Day trip from London transport help please.
 

We were planning on doing a day trip from London to Blenheim Palace, The Cotswolds and Stratford-upon-Avon with a tour company but I realise now they will not be doing the tour in November when we are there.

We will be staying in Soho Square - I'm sure we can get to our destinations by rail but there seem to be lots of options. (There seem to be a few private rail companies in the UK)

Can anyone make my job a little easier by advising both the best fare options and the best way to get to these places using rail and 'shanks pony'?

Thanks in advance!

&quot;<i>I'm sure we can get to our destinations by rail</i>&quot;

Not really - not on the same day in November and not to Blenheim at all. Yes, you can take the train to Charlbury or Oxford. And you can take the train to Stratford. But Blenheim is 7 miles from Oxford and you'd either have to take local buses or a taxi to/from.

Oxford/Blenheim is a doable day trip. And London &gt; Stratford &gt; London is a doable day trip.

There is very little rail service into the Cotswolds - basically Charlbury or Moreton-in-Marsh are your choices.

If you literally mean train and walk, there's only one train a day that stops at Blenheim's real local station (Coombe, a mile from one of Blenheim's gates), and that requires you to leave London at 1622.

Alternatively there's a REALLY nice 6 mile (2 hrs if you walk fast) walk, through a Roman villa and past medieval churches with charming paintings of what happens to ladies of loose virtue, from Charlbury station (trains from London roughly hourly: 70 mins journey) to Blenheim.

More realistically, you want the 20 or 20A bus from Oxford station forecourt to Woodstock. All train companies (and, sadly, Worst Great Western is the only train company linking Oxford to London)
are at www.nationalrail.co.uk. The only train company linking Stratford to London is Chiltern. There's an excellent bus service linking Oxford to London, but it usually takes twice as long, and time's the one thing you haven't got.

It gets dark round 1700 in November. There are no buses from Woodstock to Stratford on weekdays (there's one around 1115 on Sundays) so you have to go back to Oxford for a train, changing at Banbury.

You'll struggle to see much of Stratford before it gets dark, and there is simply no way of getting to the Cotswolds if you try to do this by public transport in a day (Charlbury's in the Cotswolds: Woodstock and Stratford aren't)

You might JUST do this if you drive, since the road route from Blenheim to Stratford takes you through the Cotswolds. It's a fairly straightforward 2 and a bit hour drive back to London from Stratford.

Thanks for your help janis and flanneruk, I guess we will probably end up just going to Blenheim but on the positive we'll get the chance probably to spend a great deal more time there then the tour would have allowed. I appreciate the input.

Oh - to clarify my post, Oxford and Blenheim is a doable day trip from London, even in November.

You could get to Oxford in the early to mid morning. Explore for an hour or so, go to Blenheim by bus or taxi before noon. Have lunch either at Blenheim or in a pub in Woodstock, tour the palace and grounds, and head back to Oxford by 3:00 or 4:00. Then spend a few more hours in Oxford, have dinner and take the train back to LOndon.

Or alternatively - go straight to Blenheim after arriving in Oxford. Spend the whole morning at the Palace and have lunch. Leave the palace around 1:00 and spend the afternoon/evening exploring Oxford.

We recently did Oxford and Blenheim as as day trip from London. We found the Oxford Tube bus service to be a better deal than the train since we wanted to see both Blenheim and Oxford. If you want the cheap day return train fare, you have to wait until 9:30 or later to book the train, so you won't be in Oxford until 10:45 or 11:00, while the Tube (strange name for a bus) can get you to the Gloucester Green bus station in Oxford before 10, then you simply walk about 15 yards over to the parking bay for bus 20 or 20A which will take you directly to the Blenheim gates. The return bus fare on the Tube is only &pound;14 for adults, and paying &pound;1 extra will get you a pass that will cover the bus to Woodstock.

Taking the early bus will give you plenty of time to see Blenheim, then see some stuff in Oxford before taking a bus back to London. I think that the bus from London to Oxford takes betwen 1:40 and 2:00, depending on traffic.