Barbara

Violet, I have to agree with Sue. If you have to use the trains, then you are really tied to going where the trains go. It does seem that it would be much simpler - and cheaper - to rent two cars, then you don't have to go back to London all the time.

ron

Michelle, it looks like you have the individual tickets vs. pass situation under control. With respect to Glastonbury, it truly is a black hole with respect to public transportation. While I am a big fan of train travel in the UK and use it a lot, I did rent a car to visit Wells & Glastonbury.

The closest train station to Glastonbury is, I believe, Castle Cary, about 15 miles. This compares to the 25 miles from Bath and 25 miles from Bristol. I know there is good, regular bus service from Bristol (First Badgerline 377) to Glastonbury. There is slow, inconvenient bus service from Bath and I am afraid I have no idea what the onward options are from Castle Cary.

jsmith

It may be too late to do this but consider flying directly to Edinburgh (connecting at Heathrow) and spending your first day or two there to get over the jetlag before continuing your Scotland sojourn either by train or rented car.

In March we flew to Glasgow thru Heathrow from Boston, rented a car for 8 days, returned the car at Oxford and went to London for 6 more days. Our car rental thru Hertz (a Vauxhall Vectra with automatic and suitable for 4 passengers) was $350. We drove about 1000 miles and spent $150 for petrol. For two cars that's $1000 and you wouldn't be renting for 8 days. You would have considerably more frexibility.

We've done this twice once with a route taking us thru York and this last time thru the Lake District and North Wales.

Just to confuse you more.

violet2

Jsmith thanks for the info and costs on car rentals. I have about 20 other relatives that want to make this trip at some point and I'll pass your information on to them so they can avoid our mistakes and inefficiencies.

We are plugged into our itinerary for now.

And, aside from the daytrips from London, I don't think the car rental is feasible. We are going to be 13-15 hours from London at one point in our trip and the trains are actually faster than a car in this instance. We are going to the tippy top of Scotland and will be on the islands.

If we had a different itinerary and weren't going to be so far away, a car might be a good idea. But who wants to drive 14-15 hours on their vacation when they can sleep on a train and be ready for another day of sightseeing upon arrival?

I don't know if you saw the other posts but this whole adventure was planned very haphazardly, we bought the tickets before the itinerary was set and it's been like squeezing blood out of a turnip to pull an itinerary together.

I'm actually happy that we are doing the train as opposed to driving, it will give us time to relax and watch the scenery go by. And I've never been on a sleeper train!

Aside from Glastonbury, the train goes to where we need it to.

Thanks everyone for all your help!

Michelle