Not the house we house-sitted, but one of the reconstructed models in the open air museum in Cardiff
With so many housesitting websites available to apply for assignments, it's becoming confusing and expensive to keep track of all of them: in fact anglophones countries are notoriously the biggest markets for house sitting, with plenty of opportunities for their users, the housesitters.
In the last years TrustedHouseSitters has become the predominant website around the world to look for an assignment, but unfortunately they are exploiting their supremacy privilege by charging what we believe to be an unfair about of money to their customers, 99€ per year as of today.
But while looking for effective and more affordable alternatives, we have found an house-sitting website specific to UK. It's called HousesittersUK.co.uk and as you can imagine it it is restricted to Great Britain only. It costs 20£ per year, a fraction of its main competitor.
We have tested it during our stay in UK and I have to say that we were quite impressed. In fact there are many assignments available, and if you subscribe to their newsletter, there are daily notifications of new projects listed, sometimes one per day other times even ten all together.
As for every house sitting website there are many housesitters looking for a free place to take care of and for lovely pets to love, so competition is fierce, and it can take some time to get an assignment. But don't give up and keep trying.
At first we have applied for projects in London, where there is the most of the competition, and apparently we were always beat in time by other users, receiving nice answers from the owners, with a polite declination. Quite understandable considering that we didn't have any reviews, being new users.
We also received several direct messages from owners offering us a place to house-sit, but every time it was in a location that wasn't convenient for us to reach, or too late in time, when we would have already left UK.
But in the end when our time in Great Britain was about to finish, we got our chance!
The streets of Cardiff before the rugby match Wales-England
One morning I started browsing for new assignment straight from the bed, and I applied right away to one project in Cardiff posted shortly before, and not far away from Frome where we were staying. I'm not sure if the timing mattered or not, but we got the assignment!
So we ended up in Cardiff for 10 days, taking care of Barney, a 15 years old terrier, and of a clean and comfortable house very well located not far from the center and next to a big park.
It was a great experience, Jeoff (the owner) has been very helpful and friendly, and he let us stay one day earlier and one day after the assignment dates to allow us to find the best connections for our travel plans.
Taking care of Barney hasn't been a big effort at all; being quite old he did sleep a lot, and he just needed to short walks per day, food, water and a lot of cuddles and attention!
For us it was a good break from our visiting and volunteering schedule, we were totally free and independent and we could empty our minds for some time.
Barney and OtiWhile Cardiff is not an impressive touristic destination, it is still a pleasant city to live in and explore. We happened to be there during a big rugby match, Wales-England, so that we could experience the crowded street full of cheering people. What we loved the most in the cities where the historical "arcades" ancestors of modern malls, and the St. Fagans open air museum, with a collection of traditional buildings and houses relocated from all over Wales. It was a really interesting museum and even free!
So our suggestion if you are looking for an house sitting assignment in the UK is to have a look also at HousesittersUK.co.uk, and you won't be disappointed!
Disclaimer: We were offered a promotional membership by HousesitterUK, but our experience and report is totally honest.
Davide Vadalà
