Prepping for Vacation to Helsinki and Northern Britain

Before any big trip its important to plan accordingly. We knew we wanted to go somewhere in Europe this August but didn't know exactly where. A few things made up our mind:

1. Worldcon was to be hosted in Helsinki, Finland. It was the 75th one held and website for the event is here. We found out during our last Worldcon in Spokane and this was a country not on our radar of places to go but seemed interesting;
2. The UK pound had fallen dramatically after the Brexit vote;
3. I had not been to the UK and my wife had on two previous occasions. Every other country in Europe we have both either not been to or have been to; and
4. The man who owns the other half of our duplex lives and works in Helsinki and we needed to talk about the declining state of three of our fences.

With those four things in mind, we decided on the following schedule in August:
04-05; Fly to Helsinki
06-13; Be a tourist in Helsinki with a day trip to Tallinn Estonia. See our neighbor. Attend Worldcon from the 9th to the 13th. Eat all the reindeer (inside joke).
14-25; Travel to Britain; York for two nights, Durham for one night, Corbridge for one Night; start five day and night hiking tour of Hadrian's Wall heading West; Lake Country for two nights, Manchester for one night.
26; Fly home

We immediately ordered the Rick Steves' guides for the two counties. The guidebooks from this producer are exceptional and have helped us on our last several trips to Europe. They helped to book our B&Bs and give us advice for the above schedule.

The Hadrian's Wall walk was organized through Mickledore. They are a company that for a set price, will book your B&Bs, move your luggage, and provide materiel for walks throughout the UK. We settled on the five day/six night package while a friend of ours was able to book a three day/four night package and stay at the same B&Bs as us.

We also did a lot of walking exercises, read the nominees to vote for the Hugos, purchasing new items for the hike, making detailed itineraries with hyperlinks, and conducting pre-packing and packing.