Travel the Home Exchange Way blog:

Can add my holiday home in Tuscany for home swaps?

Add a holiday/second home at no additional cost

Q: I live in Bristol, England but am lucky enough to also have a small (but lovely!) holiday apartment in Tuscany, Italy. I’ve been looking at the Home Base Holidays website and have seen quite a few home swap offers that appeal to me. I wanted to check, can add my holiday home in Italy or does it need to be my main property in the UK? - Kim

A: Absolutely! You can add your main home in Bristol or your holiday apartment in Tuscany ...or both! There are lots of Home Base Holidays members that choose to add their holiday homes (during the sign up steps, you'll see the option to tick “Second/holiday home”).

Listing a holiday home often allows more flexibility as you might be able to then consider non-simultaneous exchanges, where you and the other member choose to swap homes at different times rather than organising your holidays for the same dates.

Add a second home for free: as a Home Base Holidays member, you can add additional properties at no extra charge. Therefore, if you are interested in swaps with both your home in Bristol and your apartment in Italy, you'll be able to add them both under the same membership.

Home Base Holidays - Travel the Home Exchange Way!

Sign up to the Home Base Holidays 2-week free trial and arrange a home swap holiday. You'll find thousands of tempting home swap offers, including country cottages, city apartment, houseboats and homes by the sea. Search home swap holiday offers

in General Home Exchange Information, Home Base Holidays, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

Member gifts free holiday in France to NHS keyworker

Megan & Andy enjoyed a wonderful holiday in Tim & Jan's home in Auvergne

The past two years have been hard on us all, but it's been an especially stressful time for healthcare staff working on the frontline of the pandemic. That's why we were delighted to team up with the My Travel Pledge campaign to help provide much needed holidays to healthcare professionals.

It was amazing to see so many Home Base Holidays members sign up to the campaign and offer free holidays to NHS staff. As a result, healthcare workers enjoyed free holiday accommodation in members' homes in London, the Lake District, Cornwall, Devon, Amsterdam, Auvergne, and many more. It really highlighted the warmth and generosity of our home swap community.

We were so happy to receive the feedback (below) from Megan, a NHS Physician Associate, who enjoyed a wonderful relaxing stay with her husband at, Home Base Holidays members, Tim and Jan's beautiful home in Auvergne in France.

"I still can’t believe our luck that we were chosen by Tim and Jan to stay at their absolutely beautiful home in Auvergne, France. As you can see from the pictures, the views from their home are so stunning and Tim and Jan are some of the kindest, most generous people I have had the pleasure of meeting. It was so wonderful to have this week of relaxation - I am an NHS physician associate working in oncology and had been deployed to a new area during the covid pandemic. I absolutely love my work, but it has certainly been more stressful and emotionally draining. Additionally, my husband and I are both American so hadn’t been able to see any of our family since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s why I was so humbled and excited to be selected for this extremely generous offer - my husband Andy and I (and our dog!) had a wonderful relaxing week hiking and cooking and we were even able to reunite with my husbands brother who met us from Colorado and so it was so great to both unwind and be able to see family for the first time in almost 2 years. We enjoyed lots of beautiful walks in the surrounding countryside, drank coffee at adorable cafes, ate delicious French food, and drank wine in the evening in the terrace enjoying the view and the company. And if it wasn’t already generous enough, Tim and Jan invited us to over for a evening of a wonderful dinner and relaxing by the fire pit. I feel so very fortunate to have had this experience as well as having had the opportunity to get to know Tim and Jan through our emails as they are just absolutely lovely people. I was also so interested to hear their wonderful experience with the home swap community and we’ve already discussed swapping homes with Tim and Jan when we get settled into our new home in Scotland.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to Tim and Jan and to Home Base Holidays and all the lovely people of the Home Swap community who so generously offered their homes to healthcare workers and made this possible."

- Megan & Andy

Megan & Andy's holiday in Auvergne, France

Auvergne, France (HE34021)

Fantastic views from the house and patio, here you can watch buzzards, kestrels, red kites (perhaps even a short-toed eagle). Great walking/hiking country in the mountains with lakes and waterfalls. Plenty of outdoor activities such as mountain biking, riding, rock climbing and fishing.

View Tim & Jan's home swap offer

Home Base Holidays: join for free and start home swapping

Sign up to Home Base Holidays two-week free trial or select a full membership (6-month membership is just £29 and 1-year at £49).

Home swap guarantee: second year free if you do not arrange a swap during your membership.

in General Home Exchange Information, Good Causes, Home Base Holidays, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

Home swap experiences: sledging on New Year's Day

Home swap holiday: Ramsbottom to the Scottish Highlands

"We enjoyed excellent communication with Pat prior to our home swap which made settling into their comfortable Highlands home very easy. The house has stunning views from the large lounge window across to the nearby Loch and surrounding mountain scenery.

We all slept incredibly well - not sure if this was because it was wonderfully quiet, the action packed days or the lovely comfy beds!

We managed to visit nearby Fort William and immerse ourselves in some local history at the nearby Highlands Museum. We took the chairlift and made it to the top of Glencoe. We had a fantastic day sledging with the children, followed by gorgeous hot chocolates in the cafe afterwards.

We ventured over to nearby Kinlochleven and tried our hand at ice climbing ...a totally new adventure for us all but we had great instruction and quickly progressed to climbing up the ice wall.

After action packed days, it was wonderful to return to our home swap home and put our feet up in front of the log fire and enjoy a glass of wine. Their kitchen is very well equipped and so it made eating in very easy.

The Scottish Highlands was a new area for us to explore, the views and scenery are truly breathtaking around almost every corner. We would love to return as there was so much to see and do.

A BIG thank you to Pat and Neil for allowing to share this wonderful experience."

- Joanne (Ramsbottom, England)

Highlights from the Scottish Highlands swap:

Loch, mountains & stunning scenery
Sledging at the top of Glencoe on New Year's Day
Ice climbing in at Ice Factor at Kinlochleven
Enjoying a drink in Clachaig Inn next to the roaring fire, soaking up the fantastic atmosphere.