you can use it abroad, but getting credit is annoying as you need English money,
best advice is, get a pay as you pop phone over there and get onto their local telco to give you a landline deal to the uk, or get your folks on skype.
Thanks m8, need a contact number for things like dog and removals and using current pay as you go and only a for a bit over there and change over to another network I will be doing as long as it works I can put a fair amount of credit on to last
I got told by Orange I can keep my number and use it over there so that should be sorted