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Book	a holiday
	a hotel or accomodation
	flights
	travel tickets
Buy	a car
	a motorbike
	bikes
	boats
	luggage
Check	the weather
Convert	currency
Find a	map
Get	insured
	timetable information
	travel advice and information
	travel insurance
Go	camping
	cycling
	rambling
Hire	a haulage or removal company
Hire	a vehicle
Investigate	environmentally friendly transport
Investigate	travel and transport for disabled people
Learn	to drive
Plan	a gap year
Plan	a journey
Read	a travel guide
Send	something by courier
Travel	by air
	by boat
	by public transport
	by rail
	by road
	independently
Understand	travel health issues

If what you want to do isn't listed, click here to suggest it to us.

Travel > Travel independently (the links below will take you online)
Book a bus or coach ticket
	Go By Coach Go by coach allows you to plan journeys and book tickets for coach travel around the UK and Europe on National Express and Eurolines. It also allows you to book transport to and from airports with Jetlink, FlightLink and Airbus.
Book a train ticket
	Railpass Direct This is a site that specialises in providing Interail tickets for rail travel around Europe. There is loads of information about the type and price of the passes available and you can either order over the phone or online.
	TheTrainline Although you have to take the time to register to use the site, the trainline.com is one of the easiest ways to purchase rail tickets for travel all over the UK. It has secure ordering online and allows you to check times and plan your journey.
Book flights
	Aer Fares This is a useful site that lets you make direct comparisons between all the major budget airlines in Europe. Although the results can sometimes take a while to load you can still save the hassle of searching each airline independently. Always worth a try.
	Airwise This site contains a comprehensive listing of all major world airlines with links to their websites. It will allow you to contact airlines all over the world and arrange flights wherever you want to go.
	Buzz A slightly less well known lo cost airline that offers cheapo flights to Germany, France and Spain and some domestic routes within France. Their fares are very competitive if you book online and include all taxes. They are definitely worth considering.
	Cheapflights This well known site is an excellent place to find extremely cheap flights to a wide range of destinations from loads of different airlines. Can be a little slow but its worth persevering as the prices can be amongst the very cheapest.
	Easyjet The ever expanding Easyjet have some excellent cheap flights to destinations all over Europe. Well worth a look to check out the latest bargains.
	Go This well known budget airline offers excellent prices around Britain and Europe. Unfortunately they only fly from stanstead airport. They can be fantastically cheap though and are usually well worth considering.
	Ryanair Another of the low cost, no frills airlines that are currently experiencing a bit of a boom. Ryanair let you fly to a large number of destinations around Europe for very little money. Booking online is simple and quick.
	Scottish Flight Guide This is a very useful site for anyone wishing to fly from airports in Scotland, which can sometimes be more difficult to organise on other travel sites. Here you can compare fares from a number of airlines at once to destinations all over the world.
	Sky Scanner This simple and easy to use site can help you to find the cheapest flights around Europe. It lets you quickly compare flights from all the major budget airlines in one place without any of the hassle of visiting each airlines site. A very useful website.
	STA Travel STA is one of the best places available for young people and students to organise good value independent travel. A huge range of tickets to destinations all over the world and excellent value insurance makes STA well worth a visit.
Buy luggage
	British Companies - Luggage This website contains a listing of many of the major luggage manufacturers in the UK and abroad. Each of the companies websites is accessible by clicking on their names and many of them allow online ordering.
	Gear Finders Gear finders are a free online service with links to hundreds of outdoor equipment suppliers across the country, both on and offline. This site will help put you in touch with the people who can supply what you need, either by phone or the internet.
	Go Places This online luggage shop allows you to purchase a wide range of luggage with free delivery within the UK. They have been around since 1969 and pride themselves on excellent quality luggage and customer service.
Contact an embassy or get a visa
	Embassy Search A searchable database of all of the embassies and consulates in the world. This site is aimed at travellers and can help you to find information about visas and health issues before you travel.
	Governments on the WWW This huge page lists almost every country in the world and contains links to every embassy of each country, wherever in the world it happens to be. A hugely useful source if you need to contact an embassy.
Find budget accomodation
	Global Freeloaders An excellent idea that could find you free accommodation all over the world. Relying entirely on the goodwill of travellers the world over, this site could put you in touch with friendly locals who are willing to put you up for the night for free.
	Hostel Planet Use this site to book a bed or room in any of over 1000 hostels in countries all over the world. Also contains lots of other hostelling and travelling information.
	Hostel World A good American site where you can book beds in hundreds of hostels all over the world. The site is run by experienced backpackers and the site also contains lots of other useful and relevant information.
	Hostelling International This is the English website of the International Youth Hostel Federation. Here you can find out about hostelling in countries all over the world, including details of individual hostels, online booking and links to other relevant sites.
	Hostels.com A huge hostelling site that is independent of all the major organisations and aims to provide unbiased honest information and opinion on hostelling all over the world. A great place to find loads of information and well written advice.
	YHA Joining the YHA will give you access to cheap accommodation in countries all over the world. This is the site for England and Wales and you can use it for booking a bed online in any of the hostels in those two countries.
Find out about independent travel
*See Also:* Money > Get a loan \| Travel > Travel by air
	Backpacking Europe A useful guide to backpacking around Europe that contains loads of good advice and information. The advice is more about things like what to pack and when to go rather than country specific information but this is a good place to start some research.
	Everything You Need to Know As the name suggests, this is a site where you can find out a lot of what you need to know about independent travel before you go. Well written, easy to use and full of important, interesting and useful information. A great site.
	Travelmag This online independent travel magazine contains features and articles written by and for independent travellers around the world. An excellent place to read someone's first hand experiences.
Get a passport
	UK Passport Agency The official site of the UK passport agency provides a wealth of information about the how and where to apply for a passport. You can also use this site to find contact details for someone to help you with any passport enquiries.
Get advice and travel information
	Consumer Gateway - Holidays and Travel This is a part of the official government consumer website and is absolutely packed with useful information and advice to help you understand your rights, the precautions you should take and generally help you to have an enjoyable experience.
	The Foreign Office In order to get the most up to date information about travelling overseas, this is the place to visit. Provides country specific advice as well as factsheets and general travelling tips.
	Trip Prep Trip Prep provides fairly comprehensive country specific health information for travellers as well as advice about politics and safety.
	Tyzo Tyzo claims to be one of the world's largest travel directories. It contains a huge amount of information for travellers and offers help and advice on planning, travel suppliers, travel tools and for different types of traveller. A good resource
	Virtual Tourist This is a powerful user driven travel information site that has over 200,000 members in 223 different countries around the world. Real people sharing information about real experiences makes this one of the best travel information sites available.
Get insured
	Instant Pet Insurance This simple site provides access to two good places to go for an instant quote on insuring your pet. Simple but effective.
	Insurenet - Brokers This page provides links to a large number of reputable insurance brokers from across the UK.
	Travel Insurance - Travel This site is the online branch of bestquote. They aim to bring you extremely competitive prices on a wide range of travel insurance products from a number of different providers. A good site that could save you money.
	Travel Insurance Club An excellent place to search for competitively priced insurance deals for independent, family or commercial travel. Winner of several awards from 'your money' magazine.
Get weather information
	BBC Weather This is an excellent part of the BBC website. It has weather information for the entire world updated regularly by the met office. Has loads of weather news and forecasts available for most any area of the world.
	The Met Office This official site is one of the most comprehensive weather sites on the internet and allows you to search the globe for local weather information. Forecasts are available for anywhere in the world and it is updated very regularly.
	UK Weather Information This straightforward site is quick and easy to use. Its aim is to provide simple and easy weather information and forecasts for the British Isles and it does this in a detailed and comprehensive way. Can be long winded for quick information.
Hire a vehicle
	Hire Car This site contains links to all the major car hire companies from where you can organise the rental of a vehicle almost anywhere in the UK.
	Show Bus This site lets you search the country by region for bus and coach hire companies in a specific area. Links to some email addresses and websites are provided but its primarily a list of contact details. Still a very useful site.
Make a complaint about a holiday
*See Also:* Politics & Government > Contact a government department or agency
	Consumer Gateway - Complaints This is the official government consumer website. This page tells you exactly what procedures you should follow when complaining and provides an alphabetically organised list of people that you can complain to on a range of subjects.
	Travel Watch A useful site that is dedicated to promoting an improvement in holiday standards. Lots of useful advice about your rights as a traveller and what to do before and after you holiday if you have any problems.
	Watchdog - Holidays This site has a lot of useful information for the traveller. It has an archive of reports into travel issues and near the top of the page you can click on the guides section. This will help you to complain, book insurance and hopefully have a better trip.
Read a travel guide
*See Also:* Shopping > Buy books
	Lonely planet Lonely planet publish some of the best travel guides to destinations all over the world. This site contains huge amounts of useful information about most of the places you may wish to visit.
	Rough Guides These are some of the best travel guides available, particularly for those travelling on a budget. On their site you can access information about loads of countries around the world along with links to relevant sites as well as buying one of the books.
	Travel Notes This is a useful page that rates the usefulness of all of the travel guides available and gives advice about the best way to use such guides. An excellent site that will help you to choose the guide that’s right for you.
Travel with your pet
	DEFRA - Pets This is part of the department for the environment, food and rural affairs website. It gives details of the Pet Travel Scheme which can allow you to travel with pets without the hassle of quarantine restrictions. A well laid out and informative site.
Understand customs legislation
	Excess Baggage This site contains information and customs regulations for over 100 countries and territories. It also provides information about what documents you need to provide, how much time customs procedures will take, quarantine regulations, duty rates, and tax
Use an atlas and get world maps
	Atlapedia Here you can find political and physical maps of most of the countries in the world. You can also get key statistics about geography, climate, people, religion, language, history and economy for each country. The site is easy to use and fast to load.
	Maps.com - Atlas This site lets you view political and physical maps of all the continents and most of the countries of the world. You can download printable versions of the maps that you find and access lots of facts and figures about each country or region.
	National Geographic - Maps One of the most informative geographic sites available on the web. The site contains a brilliant 'map machine' section that lets you move around the globe selecting the map and scale that you want, or access news and maps about topical issues.
	Texas University - Maps This is a good place to find a number of different high quality maps. There is a useful section providing maps of topical regions such as Afghanistan as well as world maps and maps of the continents and regions of the world.

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If there are websites you think should be on this list, please click here to suggest them to us.