Hi travelready1,

Sorry, I can offer only one small question/suggestion. You'll surely have others more expert than I chime in soon.

Rather than travel north from Edinburgh to then travel south .. what about flying into EDI, staying three nights, use one day for a day trip to St. Andrews, picking up the car at the end of the stay in Edinburgh (parking and driving around the city is usually mentioned by many as troublesome).

For booking places on my UK trips, I've done a mix of booking online with cc on a secure site (looked for the s at the end of https), but also just calling the b&b and leaving my card number to hold the room.

Cheers.

Thanks, Scotlib, for your reply--we are not renting the car until we depart Edinburgh because of the parking problem and not needing a car while there. Thanks for the 's' suggestion regarding online booking!

You have picked some great places to visit. But IMO the first 4 days and the Bath/Salisbury/Canterbury bit are awfully rushed.

Driving from Edinburgh to St Andrews and St Andrews to Housesteads will eat up about 6.5-7 hours just in the car. So basically you'll have 3/4 a day for St Andrews/East Neuk villages and about 1/2 a day along the Wall

Then you'll have 3/4 a day in Bath. And from Salisbury to Canterbury along the coast (Brighton/Rye) will easily take 6 hours w/o any stops. So w/ the stops it will be an all day/exhausting drive w/ no time to see anything else in East Sussex/Kent. No Sissinghurst, or Dover, or Hever, or Bodiam, etc.

It is tempting to try to squeeze in the whole country(s). If it was me I'd slow down a bit.

Thanks for the info about our day from Salisbury to Canterbury...would you suggest staying in Rye for that one night instead of pushing to Canterbury? The 3/4 day in St Andrews is ok as we just want to see the links and have tea in the old clubhouse!

"cost of gasoline??"

AROUND £1.33p a litre.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. We've booked almost all our B&B's thanks to suggestions on this site and tripadvisor:
Edinburgh-2 nights@14HartSt.B&B
St. Andrews--still waiting for confirmation
Hadrians Wall-Ashcroft Guest House
York-3 nights St. Raphael Guest House
Chipping Campden-3 nights-Tythe Barn Cottage
Bath-1 night Three Abbey Green
Salisbury-2 nights-Grasmere Hotel
Canterbury-2 nights--Canterbury Cathedral Lodge
on to London to stay with friends 5 nights
**Now--please guide me to the best car rental company--compact car, automatic. I do not understand the 'extra' insurances.
Thanks everyone! Jill

Assuming you're American (or Canadian, which is effectively the same for this purpose), hire a car from an American company so you can b***h at them when you return if anything goes wrong. We used Thrifty in Scotland, which worked fine. Admittedly, we used Europcar in France, but that's a highly reputable agency and I don't know any other non-American rental agencies that operate in Europe and have equivalent stature.

You may want to cut the rental car short at some point - at current exchange rates, the petrol is $7.88 per gallon. That $80 refuel for an 11-gallon tank will make your eyes pop.

As for extra insurances, call your credit card company/ies and find out what they cover if you use their card(s). Certain ones will give you specific coverages on your rental just by using the card and therefore you won't have to pay the daily coverage rate for the car.

I'd start by getting a quote from autoeurope.com They are a broker that deals w/ most of the majors. Autoeurope will often (but not always) get you the best rate. They quote w/ full coverage, w/o CDW (like our 'deductible'), and w/ no insurance other than the required liability.

I usually omit the CDW because my credit cards cover it.

Then after getting ae's numbers, you can check the individual websites to compare (Hertz, Avis, Budget, Alamo, Europcar, etc.)