Georgie Hello and welcome to Real Easy English. In this podcast, we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I’m Georgie.
Beth And I’m Beth. You can find a video of this podcast and a worksheet to help you practice what you’ve learnt on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
Georgie How are you today, Beth?
Beth I’m very well, thank you. How are you?
Georgie Yes, I’m pretty good, thank you.
Beth Good. So, what are we talking about today?
Georgie Well, Beth, today we are talking about places. We’ll talk about the city and the countryside and which we prefer.
Beth Very nice. OK, let’s start then. So, Georgie, if you were going to visit somewhere, for example, would you prefer to visit the city or the countryside?
Georgie Are we talking about the UK or going abroad?
Beth Let’s start with the UK.
Georgie OK. If I visit somewhere in the UK, I would usually want to go to the countryside. That’s because I live in a city. I live in London, but I’m from the countryside, so sometimes I crave going out into a more rural area where I can see more green space, there’s more wildlife. It’s almost like you need to escape the, the busy hustle and bustle of the city.
Beth Yeah. D’you know, I, I completely agree with you. Cities in the UK are great. There are some great cities, but I have visited quite a lot of them. And after a while the cities are all similar. Whereas the countryside, you can do different activities. It’s really nice to see new places. I, a few years ago, I went to Kent and I had never been to Kent before because I’m from the north of England and Kent is in the south, and it was amazing. They had different kinds of buildings and like architecture on the farms. We don’t have those same kind of roofs in the farms in the, in the north.
Georgie Yeah, I also went to Kent last year. I did, but I went to the seaside because Kent also has a bit of coastline. Yeah. And yeah, I really enjoyed visiting Kent.
Beth And the villages are so like cute and picturesque, we could say.
Georgie What about when you go abroad? Do you, do you also visit the countryside in other countries?
Beth I have done, but to be honest, I would normally go to a city if I go abroad, maybe the capital city or maybe a smaller city. But one of the reasons for that, I think, is the transport. It’s so much easier to get a train or a bus when you’re in a city. And you’d have to hire a car, I think, to visit a village or something like that.
Georgie It’s very true. Usually if you go abroad, you fly to an airport and the airports are usually closer to the city. And if you only have a few days in a place, it’s easier to just stay in the city. It’s also, I guess, easier to do lots of, like, activities in the city when you visit and try out lots of the local restaurants, everything is closer together so you can do more things.
Beth Well, I’m just thinking if you’re in the city you can, like, search on your phone for really good restaurants really easily. But if I’m in Italy, for example, and I don’t speak Italian, it would be really difficult, I think, for me to find a good restaurant because I wouldn’t know where to go. Sometimes it’s the locals in the countryside that are able to tell you this. It might not even be on the internet.
Georgie Yep. That’s very true.
Let’s recap the language we used in this conversation, starting with countryside, land outside of towns and cities where there are not many buildings. We can also describe this with the adjective rural.
Beth And hustle and bustle, the busyness and noise that you find in the city.
Georgie We had picturesque, which means pretty or beautiful. We often use this to describe a place.
Beth And visit, to go somewhere for a short time.
Georgie That’s it for this episode of Real Easy English. Go to our website to find a worksheet to test what you’ve learned. bbclearningenglish.com
Beth And next week we’ll be talking about gifts. So see you then.
Georgie Goodbye.