Around the UK in 6 Housesits

In 2023, Jon and I decided to go on an epic two-month tour of the UK. The only snag?We were both unemployed. To stretch our limited funds, we decided to try TrustedHousesitters (referral link) and Workaway, two platforms for free accommodation in exchange for pet care, housework, or other kinds of labour.

This sort of arrangement probably isn’t for everyone. My supervisor at the bookstore gave me a weird look: “Why would you want to work while on holiday?” And yet! Mucking out chicken coops, figuring out bin day systems, and wrestling with a Henry Hoover were among the highlights of our UK trip.

Here is my account of the 5 housesits and 1 Workaway we did in Britain:

1. Buddy the feline overlord (London)

Our first housesit ever was in Isleworth, right by Heathrow Airport. Isleworth isn’t London London: it’s a neat, vanilla little town with nice middle-class houses and schools, a train station, and a little pub and corner chippy.

After showing us the ropes, our hosts left for their long weekend getaway. Jon and I soon found out that our charge, Buddy, was a hyper-intelligent cat overlord who had trained his humans perfectly. He'd come over and lead you to a specific location. If it's the kitchen, he wants wet food; study room, treats; staircase, playtime; if he stands on the landing, he wants you to brush his fur.

Between Buddy’s attentions and the luxuries of the house (massive kitchen, actual garage, backyard, and TV lounge with an electric fireplace!) I woke up every day feeling like the cat that got the cream.

Just outside the house was the River Thames. Here we were took a walk apidly accosted by pigeons, crows, ducks, geese, and swans of various temperaments. We rambled on, strolling through Syon Park (dumping ground of Henry VIII's fifth wife before her execution) eventually winding up in our first British greasy spoon. We shared a Brentford Special next to a table of rowdy bus drivers jovially ribbing the presumed owner of Brentford Cafe.

Our chief amusement consisted of hopping on random buses and watching London morph through the windows. Greater London's streets are lined with municipal libraries, more greasy spoons, nurseries, and trashy strip malls. As you get closer to the city centre, they are replaced with slicker businesses like Caffe Nero, Planet Organic, MMA gyms, and Waitrose.

In between ministering to Buddy’s requests, we found the time to tick off some important things on our London bucket lists: watching a Millwall vs Luton match, trying Yorkshire pudding from Asda, marvelling at a 2-storey house entirely painted over with Van Gogh's Starry Night, ordering British KFC on Deliveroo, looking at the statue of Virginia Woolf in Richmond, and collecting a Too Good To Go Surprise Bag from the West Middlesex University Hospital WHSmith.

2. Cleaning chicken coops (Lake District)

Going up north from London, the English suddenly become a different species. Take for instance a train delay. A Londoner would be pacing around, clutching a Costa Coffee and muttering “fuckfuckfuck” under his breath. But from Leeds onwards, he would only sing, "ah, the train only got delayed for 30 minutes this time, that's not too bad!" in a lovely northern lilt.

Such were the wonders of our journey from London. At Carlisle, we boarded a local train to Wigton, Cumbria, to our very first Workaway (labour in exchange for room and meals). Our hosts’ home was a 17th century farmhouse, which sounds more romantic and less drafty than it is IRL. We got a very nice guest room with ensuite bathroom, but it was absolutely freezing - our hardy Cumbrian hosts had the heating turned down.

Since we had no transport and there was no food within an hour’s walk, it was a good thing all 3 meals were provided by our hosts. However, only then did we realise how elaborate and demanding our spoiled Singaporean palates were, compared to that of our spartan hosts.

Breakfast was cold (cereal and milk), lunch was cold (turkey sandwich and crisps), and dinner was the one hot meal a day (lasagna, or ham and chips). Altogether, the viands were far from sufficient to sate me, though I recognised this to be entirely my own failing, being a gluttonous, decadent native of the tropics. We are simply not as tough as the British, who get through the day on cold bread and tea, uncomplaining.

We welcomed our tasks (in this cold, any labour that warms that body is welcome), which included clearing an old vegetable bed and readying it for this spring's crop, cleaning out the host couple's chicken coops, taking the garden furniture out of storage, and cleaning and repainting the farmhouse hallway.

Although we were technically within the Lake District, the lack of a car meant a visit to Windermere wasn't possible. So we spent our free time walking around, playing with the cat, and talking to our hosts about country life. Countryside society isn't as rosy as it seems from the outside. The small, tight-knit rural community sounds pleasant enough, until your neighbour asks you for the 37th time to help her solve her Wi-Fi issues. Boundaries: what are those?

On one occasion we caught a ride to Wigton town centre. While our hostess was in the betting shop, Jon and I ran into B&M Bargains and bought as much cut-price chocolate as we could stuff into our coat pockets. Then we walked 30 minutes to the lake and ate all of it. After days of deprivation, that rush of fat and sugar was heaven.

3. Kitten-sitting & Lidl (Edinburgh)

After a side-trip to the Scottish Highlands, we arrived in Edinburgh to find Nala the kitten waiting for us at the door of "our" flat. The owners of the apartment, a grad student couple, were away in London for their friend's birthday and simply left the key outside for us. 

Edinburgh has lots to do, including visiting "Tom Riddle's grave", touching David Hume's toe and Robert Louis Stevenson's bust, and chasing down shaggy coos.

But after 3 weeks of sightseeing, we found ourselves enjoying daily life most: playing with Nala, going to nearby thrift shops, and grocery shopping. We discovered a Lidl 5 minutes walk away (British groceries: so cheap! so good!) and went crazy creating dishes like instant noodles with toasted scampi and stir-fried instant rice with bagged beetroot salad.

Despite spending all this time in Edinburgh, I couldn’t get a sense of the Scottish character. The people we saw were mostly bored cosmopolitan students and gauche American tourists (obnoxiously taking selfies w/ a fan of cash against Adam Smith's statue or asking long-suffering bar staff to repeat their bill amounts, just to listen that Scottish brogue...).

I had expected rivers of oaten porridge, smoked salmon, and cock-a-leekie soup on our Scottish sojourn, but it was easier to find mala hotpot and tonkotsu ramen here than any "traditional Scottish fare". After a long search we finally found haggis, neeps and tatties at a gimmicky pub, but it was a bit of an anticlimax.

4. Chilling with Tiko & Ella (Kent)

Kent is about an hour from London by train and is understandably popular with commuters who want a proper house rather than a tiny apartment in the city. Our hosts' home has an actual conservatory! They were incredibly kind. We came by a day before they left on the Eurostar to Paris, and they made us an incredible taco Tuesday meal with way too much wine.

Here we had kittens to care for again: Tiko and Ella, whom we amused by playing with for hours every day. When able to tear ourselves away for the feline siblings, we walked around the nearby town centre and did random things like people-watching at the train station Wetherspoon’s, eating at Nando's and McDonald's, and shopping for toys and chocolates (the Sainsbury's at Maidstone bus station has "pick'n'mix" Lindor!).

On the last night, I forgot to lock the cats in after their dinner. I was worried to death when night fell and they hadn’t come back in. The host’s kindly next-door neighbour helped me look for them. Thankfully, they returned from their nocturnal romp through the neighbours’ backyards, or I might have committed hara-kiri.

Kent is wealthy. You can sense it from the tree-lined streets and general cleanliness. There are very respectable-looking houses, some with twatty names like "The Croft". Life is nice here in the moneyed, leafy suburbs. No burglar alarms - no need to lock the door, even. People wear nothing but thick houserobes and fluffy slippers when they drive over to collect their takeaway fish and chips.

5. Benson and baltis (Birmingham)

We were stoked for our next housesit in Brummie Land. Our hosts lived in a spanking new house in the neighbourhood of Redditch. They were actually looking to sell it, and one of our housesit duties included preparing the home for a prospective buyer viewing while the owners were away.

It was a very nice house - all mod cons, as they say - and we couldn’t figure out why they wanted to sell it. At first. After a few days of exploration, we realised that Redditch was sort of a half-formed new town, filled with people sold on the empty promises of property developers. The town centre was a carcass, littered with defunct shop units and dominated by a soulless shopping mall. (Unlike in Asia, the shopping mall seemed a symbol of economic and moral depression in Britain, signifying the death of the local high street.) 

While the hosts were away, we cared for Benson, the cat with extra toes. He was incredibly shy at first but eventually allowed me to pet him to sleep - you can imagine how proud I was of myself. But Benson, who looked so much like our cat, also gave me the first real pangs of homesickness.

We spent our Midlands days hunting down baltis in Birmingham. Most of the former Balti Triangle have closed down, but we managed to find Shababs, where we learnt that a balti is just regular curry served in a mini wok (!?). 

Also talked to a Brummie lad helping to raise funds for the Canal & River Trust. It seems the British government has washed its hands off the upkeep of Birmingham's historical canals, opting to sell ownership to private property developers instead. Jon helped (hindered?) with moving a boat upstream using a lock:

I had fancied Birmingham to be a diverse and colourful place, but it turned out to be a curiously homogenous city with mainly modern offices and malls. The Midlands, in general, felt rather underfunded. It was hard to get anywhere by public transport. We had to walk across a busy highway and major roundabout, risking life and limb, to get to the nearest B&M Bargains and Sainsbury's.

6. OABs Hughie & Phoebe (London)

We returned to London for our final housesit in the London suburb of Catford, to take care of 2 senior birds: Hughie the budgie and Phoebe the house chicken(!).

The birds were delightful company. Hughie, we were told, loves to perch on his owner’s shoulder and watch telly with her. But to us, he was a grumpy old man, keen only on taking out our fingers if we got too close. Phoebe (who has since passed away, God rest her soul) was a senior hen who followed us around to beg for her favourite foods: boiled eggs, tinned corn, and grapes. She was adorable, even though we did soil our socks on her poop a few times.

On the final leg of our trip, we spent our time doing All The London Things: Shakespeare's Globe theatre, Sunday roast, Dr Johnson's House, the British Library, Somers Town, BBC live podcast recording, various used book stores, and trying out African (Ethiopian, Senegalese, Nigerian) food.

Catford is as black and Isleworth is white. We spent our time checking out other black/brown neighbourhoods like Brixton, Croydon and Peckham, just to put a place to the (grime lyrics) name. One Sunday we saw what looked like a million people hanging out at Peckham Rye Park & Common. It is amazing how much fun the British can have with friends, beer, and a picnic blanket. The wonderful lost art of spending an entire day in an unstructured manner.

101% would do it again

We weren’t able to get housesits for some places we wanted to visit: the Scottish Highlands, Devon, Cornwall, Brighton, and Bristol. For those, we did side-trips on our own dime. But on our next visit to the UK or Europe, we’d probably do TrustedHousesitters and Workaway all the way through.

True, they’re not “a stone’s throw” from all the major attractions, but the chance to experience everyday life more than made up for it. 

We’ve taken amazing bus rides, eaten at working class greasy spoons, seen the widest variety of ducks and geese in our lifetimes, enjoyed unplanned walks, and shopped at every supermarket along the class chain from Lidl to M&S. We have learnt so much about British housing layouts, door mechanisms, types of heaters, how to use Henry Hoovers, how to wash dishes with a cloth, and the ins and outs of "bin day" protocol. Surely those count as travel goals?