Just time for one short comment right now: Check AutoEurope.com for cars. Use the following options: Picking up the car at (a) Canterbury, (b) Maidstone, or (c) Ebbsfleet, and dropping the car at (d) Windsor or (e) Heathrow. Reason being, autoeurope deals with all the majors and it could be cheaper using different collection/drop off locations. Plus some will have drop off fees, some won't.

All five locations would work for your plans.

Ny traveler....yes have driven in Ireland, New Zealand and Australia so are familiar with round abouts and narrow roads.

Janisj. Thanks for the Autoeurope site and will research the different options for pick up/drop offs

It is not the driving time, but the time to actually see anything. Your drive times are short, but you are trying to see too many different things/places each day. Look at how much time it will actually take to visit each place.

Day 3 is extremely problematic! Bath at the end of the day is not at all a good idea. You need to get there early enough to see the Roman Baths, the Abby, the Pump house and walk the crescent, pretty much at last one whole day. Every morning about 10:00, there is a free guided walking tour of Bath that is one of the best tours I have ever taken and very worthwhile. If you want to see even the three or four most important sights, Bath is one place that can't be seen in an hour or two.

I am not familiar with all of your stops, but hope the rest of the days are not the same. I can say that Stonehenge takes more time than you might think, parking, getting tickets, walking to the path around the stones, etc. You might look at the stones for 10 minutes (DH took 30), but add all the rest and it will be an hour or more.

You might want to walk around, not just the stones, but also the Village of Avebury, including the chruch. Charming village with beautiful thatched roofs. So the stones and village takes at least an hour. Perhaps lunch there, another hour.

Seriously, get an idea of what to see in each place and how long it will take. Then keep the ones most important to you and cut the others.

>>I can say that Stonehenge takes more time than you might think, parking, getting tickets, walking to the path around the stones, etc. You might look at the stones for 10 minutes (DH took 30), but add all the rest and it will be an hour or more.<<

Sassafrass: I think your your trip to Stonehenge may have been before the new Visitors Center opened. Now it does take longer (they say plan on 2 hours minimum) since the road/car park have been removed and one either rides a tram or walks across the hills to the Stones. It takes at least 30 minutes now to walk from the Visitors centre or about 5-10 minutes for the tram. Plus they now issue timed tickets - which should be pre-booked to guarantee entrance. (Sort of hard to do if one is trying to cross half of SW England in a day and figure out what time to book ;) )

Janisj,

Glad you added that! It just confirms that the OP is not allowing enough time for seeing things.

Thanks Janisj--love your sense of humor about crossing half of SW England in a day!! Made me laugh and I can see how off I am on my itinerary!!! Now to revamp my plans--good thing I started over a year early to get this trip organized..I may need the whole time as well as lots of help from all of you experts

Janisj-- Autoeurope only has pickup at Maidstone (not Canterbury or Ebbsfleet) and no drop off at Heathrow (no drop offs in Windsor)--so that gives me a starting point and an ending point

As I expected -- there are limited options in the other towns. For instance there is Enterprise in Canterbury, but many Enterprise locations do not allow one way rentals. All of the majors are at LHR, only a couple are in Windsor - and so on.

Avis has locations in Maidstone & Ashford, drop-off in Windsor or Heathrow.

http://www.avis.co.uk

"Am I missing anything?" - well quite a lot. York and Yorkshire for instance, and are a much better alternative to Durham and Hadrians Wall. Appreciate you have limited time but York has much more of the wow factor than many of the places you have listed.

am I missing anything, well about 10 good pre-roman fortifications, at least 2 or more major roman sites, Wells cathedral, the Jurassic coast, goodness knows how many post 1300 castles/forts, any number of dew ponds, high ridge roads, good pubs by the 1000s, multiple cobbled streets.


A bit like going to MAS and just visiting Harvard

Going north of London the place gets busier of sites to see if anything. As steve says you are missing York (plus the two local national parks) but also Lincoln, Cambridge, Oxford, how does one go on from a country that has been inhabited for 5000 years+

<<I know that the roads and speed limits in the UK are much slower..>>

Actually, speed limits are faster than the US: 70 on motorways, 60 on most A-roads. It's just that you can't or won't always do these speeds.

When the motorways are clear you will see many drivers going 80 or 90, but then there'll be congestion and several miles of 5 or 10 mph...

And on non-motorway roads, I doubt that you'll want to drive at 60, when you don't know when the next bend is coming.

It's good that you have experience of driving on the left from Australia and New Zealand. But now think about comparative population density!

"how does one go on from a country that has been inhabited for 5000 years+"

So has the USA. And Australia.

The difference between Britain and the New World isn't that it's been inhabited longer, or that its inhabitants have done less.

It's that its inhabitants had a better grasp of engineering in stone than the early inhabitants of the now English-speaking New World. And, unlike virtually all the New World: its European immigrants didn't massacre the indigenous population.

I was going to add what Gyhtson wrote about speed limits being higher than in the US, but <i>a big caution here!</i> Even though the speed limit on a country road may be 60 MPH, that doesn't mean it's safe to drive at that speed.

In the US there will usually be reduced speed limits before dangerous sections of the road, but not so in the UK. Warning signs (when they are present) will be different from the US as well.

Every learner driver in the UK studies The Highway Code before taking the test. You can pick up a paper copy in any UK bookstore, but there is also an online version you can download at home and save on a tablet or smartphone: http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/download-pdf.html

Recommend you browse through it before coming to England. You won't be taking a test, so don't need to memorise it, but it has lots of useful information.

Flanner, so right.

Still I like to compare the stone axes of Denmark (which reached a high point of flint knapping/polishing in about 2000 BC) with the stone axes of New Zealand that reached theirs at 1750 AD or so. For those who want to see the amazing things that people have done http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-...tylespage1.htm shows it well

The axes are almost exactly the same, which kind of makes your point about stone

>>Now to revamp my plans--good thing I started over a year early to get this trip organized..<<

To give you some things to consider in your 're-plan': Bath would require a full day <u>by itself</u>, not a couple of hours at the end of a long travel day.

Dover Castle takes about four hours if you have lunch (and it is easy to spend longer there). So really about half a day when factoring in travel time.

Winchester/Salisbury/Stonehenge is a really full day - and Stonehenge should be pre-booked.

Wow, got a great history lesson that I was not expecting. So with 2 weeks to see England/London--Since this will probably be my only visit I am trying to get a good cross section of British sights. Someone mentioned York but I am trying to figure out how to see that--it is basically in the middle of my sights in England and my sights in Scotland. Was planning on taking the train from Edinburgh to London so could I stop off at York and spend a day or 2 there?? So of these sights below which are the highlights-- I am trying to line them up in a loop that is driver friendly to figure out what I can see in my 2 weeks which has to include some time in London
Canterbury
Dover
Brighton
Winchester
Salisbury
Stonehenge
Bath
Avebury
Hermitage
Windsor
London
Cambridge

"would require a full day...not a couple of hours...takes about four hours...really about half a day...really full day...should..."

Bornintheusa, please keep in mind, once you're on your way you really can adjust, abandon, change as you go. There is no law, even in the UK as far as I know, against spontaneity, doing what you feel like when the time comes. I always have far more on my list than I can or care to do. There might very well be places others have said should not be missed that you find infinitely missable once there, some you thought you'd love and don't. And if you linger somewhere, skip the next and take a quicker route on. I know my "final" itinerary never is. As a friend used to say to me "no shoulds".

Another thing you can do right now to prepare for 2017 is to collect empirical data on accommodation price trends and availability at potential destinations as you approach May 2016 to simulate what might happen next year. You will then have an empirical basis in your hand to answer questions next year that many ask here, "Do I need to prebook, or can I wing accommodations?" Obviously, the trend might not repeat next year, but if you ask others, what they will be doing will be exactly that; they try to remember the general pricing and availability trend.

May I ask why Hermitage (assuming you mean the village in Berkshire)? Family connections or something?

That is a VERY long list for two weeks. Assuming you want at <i>least</i> 4 or 5 full days in London. You have 11 other destinations spread over hundreds of miles and only 8 or 9 days to play with.

And re Mme P's post -- playing by ear and changing plans on the fly is great. But it is easier when based in a place for a few days -- simple to change plans and do something else. When one is on a long linear itinerary it is harder.