So You Want to Go to England: Getting There - Freighter Cruises

Why fly when can you take 20 times longer for three times the price?
Photo by Mike Baird, licensed through Creative Commons

Part 1:  Getting Started

Part 2:  Before You Go 

Part 3:  Getting There - Air Canada

Part 4:  Getting There - Air Transat

Part 5:  Getting There - British Airways

Part 6:  Getting There - Freighter Cruises
Part 7:  Surviving Heathrow Airport

Once upon time, if a young man suffered from wanderlust or a failure to fully comprehend the rhythm method, fleeing his quaint coastal hometown was a simple matter.   All he had to do was run, preferably under cover of darkness, to the dockyard and beg for a job on the first freighter bound for Sheik Yarbouti.  Once onboard he was free to enjoy a lifetime on the open sea, never again to worry about personal responsibility or any kind of basic human comfort.

Over time, the slow encroachment of unions and maritime laws has made it tougher to escape your mistakes by sea.   Now the experience of traveling on a seagoing freighter is limited to those who thoughtfully joined the Seafarers International Union before “forgetting” their prophylactics and independent-minded tourists who have time and money to burn.  

And so, having covered some options for flying the friendly skies, in this installment of "So You Want to Go to England" we takes a look at this considerably less popular alternative to air travel.

Photo Gallery: The Lonesome Creepy - Waiting

Of all the things that smartphones can do - help us cheat at pub trivia nights or avoid having to talk to strangers, for example - their greatest feature has to be the camera. Having a reasonably capable camera in your pocket at all times is useful when your friends and associates decide to do something blackmail-worthy or when, like me, you’re walking around at three in the morning and say, “That looks spooky.” Portability, and the fact that it does all the heavy lifting for you as far as settings are concerned, has allowed me to use my iPhone to capture images I never would have bothered with if I'd had to lug around a camera the size of Optimus Prime's lower 48.