Day trip from London next week
 

We would like to plan one day trip from London....but which one is the best choice? Don't want it to be too tiring but would like to venture out of the city a bit. Reading a book on Daytrips and so far Bathe and Oxford are appealing..Have 3 teens so it needs to have some attaction for them also.

You may want to consider doing an Explorer Day with London Walks www.walks.com You travel with a guide on train to your location and get 2 walks, am and pm. Costs £12 for the 2 walks, and then group rate train ticket prices. Great value.

Next week they are going:

Tues - Stonehenge and Salisbury

Sat - Warwick Castle

Both of which may interest your teens.

I am an American living in Oxford and I have had many family members visit and all of the kids - from young to teens - find something they like. If they are Harry Potter fans, the Bodelian library tour and Christ Church are big hits as many Harry Potter scenes were filmed in each. The colleges (most are open to tourists for a small fee) are quite beautiful - Magdalen, Balliol, and New especially. If you go on the Christ Church website and look at visiting, you will see there are private toours. They cost 25 GBP and I booked one for my sister and her family and went on it with them (despite having been to ChCh many times on my own) and found it fascinating. The porters (in their traditional bowler hats) give the tours and ours lasted about 2 hours. It was worth every pound as you gain entry to places regular visitors do not and the info presented is very good. Also, if you feel up to it, you can rent a "punt" (sort of a flat gondola) and go out on the canals. It is a very Oxford/Cambridge thing to do, to go punting, and it is really quite fun even though everybody seems to be terrible at it! You can tell those who are local and do it regularly. You take a picnic, you sit on a punt and you wile the hour away...it is really nice and I have done it a few times. I hope this helps.

I don't think you could go wrong with either but I, too lean to Oxford.

I am leaning toward Oxford too. Should I take the bus or train? Which is best for family of five?
I see where the bus departs close to where we are staying...

But if we get train tickets then we could use the 2for1 at Tower of London maybe?

How much time should I allow? Is an afternoon trip long enough?

I'm no expert on this 2 for 1 malarkey, but don't the train tickets still have to be valid when you're using them to get into somewhere?

So surely a day return to Oxford on May 20 will be useless to get into a London attraction on the 21st?

Otherwise, the train/bus decision is simply that you should do whichever you think best. The bus is probably going to take longer, and might be cheaper - but check FirstGreat Western's 4 for the price of 2 offer on the train.

FirstGreat Western's 4 for the price of 2 offer on the train.

That is interesting...where do I find details or take advantage of this offer?

Hi Joebear, the train is cheaper if you book advance fares. You can get tickets for 4 GBP each way on the advance fare. I am not sure if you can buy the advance fare in the US, but if not, go to Paddington Station on the tube when you arrive and book the tickets (not every station sells the advance fares, and I know Paddington ticket office do). You have to choose a time and you have to take the train you book. Be sure to book a direct train (it wil have stops, but you wil not have to transfer) It is about a 57 minute journey and they run very frequently.

The bus, either the Oxford Tube or the Oxford Espress, takes longer than the bus company advertises....always! Traffic, I suppose. It is quite pricey. My husband is a student at Oxford and we always took the bus to London becuase it is cheaper than regular train fares, but then we discovered advance fares on the train and only take that now.

One other tip about the train, don't take your day trip on a SUnday as there are rail works going on and the trains are not coming into Oxford, you have to transfer a station ahead to a bus - that is a bit of a pain.

Finally, I would allow a full day in Oxford - taking into account travel time and eating lunch - maybe depart around 9ish and book a 5 or 6 return.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Forgot to say - I think the previous poster is correct that the train tickets have to be for the same day as the 2 for 1 offers so won't really help you unless you are interested in a show or such for the evening you return.

Regarding buying advance train tickets in the US, it is possible but rather convoluted procedure. I did that yesterday.

1. One has to sign up for an account on First Greatwestern, but it won't allow any non-UK address. So I used the post code of my B&B to sign up.
2. After an account has been set up, one has to edit the address to reflect your real US address.
3. Log out, close browser. (If one doesn't do that, it'll direct you to TheTrainLine b/c of the US address and you'll have to pay a fee for purchasing tickets.)
4. Go back to First Great Western website and now log-in to purchase your ticket.

By doing this yesterday, I was able to by my advance ticket w/o paying any 3rd party fee, and save over 30 GBP on just one ticket.

We did Oxford and Blenheim by bus. The train is fine for just Oxford, but the cheap day return fares are (or at least, were when we went) available only for trips starting after 9:30. By taking the "Oxford Tube" bus from Victoria around 7:30, we were able to arrive in Oxford before we would have even left the station in London. We paid £30 pounds total for 2 adults and a teen when we got on the Oxford Tube bus, with a £1 follow on pass tacked on for each adult for an additional bus ride, then paid £4 once we arrived in Oxford for one day buss pass for our nehpew to get from Oxford to Blenheim. The other advantage was that we wanted to go on to Blenheim, and you definitely would want to do that by bus, so taking the bus from London means that when you arrive a Gloucester Green bus station, we only had to walk over a couple of parking spaces to the bus that took us to Woodstock (either bus 20 or 20A will work). We were able to do Blenheim and Oxford in a day and felt that it was time well spent.

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