What's the best/easiest/cheapest way for a family of 6 to get from Bonn, Germany to the UK? We'd like to visit London, the Lake District, and maybe Staffordshire. I looked for information on "ferries" on the Internet but the choices/information is just dizzying!

Thanks!

cheapest:
this
www.germanwings.com
or this
www.hlx.com

Some more info would help,

do you have time and money

no time but money is no object,

time but money is tight, etc.etc.etc...

how do you like to travel? Do you just want to get to the destination ASAP, or visit places along the way?


The choices are dizzying, but only you know which few apply to you. How do you expect total strangers to advise you without providing some more info?



questions, questions, questions.....

whoops, sorry. we only have weekends so fastest would be best, but i also would still like to know about cheaper options just in case money becomes an object. no visiting places along the way, we'd rather go straight to the place, since we have 5 months (will be staying in bonn for hubby's work) to go different places. thanks for your help!

As mentioed above, Germanwings is a good start. <b>www.easyjet.com</b> is another option. Also look at <b>www.whichbudget.com</b> for other nearby airport options.

trains, ferries will be more expensive and take more time.

Also, don't ever give up on the major airlines. Check <b>www.ba.com and www.bmi.com and www.lufthansa.com</b>. You never know, sometimes they do offer better deals.

If you've got your own car in Germany, driving to Calais, getting a ferry (not the Channel Tunnel, and not a high speed ferry)to Dover, then driving might be the cheapest, but remember you probably, depending on your definition of London, need to pay parking and possibly congestion charge for your stay in London and for, say, a ten day stay that can rack up heavily. You have to sort out the ferries for yourself: there's no one cheapest ferry, and prices fluctuate all over the place.

Without a car, you might find it best to fly to Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool (Easyjet does cheapos fropm Cologne to Liverpool, but I THINK the other two airports only get full-price airlines. Check prices to all three though). All three are just off the main north-south motorway and hiring a car there for a round trip to the Lakes and Staffs is probably cheaper (and uses less of our planet-savingly priced petrol) than starting at a London airport.

Hire your car for return to the same airport, then get a return ticket to London on the train. All other things being equal, this is most painless at Birmingham, where the airport is practically on the main north-south railway line, but it's not too tricky to get a taxi to Runcorn (from Liverpool) or Stockport (from Manchester). By buying return tickets well in advance from the provincial airport to London (go to www.nationalrail.co.uk for times and fare ranges) you get reasonably-priced internal travel. Time it properly, and you'll keep your use of expensive London hotels to the least possible.

All of which said, adding Northern England to your London trip will push the price up a lot. Taking the six of you on the Easyjet or German Wings to London will probably be less than the internal travel in Britain, and it may well be cheaper to split this trip in two, doing London one weekend, and the Northwest, via LPL, MCR or BHX, another.

Also bear in mind you may be able to fly to Manchester or Liverpool which would be a good starting point for the Lake District or Staffordshire.

For the sake of time, I think flying is your only option. There will probably be more flights to London airports if flexibility/cost are major considerations.

OK - do you mean you are in Bonn for 5 months and want to know the best ways to get to the UK for weekend jaunts? Not that you want to go to London, the Lake Dist, and staffordshire on the same trip?

That is entirely different. Flying is the only reasonable way to get to the UK for such short visits. But you are in luck since there are several low cost carriers from CGN to many parts of the UK. Or you can fly from Frankfurt or Dortmund depending on where you are going in the UK.

www.whichbudget.com is a great site for looking up low cost routes w/i Europe.

<b>stenaline.co.uk</b> can get you from Hook of Holland to Harwich in 3:40 on their high-speed catamaran ferries. I've never run the numbers, but that might be the most economical way for 6 to do a car trip to the country.

For a London-only expedition, air or rail probably works best, because a car is a liability in London.

yes, janis, we don't plan on seeing different places all in one day/one weekend. so maybe one weekend we'll do london, the next staffordshire, etc. i've looked at the websites suggested here and the airline prices still seem pretty steep (compared to a eurorail pass), except if i book way ahead of time, which is a bit difficult right now since our plans are still up in the air. thanks for the links, though, i'll check them every once in a while just in case we chance upon a bargain.

The problem with a eurail pass from Germany to England for the weekend is that you would spend so much of your time on the train.

Have you checked out the time for the fastest options - for you presumably a train to Brussels (or Paris) and then the high speed throughthe tunnel to London?

(I can;t imagine that it would be less than 6 or 7 hours actual travel time each way - using up most of your weekend.)

The other problem with a Eurailpass is that it doesn't work in the U.K.

The DB site says the enroute time from Bonn to London is at least 5:34 (ICE or Thalys to Brussels, Eurostar to London).

<b>http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en
</b>

ok, i understand better now. we will limit driving or train trips to those that can be reached within 5 hours or less. otherwise, we will opt to fly. i checked out the germanwings and hlx sites and they're wonderful! thanks so much for your helpful tips, everyone.

I just had to respond to this message because it's so bizarre running into somebody else with an Euskirchen connection here. Are you with P&amp;G? I have two young children and sounds like you have several too? E-mail me if you'd like at [email protected]. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. We live in a village just outside of Bonn. Moved from Cincy and will return there next summer.