mely3

I will be arriving at Gatwick at 10 am Dec 25th. Since all public transportation will be shut down that day, what is the cheapest way that I can get to London?

I am debating whether I should just rent a car at Gatwick airport and drive to Cotswald / Bath for 2 days to avoid the "shutdown of london". I realize that most restaurants and stores will also be closed in Cotswald, but will I still be able to find places to eat? Also, are Bath / Cotswald too dreary to visit during this time of the year?

Thanks in advace for your replies!

Andrew

The Gatwick Express is not running Dec 25, but they are running a replacement coach service:

http://www.gatwickexpress.co.uk/defa...448&selectid=5

Andrew

flanneruk

Most pubs in the Cotswolds will be open Christmas lunchtime. Some gastropubby or hotel-based places will serve food, but prebooking will be absolutely essential and most pubs won't be serving food at all. Very few restaurants open, and all are really on a prebooking basis.

You'll find it virtually impossible to eat anywhere but hotels Christmas night, except near the adolescents' binge-drinking war zones in England's bigger cities, where a few cheap eateries and kebab vans open. London, BTW, is an exception to this rule.

More Cotswold pubs serve food Boxing Day lunch, and some will Boxing Day evening too. Some of the medium-sized towns have specific Boxing Day activities (like the meeting of the Heythrop Hunt at Chipping Norton, which will probably find some excuse to go on this year, even though it's really illegal now) which prompt some shops and restaurants to open, and some of the tearoooms open too.

Most paid-for attractions stay closed on Boxing Day, though it's a big day for some big, outdoorsy things like race meetings. Many churches close to visitors after Morning Service on Christmas Day, but all open normally for touist visits on Boxing Day. All theatres open Boxing Night (admittedly few in the Cotswolds, but a fair few in the towns on the periphery like Oxford and Cheltenham), though they're typically fully booked months in asdvance that night. Worth checking for returns though. If you've never been to the Chippy Panto, you haven't lived.

More often than not, Boxing Day weather is crisp and blindingly bright. The kind of day it's a crime to be anywhere other than on a 15 mile tramp around a few Cotswold villages - preferably with a hipflask of the sloe gin you started macerating around Michaelmas. Because the soil is pretty useless for growing things in, you don't get the miles of ploughed-up winter fields most rural areas have: almost all the visible landscape is pasture (our forbears cleared most of the woodland a few thousand years ago), and therefore green pretty much year round.

The "dreary English winter weather" crap is a cliche invented by third-rate novelists too lazy to stagger out of their North London pubs and too blind to look at the world outside their solipsistic fantasyland. The Cotswolds are a glorious place to spend Christmas if you want good books, log fires and pretty villages.

They are though, after Barlad Romania, just about the last place on the planet you'd go for hanging round shops.

GeoffHamer

"the shutdown of London" ? London shuts down much less than the rest of England and Wales. I live in London and always go abroad at Christmas, but if I had to stay at home, I would not go outside London. Many shops and restaurants here are run by people from ethnic minorities, many of whom don't celebrate Christmas. In London, there is no public transport on Christmas Day, but tubes and buses run on the 26th when the rest of the country still has nothing.

janisj

There is wonderful info in all three responses above.

My advice would be go into London on the replacement coach. And then later in the week take a couple of days to see Bath and a bit of the Cotswolds.

As GoeffHamer says - most of London will be shut down - but elsewhere everything will be.

You can have Christmas dinner at your hotel and walk around a quiet London w/o all the traffic and crowds.

Then schedule a couple of days sometime after the 26th to rent a car and explore the Cotswolds.

mely3

Thanks for all of the wonderful replies! I did not mean to imply that ALL of London will be shut down, but for with the tubes shut down... it just seems a bit daunting.

We have decided to rent a car from Gatwick to Cotswold and stay for 2 - 3 nights. Then back to London for some great sightseeing / shopping!

bardo1

GoeffHamer,

Are there particular areas in central London that are more likely to have Muslim or Hindi owners?

janisj

mely3: It sounds like you have your mind made up -- but if it were me I'd REALLY re-think it.

London will be shut down on Christmas Day, however most of it will be open and running on Boxing Day.

But out in the countryside in the Cotswolds - just about everything will be closed up tight on BOTH days. As flanner says - some pubs will be open, but otherwise, nothing.

You will have 2 nights/three days with pretty countryside - but no shops, no restaurants, no tourist sites, petrol stations shut, etc.

Your first day is pretty exhausting due to jet lag anyway - so I'd just head into London for a quiet Christmas Day at my hotel w/ an afternoon walk. Then Boxing Day get out and start to hit all the tourist sites.

Then go out to the Cotswolds when things are open.

flanneruk

Petrol stations in the Cotswolds aren't shut after Christmas Day.

Though, since you have to be a spectacularly incompetent driver to get less than 300 miles out of a tank of petrol, it's hard to see why this matters.

GeoffHamer

I agree with Janis. Christmas Day in the countryside will be extremely difficult unless you have booked somewhere where you can eat. No cafés or restaurants will be open and, in the evening, even pubs are shut. If you're arriving in the UK on Christmas Day, pack some sandwiches in your suitcase.

SandyBrit

mely3

If you are arriving after a long flight you will be very tired. I agree with those who suggest that you stay in London on Christmas day. Have a meal at your hotel and walk about. You can add the Cotswald/Bath bit on to the end of your holiday.

Have a lovely time.

Sandy

caroline_edinburgh

If you do plan to rent a car on Xmas Day, watch who you rent it from. While most give you it with a full tank, some don't. Worth checking at least.

I think Xmas Day will be a great day just to walk around London, as there will be barely any traffic & no crowds anywhere.

janisj

The reason I mentioned petrol stations is exactly what Caroline mentioned. Unlike in the States, it is not automatic that your rental car will be delivered w/ a full tank. The last two cars I rented in the UK (different hire companies BTW) had 1/4 tank or less.

Now, sometimes the petrol is filled up but it is definitely not a given.

flanneruk

In which case, mely3 will simply top up at any motorway service station, unless mely3 wants to spend a transatlantic flight working out how to get from Gatwick to Little Puddlecombe entirely on B roads.

Let's not exaggerate the Great English Switch Off. I confidently expect to be able to fill up on the way back to the Cotswold idyll at 0130 Christmas morning after Midnight Mass, should I have been improvident enough to run short.

I expect no difficulty in finding open restaurants in the area on Boxing Day, should my world-famous goose rechauffee hash pall on the Flannerhordes. Or in finding outside entertainment on Boxing Night should they rebel against an old-fashioned evening playing Dirty Charades.

Christmas in the civilised bits of England's countryside isn't at all like a walk in a mortuary.

flyer

Try Hotelink, it is an airport to hotel shuttle service.