europeannovice

Hi all,

Is this a nutty thing to try and do in one day?

I know we can easily combine Sissinghurst with Bodiam and Scotney in one day but we are trying to also somehow fit in both Rye and Port Lympne if we can into the trip and don't know best combination to accomplish this.

Another option for us is to combine Port Lympne with Dover Castle (leaving out Walmer and Deal) and then on another day we can combine Sissinghurst, Bodiam, Rye and maybe Scotney too?

However, we would like to see Walmer at least along with Dover Castle. DS would like to see one of the animal conservation places either Port Lympne or Howlets and Port Lympne I believe will be closer to other things we want to see.

So far I have

Option 1

Day 1--Dover, St Margaret's Bay, Walmer, Deal
Day 2-Port Lympne, Rye, Bodiam
Day 3--Sissinghurst and Ightham Mote (must see list)
Won't be able to do Scotney with this option.

Option 2
Day 1-Dover Castle and Port Lympne--is it better to see Port Lympne in the morning though rather than afternoon?
Day 2-Sissinghurst, Bodiam, and Rye
Day 3- Ightham and Scotney
Won't be able to see St Margarets Bay, Deal or Walmer under this option

Do you have recommendations on what might work best and which places you enjoyed the most?

Thanks for all your wonderful advice.

anicecupoftea

I don't mean this as criticism, but I fear you are over planning and trying to structure your days too tightly. What happens if when you wake up on day 2 it's raining? Or you get stuck in a traffic jam for an hour? Or even if you love a place so much you would rather linger a while? Allow yourself some time to relax, sit in a tea room with a slice of cake and people watch, poke round the shops, have a glass of wine over a long lunch, go for a walk. Have rough plans of couple of things you want to do each day, and a nearby extra or alternative in case plans change. But slow down a bit - it's a holiday, not an endurance test.

europeannovice

anicecupoftea--You are right, you have to be flexible. When we visited London a few years back, we went to the National Portrait Gallery and DS spotted a free art class that he wanted to join so we did that instead of touring the museum. We missed out on seeing the museum but he had fun doing the class which was just as well.

On that same trip, DS got food poisoning and we had to cancel our trip to Oxford because he was at University Hospital instead and in the hotel room wretched for two days.

My point in planning the logistics this way though is since we are traveling so far, we at least want to "try" to see some of the major highlighted sites and plan for other things nearby. If we just wing it entirely we may miss out on some things we really wished to have seen but couldn't because we didn't plan appropriately.

We want to factor in driving distances and not wake up and say let's do Port Lympne and Hever Castle which may not make too much sense from a distance standpoint. However, the zoo and Rye or the zoo and Dover seem to be about the same driving distances between them.

I realize we probably won't see all that I have listed--but we are looking for a general consensus of good grouping combinations and opinions on what not to miss.

europeannovice

From a driving perspective the map programs say that it takes approx. 30 min to go from Dover to Port Lympne and it also says it takes about 30 min to go from Port Lympne to Rye.

Is that accurate? Most people advise to build in an extra 30-50% to the suggested driving times. Is one road more a major highway and the other a slower country road? Are they both country roads?

Which is easier to navigate for a novice?

janisj

Dover to Port Lympne is one of the few drives that the mapping programs get pretty close. I'd give it 35-ish minutes.

But Port Lympne to Rye woud take significantly more than 30 mins. Closer to an hour IME. Its only 20-ish miles but a slow 20 miles.

MmePerdu

It seems to me one should be flexible in one's desires to stay longer or not in a place too. So many threads asking what you should do when you and your companions might better make these decisions on the ground, not in advance, for many reasons. There is no such thing as an itinerary without trade-offs when the list is as long as yours seems to be. Maybe just relax and see how it goes.

europeannovice

Thanks again. That is why it is best to get a real person's opinion on actual "approximate" driving times vs. the programs. Of course on any given day there could be delays but in general it is good to know that Rye to Port Lympne takes more time than Port Lympne to Dover would take in our example.

Of course, as anicecupoftea states, if it is pouring rain, like it was when we were in Edinburgh, then we would rethink going to the zoo.

We don't have to pre-book that at least. I pre-booked Alcatraz tickets a couple of years ago when visiting San Francisco because those tickets sell out fast and of course I picked the day of heavy rain. It was us and a couple of hundred other people there that day soaked through and through coming on and off the boat.

I'd just like to have a good sense of what could be grouped together vs. what looks nice on paper but doesn't make sense in reality. The hardest part with so many great and interesting things to see is to decide what to leave out!