July trip to London
 

>>Should we travel within England, or make the flight/train ride to one of the other countries? We are undecided...and could use some guidance!<<

No one can advise you on that. But how long exactly is your trip. In other words -- how many nights in the UK not counting your flight to and back home?

To get 3 days in London you need 4 nights. If your entire trip home to home is seven nights - then you will only have 5 nights in the UK so not really any time to spend anywhere else. If the trip is 9 days total the you'll have 7 nights on the ground so you could spend 4 h=night in London and 3 elsewhere -- expect you do need to be back in London the night before your flight home.

Sooooo - have you booked your flights? If not, consider open jaw say in to Edinburgh or Glasgow and home from London. You could stay in Edinburgh 3 nights and take a day trip out into the countryside either by train or on a small group mini bus tour, then take the train to London and stay til your flight home.

OR -- you could spend all your time in SE England with London as your base and a couple of day trips to the Cotswolds/Oxford and/or the south coast and/oror Cambridge and east anglia.

But you are talking about FOUR countries so you need to do some reading up and decide which couple of places you want to visit.

Within the UK, at the end of July, you will need to book some accom pretty soon. I'd look at one of Dorset, Cornwall, North Wales, Yorkshire (North, East or South). Look at trains seat61.com (to get an overview). All four areas have great walking and nice people, pubs etc.

Scotland and Ireland are also fine, but "make with a plan man".

Do not underestimate travel times in UK/Ireland. I would forget flying from a London base and back again. 7 days is too little time for that. The only practical (although not advised) way to do this is a city break - e.g. Edinburgh or Dublin, etc. But why burn all that travel time for another city out of London when you're there for 7 days? Getting to countryside (or 'worse', proper hiking/hill walking) is simply not practical on a, for example, 3 day trip out to Scotland, Wales, Ireland.

Unfortunately getting to 'real' hills from London (Northern England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland or even Devon) is generally a several hour travel commitment and access to good walks generally requires a car or time to burn on countryside-speed public transport. You should set expectations accordingly.

Janis is right. I would recommend no less than 3 FULL days in London (i.e. no travel at all on those days) or you're shortchanging yourself. That's really very little time as it is. As she says, that's 4 nights. Any day where you travel at all to change locations, even by train, adds hours of 'overhead'. there is no way to avoid this. You're packing up, changing hotels, getting to airports or train stations with enough time to spare, contingency time, etc. Settling in. Maybe having to store and later retrieve luggage, etc. I'm an 'agile' and frequent traveler but it is what it is.

I am not an expert on traveling in Southern England without a car but there are smaller cities which are very easily accessed from London by train as day trips but the countryside still remains challenging without a car. The usual places like Winchester, Salisbury, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. depend on your interests. They can feel as busy and crowded as London and personally, I would not bother without special interest. Then there's the coast (late July). Brighton is easy and a nice day trip. But it's a busy city. Around Brighton you have the South Downs / South coast which are beautiful and have good 'countryside'/coastal walks. That requires good planning without a car and I don't know how practical that is. Seven Sisters, Beachy Head, Birling Gap are wonderful places. Just west of Eastbourne and also close to Brighton (both easily accessible from London by train). Further afield on the coast you have the Lulworth Cove area which is off the Bournemouth line out of Waterloo station. Again, more challenging without a car and would need planning. People sometimes take these places for granted (although obviously they are busy in the summer) but they are absolutely beautiful, especially on nice summer days - blue sky, blue ocean, deep green grass, sparkling white cliffs, dotted with white lambs all around. And loads of great walking trails up and down the rolling hills.

London to Paris is just over 2 hours via Eurostar train - 4.5 hours to Scotland - fly to Ireland - for lots on trains check www.seat61.com; BETS-European Rail Experts and www.ricksteves.com.

>>London to Paris is just over 2 hours . . . <<

?? I don't see any mention of France/Paris in the OP.

Really great point on the travel times and we definitely need to consider. We are tho king of going north rather than south. I would not like to burn a day railing if there is more to see experience in the UK. Definitely need to spend more time researching,,

>>one of the other countries' is ambiguous -<<

No -- it is not ambiguous. The other countries under consideration were clearly spelled out . . . Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.

<<. I have trouble calling Scotland and Wales countries which technically somehow they must be.>>

Hoo boy!