Driving Edinburgh to London - places to see?
Apr 22nd, 2008, 03:23 AM
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Driving Edinburgh to London - places to see?
G'day from "Down Under"!
We (couple in our 50's) are flying into Edinburgh mid-May and we will then take 4 days to drive to London.
Can you help us with our itinerary please?
Basically our sketchy itinerary is:
Day 1 - Fly into Edinburgh and stay overnight
Day 2 - Sightseeing in Edinburgh with brief ancestry visit of the Peebles/Hawick area.
Where should we overnight?
Day 3 - Thought of driving down the Western side.
Any "must sees" to visit?
Where should we overnight?
Day 4 - Ditto.
Possibly overnight in Bath.
Day 5 - Visit Stonehenge and drive into London
Can you suggest any "not-to-be-missed" places that shows us some highlights of Britain (landscape/scenery, history etc)?
Thanks in advance
Cheers
We (couple in our 50's) are flying into Edinburgh mid-May and we will then take 4 days to drive to London.
Can you help us with our itinerary please?
Basically our sketchy itinerary is:
Day 1 - Fly into Edinburgh and stay overnight
Day 2 - Sightseeing in Edinburgh with brief ancestry visit of the Peebles/Hawick area.
Where should we overnight?
Day 3 - Thought of driving down the Western side.
Any "must sees" to visit?
Where should we overnight?
Day 4 - Ditto.
Possibly overnight in Bath.
Day 5 - Visit Stonehenge and drive into London
Can you suggest any "not-to-be-missed" places that shows us some highlights of Britain (landscape/scenery, history etc)?
Thanks in advance
Cheers
Apr 22nd, 2008, 03:37 AM
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And G'day from Edinburgh !
The west coast is certainly the quicker route to London (although counter-intuitive since Edinburgh & London are both on/near the east Coast).
However you won't want just to drive down the motorway (M74/M6). Look at one of the scenic routes through the Borders, perhaps via St Mary's Loch, then a night in the southern Lake District - maybe somewhere like Windermere. Then you could consider going down the A6 & spending the next night in north Wales. (Though I'm not clear if this is the Bath night or the one before it.)
You don't seem to be spending much time in Edinburgh, though - have you been before ?
The west coast is certainly the quicker route to London (although counter-intuitive since Edinburgh & London are both on/near the east Coast).
However you won't want just to drive down the motorway (M74/M6). Look at one of the scenic routes through the Borders, perhaps via St Mary's Loch, then a night in the southern Lake District - maybe somewhere like Windermere. Then you could consider going down the A6 & spending the next night in north Wales. (Though I'm not clear if this is the Bath night or the one before it.)
You don't seem to be spending much time in Edinburgh, though - have you been before ?
Apr 22nd, 2008, 04:26 AM
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The distance drive starts with day 2. Both Hawick and Peebles are more or less on the route south. So the wise thing is to stay in or near Hawick, rather than Edinburgh, on Night 2.
You've now got 2 days to get to Bath. If you stop off for a bit of Hadrian's Wall, then the Lake District, you overnight there. Leaving one day.
I don't think you're going to get much of Wales in, and the closest bit for this journey (North Wales, accessible from the M56, possibly stopping off at Chester), isn't that spectacular. Before the Welsh go into their usual whine, let me stress there are lots of nice bits in Wales (especially the bits where few Welshpeople live): they just take a long time to get to from the M6 if you need to get to Bath that night.
Personally, I'd spend much of the day in Liverpool, the greatest city in the universe and the cradle of the modern world. It's got more museums and conservation-grade buildings than anywhere in Britain other than London - far outstripping second-rank places like Edinburgh or Bath, to whose prissy tweeness it's the perfect antidote. 80% of 19th century European migrants to the New World sailed through Liverpool - which means the likelihood is it was the last bit of Europe at least one of your forbears saw. It's also got the very finest pubs anyone's ever designed.
Others might have other suggestions, of course. But they'd be wrong.
You've now got 2 days to get to Bath. If you stop off for a bit of Hadrian's Wall, then the Lake District, you overnight there. Leaving one day.
I don't think you're going to get much of Wales in, and the closest bit for this journey (North Wales, accessible from the M56, possibly stopping off at Chester), isn't that spectacular. Before the Welsh go into their usual whine, let me stress there are lots of nice bits in Wales (especially the bits where few Welshpeople live): they just take a long time to get to from the M6 if you need to get to Bath that night.
Personally, I'd spend much of the day in Liverpool, the greatest city in the universe and the cradle of the modern world. It's got more museums and conservation-grade buildings than anywhere in Britain other than London - far outstripping second-rank places like Edinburgh or Bath, to whose prissy tweeness it's the perfect antidote. 80% of 19th century European migrants to the New World sailed through Liverpool - which means the likelihood is it was the last bit of Europe at least one of your forbears saw. It's also got the very finest pubs anyone's ever designed.
Others might have other suggestions, of course. But they'd be wrong.
