National Trust followup

You may recall in my first Open Letter to the National Trust I talked about how the National Trust only allowed people to pay for National Trust membership annually. That is £80+ (for me and my girlfriend) and that was a huge hit out of one months wages for us. I talked about ways the National Trust could and should introduce schemes for members to pay at least quarterly. This is a follow up to that blog post as I’ve worked out a way round this problem for me.

The National Trust has reciprocal agreements with other similar bodies around the world in that it’s members has free entry to all the properties in every organisation within the scheme and vice-versa. There are a vast number of organisations within the scheme, Canada, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jersey and The National Trust for Scotland. I’ve known for a long time that my English National Trust card would be accepted in National Trust for Scotland places.

I've recently been staying at a cottage up in Scotland and we visited a National Trust for Scotland garden near Edinburgh and one of their posters caught my eye. Join the National Trust for Scotland for as little as £3 a month. Reading their leaflets I found out that the National Trust for Scotland allows its members to pay for their membership by monthly direct debit. I did hope that they are not going to turn away money from a potential member just because they don’t live in Scotland but that was not an issue.

So problem solved. I’m now a member of the National Trust for Scotland and can’t wait to use my card in English National Trust properties. Only drawbacks is that I get the National Trust for Scotland property guidebook rather than an English one but they seem to be freely available on e-Bay for just a few quid. Plus I get the Scottish magazine rather than one that gives news of my local properties, but the ability to pay monthly is well worth the sacrifice.

Now why can’t the English National Trust offer its members monthly direct debit?