England Tours

[Jimbo67]

First post so please be gentle. I love watching England especially in test matches and it has always been a life long dream to go to Australia and do The Ashes. Unfortunately life seemed to get in the way, every time I started saving a mini disaster or crisis would come along and rob my piggy bank. I'm now in my mid 50's and can't see that dream being a reality until retirement, also with a couple of health scares there's no guarantee I'll be around then so I'm after some advice. My bother in law has said "let's go to Sri Lanka this year, if we love it we'll find a way to go on other tours". So do I go, or wait and save to hopefully go on an Ashes, South Africa or West Indies tour. Now this is my dilemma, I really want to go and follow England abroad and Sri Lanka seems an amazing place to visit and not too expensive, but it doesn't hold the glamour in my mind of Australia (only sister emirgrated there 20 years ago, loads of old forces friends moved out there too as well as all the cricketing history). Any advice from any past tourers greatly appreciated as I don't want to waste my savings on somewhere I won't have a great time but also know that sometimes you need take a chance and follow the Bird in the hand proverb.

 

[Burgey]

I would definitely go mate. Would be an awesome experience. There’s always a chance your plans for later tours will be interrupted like they have in the past.

Hope you do it and have a great time. If you go, make sure to post and let us know how it’s going.

 

[S.Kennedy]

The Barmies are good for this sort of stuff apparently, travel advice,

https://www.barmyarmy.com/club-class.html

Not sure about the advice this lot on cw will give you!

To answer your question though If I ever followed England I'd want to go to the West Indies or South Africa. West Indies has the weather and people but the cricket might be crap these days. South Africa has some amazing grounds (Newlands) and the cricket is usually excellent. Aussie wickets are flat tracks these days so...well, bring a good book to read - that is all I'll say.

New Zealand looks beautiful also but the weather is a bit dicey.

Galle looks like a beautiful ground in Sri Lanka.

 

[Jimbo67]

Seriously thinking about it, especially as Sri Lanka looks like a very cost effective option (24 day tour, from £2.2k, DIY for just less than £2k, and food and beverages reasonable, £1 a pint). Think WI is about £4k for a similar tour,SA a bit more, NZ and Australia, well if I went I wouldn't want to go for less than 3 tests so that's £6k and £4 a pint (international currency like gold). That means with spending money I could probably go on 3 tours to Sri Lanka for the cost of one Ashes trip, not sure how expensive WI or SA is once your there. As for the cricket, it would be nice to go somewhere where the matches are competitive, shelling out my life savings to watch a 5-0 tubbing would destroy me, no matter how good the NYE fireworks are.