Planning Our Epic UK Adventure to Discover Family Roots

Episode 2 Show Notes: Getting ready to visit Wales and England

Planning Our UK Trip

This episode discusses planning our UK trip, including stops in England and Wales.  Our lengthier trips like this always begin with assessing the budget.  This helps us to plan trips that work with our financial situation.

Family Research Guides Our Itinerary

Julie has been actively doing genealogy research on her family.  This sparked an interest in visiting places where her family emigrated to the United States.  This was our initial plan, as Sweden is one place with still-living relatives.  We considered Stockholm and Sodra Lian during our early planning.

However, having recently completed an Ancestry DNA kit, Julie was surprised to see a large percentage of ancestry from the United Kingdom.  This sparked new interest as she traced her lineage to the Ragland clan in Raglan, Wales, where there is a present-day castle ruin.  She decided this would be an excellent place to visit.

Deciding To Visit The United Kingdom

Our planning shifted to the United Kingdom.  Julie’s lineage came from Wales (Raglan, Llantwit Major, Penarth, Barry) and England (Watchet, Somerset), which are places around the general area of the Bristol Channel.  Julie tracing her family tree in that part of the world to the 1400s gave us an outline of places to consider for our visit.

Our planning timeline for lengthy trips like this usually begins around eight months in advance.  We discuss why planning is essential when traveling to popular destinations.

Pausing For Brexit

But then, our trip planning hit the pause button due to Brexit.  We weren't sure how this political situation might impact travel.  We watched the news and read the newspapers to avoid a condition resulting in social unrest.  Ultimately, we decided to venture forward with our UK travel plans regardless, as no Brexit solution was found three months before our calendar showed our tentative UK trip.

Art's Family History Adds More Stops On Our Itinerary

Art’s dad spent five years (1943-1948) in England during World War II upon leaving a Polish refugee camp in Palestine.  Adding the English footsteps of Art’s dad to the itinerary would add stops in London (for Osterley Park and Richmond Palace, where Art’s dad was invited by Lady Jersey, actress Virginia Cherrill, to spend holiday time), Halton and the Trenchard Museum, and Liverpool.

An itinerary influenced by tracing family lineage would keep us from visiting Scotland, Ireland, and Poland – places on our radar at the early stages of planning this trip.  A trip that takes you to particular places will likely cause you to leave out many otherwise popular tourist destinations.

Art doesn’t get to include his bucket list item of attending an English Premier League game on this trip.

Our Travel Planning Resources For This Trip

We used TripAdvisor to identify attractions to see once we had our short list of cities identified for this UK trip.  We selected Cardiff to be our hub in Wales.  That would make it easy to get to several places in Wales, including Raglan, Barry Island, and key attractions we selected in Cardiff.

We leveraged “DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Great Britain” to identify specific attractions during our trip.  The book helped to identify walking tours and museums and times when particular places are open to visitors.  We recommend purchasing a book similar to this one when planning a more extended trip.

 

The book, “Survivors of War: One Family's Struggle Through World War II” by Dan Dobrucki and Walerian Joseph Dobrucki proved to be another helpful resource for planning this personal family history journey.

 

 

Our DIY Travel Approach

Because our UK trip included particular places, planning the trip ourselves versus a travel agent offered us the best approach.

This episode sets the stage and context for the upcoming UK episodes, where we’ll talk specifically about the places we visited.  Our next episode will focus on Cardiff City Center.

Where would a trip to trace your family history take you?  Consider tracing your family history to develop a personally fulfilling travel itinerary.

We hope to see you at the places where we go.
Julie & Art

 

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