International Student

Grocery shopping and more! I hope this post is useful to

• students living on campus of Edge Hill University, especially who self-cater (cook for themselves), or need a break from the university catering
• people who consider living in Ormskirk

The range of shops in Ormskirk can cater to your needs of: everyday grocery shopping, cosmetics/skincare/health and beauty in general, warm clothes and more. You can’t really find some big names like Tesco, Primark, TKmaxx, etc. in Ormskirk but for me, what it has right now is enough for all essential shopping needs. Plus I even think life is made simpler and easier to live, and consumerism is avoided, when you’re not spoilt for choices.

1. Supermarkets in Ormskirk

live on campus, two choices: catered and self-catered. for catered, as is the case with students on a study-abroad program to edge hill – cost 42 GBP per week. self catered students (like me and my flatmates) buy their own food, and we could could save by spending 20 GBP per week but still have a range of food to go round. Supermarkets offer you this saving choice

1. Aldi: cheapest. wide range: spices like ginger garlic also very cheap, much cheaper than Morrisons or M&S Foodhall.
2. Morrisons: bigger shopping space, a cleaner and more tidy look than Aldi in my opinion. Wide range of goods, especially meat and fish, vegetables, desserts and so on, definitely a winner in the area for me. One discovery for me when it comes to Morrisons is the ‘Food to order’ section on their website, which is like booking very good, ready-to-eat food in advance to collect at the store. I think I’ll talk about this in another post on culture highlights I’ve noticed in England.
3. M&S Foodhall (Mark and Spencers): sounds posh? expensive? yeah maybe a little. But I got to admit this is my favorite place to shop: smoothie, range of ready meals, fresh king prawns (I can’t find at Aldi or Morrisons). For other things like vegetables, fruits and meat, I’d say I’d go for Morrisons or Aldi.
4. Poundland: The idea of Poundland is many goods on sale at 1 pound. Sounds ideal enough, and the range of things there is great, I used to shop there in the beginning for mugs and laundry bag, and even makeup, but most other things you can find at Aldi for less than a pound, like 50p or less. So now I almost don’t go to Poundland anymore
5. Iceland: great for shopping frozen food: pizza, varied dishes of chicken, beef, lamb, etc. Bad news is at the time of this post, the Iceland store is closed down for good (from 4 Jan 2020), you have to walk for a while to the next Iceland store. I feel saddened by this because I like to shop a few things at Iceland like their kitchen rolls and box of 10 free range eggs, because they are the cheapest and best value for money among all the stores here.
6. Local butchers: Family butchers, Scott’s butcher. These are great for buying sausages, pork, beef, chicken, lamb; especially at Scott’s Butcher they have many offers/deals everyday and they offer a range of seasoned/prepared-to-cook meat, along with different types of chutney and sauces. Worth a look and a try.

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I only speak from my experience, therefore the information may be limited. The best thing to do is just go to the stores and see for yourself which one is your favorite. As someone who’s been literally scrutinizing through these supermarkets, I think it’s safe to say you can rely on (some of) my choices 🙂

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Comes another problem when shopping around: navigating (tìm đường), which means knowing the roads and streets’ name. But I don’t feel the need to because its very straightforward. As long as you take the Ormskirk tour with the student guides on your arrival, you’ll find it easy to navigate around. the clock tower is the heart of all the shopping places so if you get lost, just find way or ask directions back to the clock tower

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Next, Iceland (which is closed now, since January 2020), and Poundland – where you can find all things at 1 pound! (although sometimes you may want to buy cheaper than 1 pound, in that case, find B&M and Aldi, haha)

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Lastly, a photo inside M&S, though I took of nothing but the flowers:

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2. Shops

I’ll continue in the next post

health and beauty shops, then clothing shops.

Until next time x

Thao Vy Thai