Quiet UK

Category: Quiet travel

  • Travelling in peace, or the search for a silent minibar

    Travelling in peace, or the search for a silent minibar

    So, hands up, who can’t wait to book their next holiday?

    I love to travel and I really love hotels. I don’t understand people who say, “it’s just a place to sleep.” Ok, sure, if it’s an overnight stop on the way to your destination then a motorway motel will probably be ok.

    But if I’m spending more than a night there then I need comfort, quiet and at the very least a rain shower. The key word there is quiet. A hotel can be the fanciest place, in the hippest new destination but if they have noisy lifts or a humming minibar, then I’m out of there.

    Tips for finding a quiet hotel room

    • Look at TripAdvisor. Honestly, I take many of the reviews with a pinch of salt – one person’s too-hard bed is another person’s best sleep ever. But one thing that stands out is the complaints about noise. From paper thin walls to slamming doors to the bane of my life, the humming minibar, you can guarantee that someone will have mentioned it.
    • Ask if the hotel has a quiet zone – some of the bigger chains have been introducing these.
    • Or if they don’t have on ask for a quiet room. And this is where being extra polite can help. Even when booking online I become the nicest person in the world (I’m quite nice anyway, but I really dial it up a notch) putting lots of pleases and thank yous in the comment/ request box.
    • Ask for a high floor – although do check if the hotel has a rooftop pool or bar – if so, you might be better off with a room on a middle level. High floors aren’t a guarantee of quiet but especially in cities they can put a few more metres between you and people and traffic on the street.
    • Ask for a room that is away from reception. You might have a bit of a hike with your luggage but a room further away from reception should mean less footfall going past your door. Corner rooms are quiet for the same reason – and less likely to have a lift nearby.
    • Big one – ask for a room away from the lift. Lifts are noisy – beeps and dings and creaking doors, and they are an area that attracts people; and depending on the speed of the lift can leave those people standing in the corridor, repeatedly pushing the button and loudly discussing what they want for breakfast.
    • Do you really need the stunning view? Especially if between you and it there is a four-lane highway or trams that run until 2am? If you prefer peace over mountains or sea, why not opt for rooms at the back or facing over the courtyard? Bonus – these rooms are normally cheaper.
    • After doing all this, make sure you get what you asked for. When checking in mention that you requested a high floor/ away from lift/ quiet room. Sometimes requests can be missed on booking and this gives the receptionist a chance to help you out and save you and them time.
    • And, finally, if you get to the room and it is noisy, ask to move. Hotels don’t want unhappy customers writing bad reviews so most will move you – and sometimes you even get an upgrade!

    Here is my standard request when booking a hotel room:

    Hi, please can I request a quiet room on a high floor and away from the lift. Many thanks for your help and I’m looking forward to staying with you.

    And remember if the room isn’t quiet or there are annoying noises, report it to the hotel first and give them a chance to rectify the issue.

    TripAdvisor and other review sites are great sources of information so please help your fellow quiet travellers and write a review – good or bad – to let them make the best choice. I’m going to commit to writing reviews that highlight noise (or lack of) in the title so you can spot them easily.

    I hope these tips help you when you book your next holiday. Happy travels!

  • Simple solutions for a quieter life

    Simple solutions for a quieter life

    Back in the day when I used to commute to work the simple task of getting the train used to raise my stress levels to breaking point. Five days a week I’d arrive at the station five minutes before my train, then wait an extra ten minutes because the train was always delayed. I’d then jostle with my fellow commuters trying to claim a spare foot of space as my own. The journey itself was 12 minutes, except on days when we had to stop because of branches, cows or swans on the track (yes, all three of those we’re given as reasons for delays). And by the time I reached work, I was a jittery mess of anxiety and hatred towards all humanity.

    Yes, the delays were frustrating, paying for a seat and not being able to get one was a tad irritating, but the thing that got to me most was the noise. From the minute the carriage doors clunked shut there was constant noise. The train manager making unintelligible announcements over the PA. The squeals, bangs and squeaks of under-invested in rolling stock. The new phenomena of people playing music or watching movies without headphones — it was bad enough having loud, tinny music leach from headphones, but this new antisocial habit is enough to make me shove their devices into some very dark holes. And who can forget the very important man (yes, always a man) who doesn’t understand how a phone works and shouts so loudly into the receiver that the whole carriage knows just how important it is that Steve gets the contract to Maggie by close of play.

    In the end, I started driving to work — yes, I know this is not the sustainable option, but honestly, I was so far past the end of my tether that I was liable to headbutt the next very important man I came across. My commute time went from 12 minutes to 45 minutes, but those 45 minutes were quiet. Before this, I was ready to quit my job but this little change allowed me to hang on until I was ready to go freelance.

    In an increasingly loud world, opportunities for quiet seem to be diminishing. From the minute we wake up to the beep beep beep of our alarms to the time we are lulled to sleep by the near-constant rumble of traffic and aeroplanes noise is always there. And it’s killing us.

    So how can you find the quiet space you need?

    Explore your local community

    Even in the busiest of city, you can find quiet nooks and crannies. Sometimes they are obvious places like large, tree-filled parks but there are also plenty of hidden spaces waiting to be discovered. One of my favourite places is churches. I’m not religious but the enforced quiet of a religious building can be a blessing. But you need to avoid the fancy ones, the ones that tourist flock to.

    For example, Liverpool has two cathedrals. The first, and oldest is the appropriately named Liverpool Cathedral. An imposing building full of stained glass, stone carvings and tourists. The other, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, is a modern building with a derogatory nickname due to its, shall we say, distinctive architecture. And because of this fewer people visit making it a much calmer space. This building is a wonderful space to escape the rumble of traffic and bustle of the nearby shopping centre. (If you’re not religious please be aware of the religious practices in the building and act appropriately).

    Turn everything off

    Nice and simple this one. Take off your headphones. Turn off the TV, phone and tablet. If you are constantly listening to your devices you won’t know when there is quiet around you.

    Yes, they block out unwanted noise, but you are just substituting one noise for another. Turn them off and listen. Let your ears lead you towards the quiet they crave.

    Change your schedule

    A few years ago I worked in an open-plan office. Well, that was its own special kind of hell. No Phil, making hour-long calls on speakerphone is not sodding appropriate. Other than building your own fort out of reams of printer paper and broken A4 binders there’s not a lot you can do to change the physical space. But what if you changed when you are in the space?

    My old company allowed flexi-time — as long as we were in the building for the core hours we could start as early as 7am and finish as late as 8pm. I was an early bird and would arrive outside the office at 6.59am and leave just as the clock struck 3pm. This worked because the rest of my team were night owls who would rock up sometime between 9.30 and 10.00. Leaving me with up to three delightful hours of quiet every day.

    Depending on your company this might take a bit of negotiating, but it’s worth a try — even half an hour of quiet a day could make a difference.

    Avoid traffic

    Venice and Amsterdam are major European tourist sites, filled with people, cafes and restaurants. But they are both missing one thing — cars. Thanks to their unique landscape and, in the case of Amsterdam, their attitude towards cars, they are filled with the hubbub of people, but they lack the roar of motorised transport.

    Some towns and cities are finding ways to reduce our reliance on cars but others are still stuck in a car is King mindset. This gives you another reason to explore your neighbourhood or perhaps try a different walking route to work.

    If I walk the most direct route from my house into town I end up walking alongside a major road — filled with all the accompanying air and noise pollution. But if I take a diagonal route, it adds five minutes, but it avoids the main road and takes me along a tree-lined path that skirts a brook with all its accompanying bird song and babbling. For the sake of five minutes, I know which my lungs and ears prefer.

    I hope these simple ideas will help you to find some quiet space. I’d love to hear if you have any other ideas for finding a bit of hush in our increasingly noisy world.

  • There’s one way you can help me sleep better (please)

    There’s one way you can help me sleep better (please)

    I’ve got a little favour to ask…

    It won’t take much of your time and it could mean the difference between a good night’s sleep and me trying to work out how to turn off the buzzing minibar at 1am without ripping it off the wall. It could mean the difference between a few hours of rest after a long day exploring a new place and my husband screaming at children who are running up and down the corridor at 3am (yes, this really happened — Disneyland Paris, 2005). It will definitely mean the difference between me enjoying the hotel I’ve spent hard-earned cash on and spending the day searching for a hotel to move to so I don’t start plotting ways to end all humanity.

    So what is this little favour?

    I need you to write hotel reviews. More specifically I need you to write reviews that mention the noise levels of the hotel. I don’t care if you’re an American and have turned up in Paris or Venice and the rooms are ‘so small I can barely stand up’. We know the rooms in our centuries-old listed buildings are small, but we like them. I’m also not overly concerned if the car park is a little tight or if the receptionist doesn’t jump at your every last little whim. These things won’t disrupt my holiday or cause anxiety or an increase in tinnitus levels. They are minor inconveniences — knock off a star if you must, but I only have one concern — is the room quiet enough to sleep in?

    So, please, when you write your next review, in between moaning about or gushing over the range of pastries at breakfast, take a moment and think about the noises you heard during your stay.

    • Were the walls in the room paper thin so you could hear everything going on in the room next door?
    • Did the bare wood floors make the people on the floor above sound like they were partying with a herd of tiny elephants?
    • Did the air con hiss and whine all night despite being turned off?

    Quiet night? It’ll cost you

    A recent article in the Guardian talked about a new trend for sleep tourism. Fancy hotels who have created plush rooms with soundproofing, comfortable beds and blackout curtains promising a great night’s sleep. Now, excuse me for being picky, but surely the aim of every hotel should be to offer a great night’s sleep?

    Yes, depending on what you spend the bedding might be fancier, the shower gel might have come from an over-hyped apothecary in Mayfair or you might be lucky to get some PG Tips and the slowest boiling kettle in the world. But a great night’s sleep should be the number one aim for anyone opening a hotel. What the else are you there for?

    Perhaps if more of us write about the noise issues then hotels might start to pay attention. If people aren’t staying at their hotel because the lifts are noisy or housekeeping bangs their vacuum against the door at 7am, then they might do something about it. If not it’s going to affect their bottom line.

    Recent hotel noise issues

    Here’s just a handful of noise-related issues that have led to middle-of-the-night rage:

    • A buzzing minibar in a £250 a night room — the plug was hidden behind a panel so I couldn’t even turn it off.
    • A loose manhole cover on the road outside — nothing the hotel can do directly but they can report it to the council. When asked if they’d done this they responded, “No, it’s always been like that.”
    • A lift that every time the door opened bellowed “first floor” loud enough to wake us in the room furthest away from it. I’d hate to have been in the room opposite.
    • A hotel receptionist in Paris who when I complained about the traffic noise and asked to be moved to a courtyard room responded, “It’s Paris”, in that spectacularly haughty way that only Parisians can pull off. I appreciate it’s a major city with all the accompanying noise — I’ve stayed in Paris many times. But I didn’t expect to stay in a hotel where they’d apparently opted for tracing paper rather than soundproof windows.
    • A beautiful old hotel in the hills above Donostia / San Sebastián — lovely and peaceful until the dog on the farm next door started barking at 4pm and continued through until quarter past ten.

    Some of these things the hotels should have thought about when they were being built — oh the doors slam really loudly, perhaps we’ll go with a different style? Some of these things can’t be changed — yes the centuries-old buildings in Europe are beautiful, but they’re often not practical or easily modernised.

    But I’d like to know about these things so I can make an informed choice. And writing a review that comments on the noise levels, even just a few words, could make the difference between me spending a lot of money for barely a wink of sleep or waking from a night where it feels like I’ve been cocooned in a marshmallow made of love and kittens (Sofitel Luxembourg, that’s all you).

    Of course, some of these things wouldn’t bother other people — I admit as a person with tinnitus and misophonia I’m perhaps more sensitive to noise than others. But with 7.1 million people in the UK suffering from tinnitus and one in five having misophonia, a little bit of thought about noise will go a long way.