and shellfish dishes to your heart’s content. Just take care that your eyes aren’t bigger than your belly. If you can’t stomach all the noise and excitement of a popular food festival, try the exclusive recommendations of the Guide Michelin. Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester Hotel, Mayfair, and The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, are the only three-star restaurants in the UK. Bon appétit!

Expat families with kids will hardly opt for an evening of fine dining with their bored and fidgety offspring in tow. Fortunately, there are much more interesting things you can do with your children in the UK – far beyond the obvious touristy clichés of visiting Madame Tussauds or booking the Harry Potter Studio Tour in London. Younger kids might be really enthusiastic about nostalgic steam trains, and there are plenty of well-preserved steam railway tracks throughout the country. For example, you could go for a tour of the Keighley & Worth Valley railway in the picturesque Yorkshire Dales, where the 1970s children’s classic The Railway Children was shot. From there, it’s not too far to the city of York, with the National Railway Museum. The museum is a kid-friendly place offering interactive tours for the little ones and a simulator ride on the world’s fastest steam engine for older children.