Adventuring in the USA and the UK: Differences we found
One of the things we enjoy the most about adventuring outside of the UK is experiencing the novelty of cultural differences, and our thru-paddle of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT) in 2023 gave us ample time to experience so many of them. Throughout all of this we are not staying that one is better or worse than the other, just that they are different places to be and experience. Hopefully this article will help those from the UK travelling to the North East USA, as well as those from the USA looking to have an adventure in the UK. Some of these differences may not be obvious before you travel, but there is the old adage “forewarned is forearmed”, so we hope that some of these differences we’ve noticed can help you before you go.
Camping and Living Outside
The name for camping locations
This is a small detail that more often than not just caused minor confusion amongst the group when talking about what to expect at the location where we were spending the night, but it seems that different sides of the pond refer to camping locations differently.
In the UK we only really have two types of camping:
Campsites - A commercial camping location where you have to pay. These can vary wildly in the services they provide; from just a scrap of land with a toilet and a potable water tap to a full holiday park with pools, bars, clubs and shops on site.
Wild Camping - Specific regions where you can camp without charge. These are limited. There are other locations where a blind eye is the case for those who are respectful. In general wild camping in the UK is much harder since 2020 where there was a massive influx of people camping who did not necessarily respect the land and follow the Countryside Code (which is basically the UK version of Leave No Trace).
In the USA there are a few types of camping location we came across:
Campsites - Designated camping locations that were free to stay at. Along the NFCT we found that these mostly had a fire pit, picnic bench, long drop toilet, and somewhere to pitch a tent or two. Critically there is no fresh potable water at these locations. The UK doesn't really have an equivalent to this.
Campgrounds - A commercial location where you pay to stay the night. Many of these had toilets, showers, and clothes washing facilities.
Dispersed camping - From our understanding this is similar to wild camping in the UK where there is a designated area that you are allowed to camp anywhere. Interestingly some of the arguments against this type of camping that we heard in the USA resonate with those relating to wild camping in the UK.
National parks
What is meant by “National Park” - The National Parks in the USA and the UK are fundamentally the same idea, however, the starting points were quite different and hence the experience being in them is significantly different. By the time that humans as a species had decided “hang on we should probably keep some of the nature that is left” the UK had pretty much altered most of the natural landscape on the rock in one way or another. There are a few small pockets with minimal changes from humans, however, these are few and far between. For example, The Lake District is held up as one of the UK’s best National Parks. The whole area was once trees, but now it is mostly farmland. Even the mountains are still used to graze sheep, and as such have dry stone walls all the way up to some of the peaks to keep the sheep in specific areas. New housing or business construction projects are difficult (but not impossible) to do in a UK National Park. This could not be more different to the parks we have been to in the USA. The Allagash Wilderness Waterway, since the logging ceased, has had a dedicated effort to rewild and reduce the human impact on the environment, with strict rules on what could even be taken in and out of the area.
Park fees - This is just a USA thing. In the UK you can wander, ride, or drive into any of the National Parks without charge. Now don’t get us wrong, there can be some hellishly expensive car parks, but entrance is free. This is largely due to the fact that there are significant sized communities in all of them with houses, shops and everything else that makes living somewhere possible. So the first time we went to a National Park in the US and were asked to pay just to get in was a bit of a surprise.
Park Rangers - We think that we can count the number of times we have seen a UK Park Ranger in the wild on one hand. They are woefully underfunded and under-appreciated by the UK public. When visiting any of the USA parks we have bumped into and had a chat with at least one each time, and this is not even including the ones at the gates on the way in! We have always found the Rangers a wonderful source of knowledge and experience, and that they are happy to pass this onto hapless visitors from foreign shores.
Entirely unpopulated sections of river were quite common, we’re sure we saw over a billion trees throughout the trip
Wood and trees
Volume and quality of woodland - In general the north east of the USA has significantly more woodland than found anywhere in the UK. Interestingly this has little to do with the weather or topography, but rather many of the UK trees were used to make ships many years ago. Much of what was once woodland is either farmland or urban sprawl now. This means irrespective of the size of the campsite in the UK there are rarely many trees, and often open fires are not allowed. This is almost completely different to our experience along the NFCT. There were seemingly endless forests in which the camping locations were situated. This meant that there were often many trees in superb locations for stringing up tarps and gravity filters. One strange thing we did find was the number of trees with nails in. Some of these nails we made use of hanging water filters or the Andy Handy.
Prevalence of firewood - There is probably a large crossover between the volume of woodland and the prevalence of firewood. However, while on the NFCT we never found a lack of dry fallen timber suitable for firewood at any of the campsites. The prevalence of suitable firewood can be summed up by this fact - we did not once require an axe. A simple laplander folding saw was sufficient for the whole trip and when starting fires there somehow always seemed to be a piece of silver birch bark the size of an A4 sheet of paper to get them going. Silver birch trees just don’t grow that well in the UK. Sadly, if there happened to be a silver birch at any of the possible camping locations where fires are allowed in the UK, it would likely have been stripped from root to head height of bark. For this reason it always felt like a little treat starting a fire with silver birch bark.
Flora and fauna
There is no getting away from the plants and animals being different between the UK and USA. This might be because in general the UK has, for the last thousand years, systematically removed any plant or animal that could cause serious harm.
In terms of Flora, we have already discussed some of the differences in what trees we saw more of, but the differences go further with poison oak, poison ivy, poison sumac, wild parsnip just not being present in the UK. We were glad that we had researched these before heading out as we came across all of them at one point or another.
Interestingly hogweed, giant or otherwise, is something that we do have in the UK; along with stinging nettles. When we were around these we automatically avoided them out of habit.
In the UK there are only a couple of animals that you have to watch out for, and mainly only in isolated areas. Wild boars, badgers (if you accidentally corner them), and adders (a type of snake). Firstly, UK badgers are different to the USA ones, with European badgers generally shying away from areas with humans, although they are bigger than their North American counterparts. Adders are rare in the UK, but even as a healthy adult if you get bitten the hospital will often treat the bite with a course of antibiotics. One of our family accidently stepped on one some years ago and got bitten. It was painful, but after a dose of antibiotics they were back to rights in just a few days.
The animals in the USA are on a whole different level of dangerous. Bears, elk, wolves, cougars, and many venomous snakes have habitats in North America, to name but a few. We had to make changes to the way that we camped and portaged to reduce the risk of a negative encounter with the various native animals. If travelling by your own power in this part of the world we would highly recommend that you become well versed with, not only the types of animals, but also how to reduce the chance of a negative encounter with them. We decided to carry bear spray. This may not be the answer for you, but it gave us a sense of reassurance and confidence while in the backcountry.
Much in the same way as the animals, the bugs in the two counties are quite different. In the UK we have mosquitos in comparatively low numbers and midges by the swarm. We don't have the variety of nuisance bugs that are apparent in the USA. Along rivers and lakes in the UK there are lightning bugs, but nowhere near in the volumes that we encountered daily in the USA. We cannot stress enough the importance of bug shirts, head nets, and working gloves if you are looking to plan adventures in the Northeast US.
Weather
In the UK we are obsessed about the weather, and we took this keen interest with us to the USA. These are a few of the things we noticed.
Predictability - as it is so changeable in the UK there is a saying “if you don’t like the weather then wait 10 minutes,” which has led us to feel dubious about weather forecasting. In general it will be right, but should always be taken with a large pinch of salt. Whereas in the part of the USA we were in, the weather forecasting from Garmin was unnervingly accurate. The epitome of this was when we were in Mansonville, and the weather forecast said there would be a thunderstorm and rain arriving at 14:00. The weatherfront arrived almost to the minute. We know that this is due to the size of the landmass, and the radar weather tracking, but even so, the accuracy was welcome. This gave us quite a bit of confidence for starting some of our larger lake crossings.
Warm rain - Ok so this one may sound a little strange. As most of the weather in the UK is blown off the sea the rain tends to be cold. There are maybe only a few days a year where it is warm enough for you to stand in the pouring rain in a t-shirt and shorts and not get cold. We had weeks of rain on the NFCT where it was so warm it was not worth getting waterproofs out, as we would have just boiled in the bag and got soaked from our own sweat. Somehow at the end of the day we could hang up our clothes under the tarp and they would be mostly dry by the morning. This was a super novel experience for us, and not an unpleasant one!
Drought and flood - In 2023 when we did our through paddle we started off (May) in unseasonably hot (30+C°, 86°F) dry weather which turned out to be a drought. Unfortunately for a canoe adventure this meant many longer portages to get past the low water. It was not until much later in the trip that the weather changed dramatically with day after day of rain which led to widespread flooding. The change between low water and high water took only a few days. We got to see footage of locations we had passed just a few days before when they had washed out. This meant that we had the reverse experience of many thru-paddlers as it is common to start with high water and end with low. We actually found many of the rapids in the Allagash to be little more than riffles given the high water levels we experienced near the end of the trail. Having extensive flooding (anything more than a 24 hour flash flood) in July and August in the UK is almost unheard of.
Rivers and Lakes
One of the key reasons we decided to thru-paddle the NFCT was the size and length of it. You can fit the whole of Great Britain from tip to tip within the length of the NFCT (Land’s End to John O’Groats is 603 miles as the crow flies). There are just not the rivers with the scale of those that can be found in the USA in the UK. However, scale was not the only difference that we found.
Pollution & water quality - This is a big one for us. In the UK we are struggling with water quality in many of our rivers and lakes. This is largely due to farming run-off as well as deregulated water companies that have dumped huge quantities of raw sewage into the rivers. Paddle UK regularly highlight the issue of the health of UK rivers and there are political movements in the UK attempting to combat this; one of the most prominent being Surfers Against Sewage. So when we have been paddling in the USA it has been a real treat to have water that is possible to drink after putting through a water filter. We have an article about drinking water on the NFCT here.
Size of lakes - There is just no comparison on this one, even when we were preparing for the NFCT we purposefully sought out large bodies of water in the UK to go and play on.
We were thankful that we did, as we found our limit of waves while training on the Great Glen Canoe Trail, but to put it in perspective, Loch Ness is the largest open body of water in the UK and Lake Champlain is 24 times bigger! When we paddled Loch Ness in training we could just about see the hills at the other end when we entered the loch. The day we crossed Lake Champlain though, we could not even see half way along where we needed to get to.
Another example was Mooselookmeguntic Lake. The morning we needed to cross it was like a sheet of glass, with a low wind forecast for the rest of the day. We decided to take a possibly more risky route and straight-lined it to the get out, rather than hugging the shore. When we checked on the Garmin Explorer+ that put us well over a mile from shore on either side for most of the crossing. Being that far from shore on an inland lake is just not something that you could do in the UK.
Jet skies - In the UK, due to our aforementioned lack of large lakes and generally low permissible speeds on lakes, Jet skies are not really a thing. They are more used on the coast and this happens a fair amount. We were a little surprised at how many there were along the NFCT, especially in the Adirondacks. In an open-top canoe Jet skies (or Seadoos) were a right pain for us. Not only are they loud and disturb nature, they can also pose an unpredictable swamping hazard. When they are used responsibly and they drop their speed as they pass you the danger is minimal. We unfortunately had a couple of close moments where a hard bow pry and stern rudder were needed to get the wake from a few to not hit us side on!
Sailing boats - Despite the relatively small inland waterways, there are a surprising number of sailing boats in the UK. It seems that you cannot have a body of water bigger than a puddle without someone who wants to harness the power of the wind and go for a sail. So when we were crossing seemingly endless bodies of water on the NFCT we were surprised at how few sailing boats were on the water. This is not saying that there were not any, just significantly less. Being in canoes this was good for us as sailing boats tend to be a bit less nimble than their motorised compatriots, and in the UK we have had a couple of occasions where we have had to dodge a sailing boat that has put in a tack without seeing us!
One of the few sailing boats we saw was on one of the largest lakes
Food in supermarkets
When we travel somewhere new we always try to find wherever the locals get food. This is a great opportunity to find new foods and try new things. Often the snack aisles are full of flavour combinations that you just don’t get in the UK. However, there were quite a few other differences that we noticed while shopping in the US.
Fresh fruit and vegetables
This is one which was not obvious to begin with, but when looking for ingredients for fresh meals it became apparent. A larger proportion of the supermarket's floor space in the UK is dedicated to fresh fruit and vegetables. There are often many varieties of common fresh fruit and vegetables available even in smaller supermarkets; and fruit and veg is generally cheaper than we were able to find throughout our trip. When considering the size of the USA and the distances that food is shipped by road though, it makes sense why the perishable ingredients are significantly reduced in number and increased in cost.
Shelf stable foods
For multi-day expeditions we found that US supermarkets were much more suited for this, due to the amount of shelf stable foods available. In contrast it can be difficult in the UK to get cheap dried packet shelf stable foods. Yes there is pre-packaged “expedition food” however these tend to be expensive. We had great fun wandering around supermarkets coming up with what we were going to eat. Believe it or not, when we were at the start of the NFCT we ended up having to put food back as there was more variety than we expected!
Sweetness of foods
This may be somewhat of an internet meme, but from what we experienced everything did seem to be sweeter in the US. When looking at ingredients in things it was surprising how often high fructose corn syrup was in the list somewhere. This was more apparent in the cheaper food options, or in breakfasts we had provided with some accommodation on the trip. We did find that health food shops did provide ingredients without this ingredient however they did come with a heavier price tag. This felt very different to the UK where the colloquially called “sugar tax” has resulted in foods with high sugar levels being much more expensive than their lower sugar counterparts.
A small but significant difference to Katrina, there were no fried eggs in Haribo Starmix?!
Highways, Byways, & Public Transport
Roads - The roads we travelled down in the USA tended to be far wider and straighter than those in the UK. It was not until we got into the larger cities, such as Boston, that we saw anything like the traffic you get in the UK. We found that driving in the USA is just easier than in the UK, largely due to the wider roads with less vehicles on. The lower speed limits on most roads felt almost sedate compared to the main roads we are used to driving in the UK. We were thankful for this when we were driving U-Haul trucks at the end of our trip.
Footpaths at the side of the road (pavements, sidewalks) - It felt to us that there had almost been a conscious effort to make it difficult to walk anywhere in the US. There were a number of occasions where we wanted to walk from one place to another on the outskirts of a town (e.g to a supermarket) and there were no footpaths at all! The whole place seemed made for cars. This was strange to us as there are historic footpaths and rights of way that criss-cross the UK and you can largely get to anywhere by walking and not having to wander along the side of a busy road with nothing separating you from the fast moving traffic. On the occasion where there was a sidewalk it was surprising how rough, bumpy and full of trip hazards they were, even in major cities!
One of the widest verges we ended up walking along
Level crossings - This might have been one of the strangest differences to us on the trip. In the UK where a road crosses train tracks (railway or railroad crossings) there are multiple layers of safety. These include, but are not limited to: warning sounds; warning lights, security cameras linked to the train operator; and automated barriers. Even on a small rural road there will be barriers. In the US we came across a few that had nothing, not even lights to let you know a train was coming. We certainly did not hang around when crossing the tracks when we were there!
Trains - Love them or hate them they are often a cheap and easy way of travelling between major cities the world over. The length of the trains that are operated in the USA are just on another level compared to those in the UK. Some of the US freight trains that we had to wait for to cross a railroad went on for what seemed like miles.
At the start of our NFCT adventure we caught the train from Boston to Albany and per mile it was far cheaper than any train you could get in the UK, however it was far less pleasant. The train broke down multiple times, was delayed by a couple hours, leaked inside when it rained, the track was bumpy, the lights in the carriage went on and off at seemingly random intervals, the toilets were grim, the temperature was stifling, and the food on offer was not great. A tip for the wise: take your own food and drink if travelling on US trains it will be cheaper and nicer than anything they have on offer. Now we are not saying that the UK trains are all fun and roses either (far from it!), however it would be unlikely that you would experience all of this on one train ride in the UK.
People and Interactions
We were blown away by the difference when interacting with the general public while canoeing. In the UK canoeists are treated by non-paddlers with a somewhat curious amount of caution. You may get the odd surreptitious point or nod in your general direction, but very few adults will interact with you. This could not be more different to what we found in the USA. People would just walk up to us, as bold as brass, and ask us what we were up to. Also we were told about Trail Angels prior to our trip, but we were not expecting the number of positive interactions, or the magnitude of what people were willing to help us with.
All in all the UK and USA have a lot in common, but it was the differences that kept us on our toes and gave us many interesting tales for us to tell!