April in Cornwall and Bath
 

Hello all. I’m GOING OUT OF MY MIND (had to get that out there first, haha) and am planning trips to stay sane. If I have something to look forward to, it helps immeasurably. Before I continue, this trip would be my husband and I, mid-70s, walk a lot (not hiking, but lots of walking), love gardens, architecture, museums, relaxing, good food, meeting new people. I would say we’d have a nightly budget of 300 - 350 USD tops. Thinking about ten days. One of my daydream trips - God willing - would be late next April, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

Basically:
Bath 5 nights
Cornwall 3-4 nights
London or Oxford 1 night, to be close to Heathrow to fly home

Fly LAX to London, get a driver to take us to Bath (it would be worth it to us). Stay in Bath five nights, relax and recover, see environs. I would also love to see Hidcote gardens, some Arts and Crafts homes and gardens (Kelmscott, etc) as well, and we would use a personal driving service to get there. **If it’s not practical to go that far, I’ll put it off for another trip. Like this place to stay: Grays | A beautiful Boutique B&B in Bath.

From there, we’d go to Cornwall. I realize that the trains are limited, but perhaps we could get one partway - Exeter? - and get someone to pick us up for the remaining distance. Once, there, I would book day trips with this guy: https://www.tourcornwall.com. I did read someone’s trip report about Cornwall w/o a car! Bravo! Perhaps that would work for one day, but we would use him to see the rest of the area. We look forward to seeing the Lost Gardens of Helligan, other gardens, loved Doc Martin so seeing Port Isaac would be fun, not sure if we could make the Tintagel climb. Those are just a few things on the list.

My question is, where should we base ourselves in Cornwall? I am not sure if we need to be in TWO locations for four nights, or ONE location for three nights would be sufficient and wouldn’t require unwieldy drive times. So I looked at the upper coast and lower/ middle coast. I do not think we would like Penzance or St Ives, they look very crowded. We would like a place with multiple restaurant offerings, walkable, relaxing.

I have bookmarked several hotels and B&Bs that look lovely, among them these:
In St. Mawes: https://www.stmaweshotel.com/rooms/village-room/
Falmouth: https://www.merchantsmanor.com/more/the-manor/
Padstow: https://www.paul-ainsworth.co.uk/pad...nhouse/suites/ (but full for our proposed dates, just putting it out there)

Can you please guide me to some wonderful towns, and give me a more realistic idea of the distances we would have to travel than my Google maps? I so appreciate it. :)

Meant to add - one of the reasons I am including Cornwall is that it seems to have lovely weather in late April. I’m hoping that there will be masses of spring flowers in Bath as well? What is your experience? Thx.

I am just dashing out and haven't read the whole post but IMO 5 nights in Bath is a bit of overkill. If one was going to use/pay for drivers anyway I'd maybe consider a couple of nights in Bath and 3-ish nights in a Cotswold town or village. Hidcote Gardens is glorious in the Spring but it is easily a 2 hour drive from central Bath. So a 4 hour round trip and missing so much in between.

Same with Kelmscott -- very interesting house and pretty gardens but close to 2 hours from central Bath.

Someplace like Burford would be 20 mins from Kelmscott and about 40 or 45 minutes from Hidcote Manor. Or Stow-on-the-Wold . . . 30-ish mins to Hidcote/35 or 40 mins to Kelmscott.

Thank you, Janisj. I was thinking of Cornwall - can you guys please advise - because it was my impression that its location and the Gulf Stream meant Cornwall had “more” floral displays in early spring than the Cotswolds (I was assuming you’d need to go further into May and June for the best blooms there).

I don’t think that we could spend more than about nine to ten days total on this particular trip, so I was limiting the locations; otherwise I would change it to 4-5 Bath (a relaxing time to recover), 3-4 Cornwall, 3 Cotswolds, maybe 1 Oxford then bus to Heathrow.

would anyone have further information about the Cornwall aspect of a trip? That would help a lot. Thank you.