Discover the UK's most unique and unusual Airbnbs. We hop onboard a quirky Airbnb in Yorkshire and even stay in a unique double decker bus in Teesside which is based on a farm. Our final place to stay is one of Lancashire's most strange Airbnb offerings. Sit back and relax and see if we can find you your next weekend break.
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00:00 Discover the UK's most unique and unusual Airbnbs. We hop on board a quirky Airbnb in Yorkshire and
00:10 even stay in a unique double-decker bus in Teesside which is based on a farm. Our final place
00:16 to stay is one of Lancashire's most strange Airbnb offerings. So sit back and relax and see if we
00:21 can find you your next weekend break. My name is Tom Greenwood and I am an Airbnb host. Welcome to
00:31 Rainbow's End. We're here at Dowley Gap which is, for those of you who don't know, it's a little
00:36 tiny hamlet I would imagine between Saltair and Bingley Five Rise locks. I bought this boat about
00:43 I want to say about five or six years ago something like that, I can't remember exactly.
00:47 We lived on it, myself and my wife Prue, enjoyed living on it but then decided you know it's time
00:54 to get a house, bought a house and then what do you do with an enormous boat that's sat there
01:00 doing nothing so we decided to go down the Airbnb route. We spent about a year getting everything
01:07 just so, took it up to dry dock, got it blacked, got it all ready and then did all the garden as
01:13 best we could. Spent a fortune and I thought right I'll read this book on how to do Airbnb,
01:20 Airbnb for dummies. We listed it and within seven hours the phone or my iPad just went crackers.
01:27 I say to people when they get here, I say it's really relaxing and when I say that it'll be like
01:33 you've been given a tranquiliser and people say we got it and then they'll speak, you'll come back
01:38 and speak to people and they'll go we got in there and an hour later I was comatosed on the sofa,
01:43 what is it? I said I've no idea, I said it just slows you down. That's the nature of boats, it's
01:50 you know, don't buy a canal boat if you want to go anywhere fast or do anything fast because
01:55 everything's slow. As part of the Airbnb experience we want to offer our guests
02:03 we thought about adding spa or pamper sessions so I'm currently training as a complementary
02:10 therapist and so we're going to be offering as add-ons relaxation treatments such as a full
02:15 body massage, head massage, just kind of relaxation pamper stuff so that's going to be added on to
02:22 this lovely Airbnb. They can be inside if it's raining, they can be outside if it's even if it's
02:27 drizzling, have a barbecue, do whatever you know eventually hopefully we're going to do some
02:33 canoes down the canal. All the alternative energy that we've put onto it, all the electrical systems
02:38 and everything we've done to it is a lifetime's work for me. I did it with my last house and I
02:44 wanted to make an off-grid lifestyle, this has just done it. I am as nervous or was as nervous
02:50 as a kitten saying there you go there are the keys to my pride and joy, enjoy it, don't trash it,
02:57 but what I've found is most we cater only for couples, no kids, no pets, 99.9% of the people
03:07 that come here are extremely respectful, they look after it, some people you can't even tell
03:14 they've been here, they literally, they must photograph it before they start and then put
03:19 everything back exactly as it is. We've had people in tears because they've had to leave,
03:24 it's like well I can't do it about that but you can always buy your own boat.
03:28 Maybe it comes from singing the wheels on the bus so often as children but there's something
03:40 about getting on a double-decker that makes a lot of us think of happy times.
03:48 Hi my name is Nish, this is Anu, my wife. We are in just the outskirts of Norton which is in
03:56 Teesside, it's quite a beautiful area and here we are, this is Mew View and this is located on a
04:04 farm just outside of Norton and if you were to look around you would be able to see the countryside
04:10 that is around here. Sell it but it was for a different purpose altogether and then things
04:20 moved on from there, we bought the bus and then converted it into this Airbnb. Everybody as a
04:27 child wanted to you know drive a bus, at least I did, so the essence of living in a bus is completely
04:35 unique in its way that it's completely different to any other accommodation that you can live in,
04:40 plus being out in the countryside it's you're quite exposed to the elements but then being
04:46 inside a bus makes it quite a different sort of experience compared to what you would expect in
04:51 a log cabin or something else. And the bus is in the south facing field so the views are amazing
04:58 from here and the sun is almost here all day. We've been trying to decorate it for the past
05:11 six to seven months, it's partly because we've got other jobs full-time
05:15 and this is you know sort of a hobby rather than anything else.
05:23 So we've only recently listed it about two weeks ago and we've had loads of inquiries mostly from
05:31 people at work and you know other places but yes we've had some people who've recently stayed in
05:37 it and the response was quite enthusiastic and there are more bookings on the way so
05:43 people are expected to come up in the near future.
05:50 We've already seen of course that a bus isn't the only mode of travel that can be converted
05:54 into a great place for a getaway. The couple mentioned to us that they had also considered
05:59 the possibility of transforming a... Speaking of that, but it's taken us such a long time
06:04 that we're thinking in the future yes that is a distinct possibility, time allowing of course.
06:09 And we have looked at one of the train carriages as well so I don't know what will happen next.
06:14 [Music]
06:31 So this place basically is my dad's land. He bought it before I was born, probably maybe
06:39 a couple years before I was born and then he decided to dig the lake out, create the island
06:44 and then he decided to open a holiday park.
06:46 There's 16 lodges and then there's the Canadian cabins, four geodesic domes which are out on the
06:54 lake so they've got a really nice view and we've got the glamping pods over there which are more
06:59 like a kind of camping style quite you know rough and ready to a certain degree but people like them
07:03 you know if they want to do a bit of a glamping, a bit glamorous then pop in a tent.
07:08 [Music]
07:10 My dad, he was always buying strange things online so I think he saw one on an auction
07:15 or something they thought oh I'll buy that and convert it into sleeping accommodation.
07:19 [Music]
07:31 So this helicopter arrived in 2015 and it's a decommissioned ex-Lynx helicopter that obviously
07:38 was used in the military. My dad is in the aviation and he decided that this would be a
07:43 great touch for us so something you know a bit unique, no one had done it before at the time.
07:47 So yeah it's very popular amongst young children and adults and you know adds a bit of a different
07:55 touch to our park.
07:56 [Music]
07:58 The helicopter was actually sourced online through an auction strangely enough so yeah it was one of
08:05 those things that caught my dad's eye and he thought oh wow that's brilliant and he decided
08:09 to do it from there on. It came on a very big wagon, on a huge wagon and then it came off on a
08:17 forklift. Yeah it was a bit of a mission to get it sighted. It was actually a horsebox manufacturer
08:25 but he specified, he specialised sorry in refurbishments and he'd done a bus before
08:30 actually. He'd converted a bus into sleeping accommodation for somebody down south.
08:34 So he came and he obviously had all the ideas, he knew exactly what to do. He basically ripped
08:39 the whole thing out apart from obviously we tried to keep as many natural features as possible
08:44 and then he ripped it all out, created the bed space, the sofa space and then obviously
08:49 your kitchen, kitchen space and there's also a sink in there I forgot to mention that.
08:53 Well I'm not quite sure how we managed it but we did.
08:57 I think our next venture in the glamping world may be some sort of bus, I quite fancy doing that
09:11 so you never know there might be a plot here with a double-decker bus at some point
09:15 but we'll see what happens.
09:17 [Music]
09:23 (explosion)