Traveling around the UK as an expat, seeing family and friends involves a lot of sleeping on sofas or staying in over priced accommodation due to it being the school holidays, for 6 weeks and it's not a lot of fun, lugging suitcases around and packing and unpacking and traveling around by train, bus and on foot.
I was offered the opportunity to stay in a friend of a friend's house in exchange for feeding her cat during our stay.
I was joined by my son who collected me from Heathrow, so I arrived fresh and had a relaxing few days, rather than the usual 7 hour flight and a 3 hour coach or train journey via the London Underground with a suitcase and hand luggage. There was no queueing for the bathroom, worrying about leaving all my stuff lying around or just getting in the way of everyone else getting ready for school and work and I didn't have to get dressed to have breakfast in the morning like I would've done had I been staying in a hotel.
On the 2nd day I did message the woman who owned the house with a picture of the cat we were feeding to check we were actually feeding the right cat, thankfully we were.
I'd like to explore doing this again in future, cat and dog or house sitting.
