London, Bath, Cotswolds in a week?
 

My wife and I are planning a trip for next October to the UK (from the US) and are trying to get a handle on whether this is a reasonable/doable itinerary. The two of us have been to London before, but this time we're bringing our 10 and 13-yo daughters with us and would love some feedback/advice. Here's sort of what we're thinking:

Sat - arrive LHR around 7 AM, take a bus to Bath for 1 or 2 nights.

Sat/Sun/Mon - tour Bath, Stonhenge, Salisbury. Not sure if we should rent a car right away (once we get to Bath), or just take a day-long tour out of Bath to Stonehenge/Salisbury on Sunday? Are car rentals available on the weekends?

Mon/Tue/Wed - Rent a car, drive up into Cotswolds, stay in one place, do some hiking, some car touring, visit Stratford and Warwick Castle.

Wed/Thurs - Visit Oxford, drop the car off before heading into London. Not sure where we should drop it off - Oxford and catch a train/bus into London, or maybe take it all the way to Heathrow?

Thurs/Fri/Sat - London.

Sun - flight leaves around noon.

Not too concerned about the weather (temp, rain), but am wondering if the leaves will be changing color the 3rd week in October? Any National Holidays or other events that we should be aware of?

Thanks for any input!

Two points:

<b>Autumn </b>
"if the leaves will be changing color the 3rd week in October?" Leaf-peeping isn't a national sport round here. Britain's biggest arboretum - Westonbirt, near Tetbury - has a good collection of quite unEnglish Japanese maple, and these go over to red around mid-October. There are also more guided tours etc at Westonbirt in mid Oct than at other times. Otherwise, deciduous woodland in the Cotswolds normally goes over continuously from early Oct to about Christmas, but mostly to shades of orangey yellow.

The point about English autumn isn't one huge, boring, short-lived and monocultural extravaganza (the best place at this latitude for that are those ghastly tulip fields tourists get so excited about in Dutch springs): it's about ten-twelve weeks of constant, subtle and ubiquitous change. Timings are as unpredictable as any other facet of English weather.

And, of course, there's little dense woodland round here anyway: what we have are thousands of 0.5-2 acre clumps of trees and hedges, dotting the whole landscape. Since they're surrounded by far, far bigger swathes of (mostly) grazing land, which is always green, the predominant and permanent colour, except during the odd, unwelcome, hot dry summer, is green - even while the trees are going over.

However, if arboriculture's your thing, Batsford arboretum, also in the Cotswolds, might be worth a visit as well as Westonbirt.

<b> Car dumping </b>
The problems with Oxford are:
- getting into town and parking, and
- dealing with luggage.
The easiest solution to both is to park at the P+Rs (free and well-guarded) near the A34/A44 junction in north Oxford, get the bus into and out of town, then drive to LHR and dump the car there. You'll drive faster than the bus to LHR can, and trains aren't a totally satisfactory way of getting from central Oxford to LHR.

Rather than leave the car at a P&R where it just accrues hire charges, the X70 bus goes direct from the centre of Oxford to LHR

Thanks for the feedback!

flanner - I'm not really into leaf-peeping so much as wanting to make sure the countryside isn't "barren" that time of year, and it sounds like it's not! I like your idea re: Oxford/car.

alan - thanks for the input. I'm just looking for the easiest way to transition from touring the Cotswolds/Oxford via car to switching to public transit (bus/tube/whatever) in London for several days at the end of our trip. Maybe there's a better place than Heathrow to drop off our rental car and take the tube (or bus) to get into London, but it seems like it might be convenient to do it that way?

Leaving the car at an Oxford hire location, then bus or train into London is fine if you don't want to visit Oxford.

If you do, you've got the luggage prob, which is why P+R/LHR dropoff works. The alternative to that is dropping off in central London, which is navigationally challenging for many (and expensive if you turn off into the charging zone that's never more than 15 yds from the route to hire depots)

England's really never barren looking. All that "snow on snow on snow" stuff stems from the fact that Ms Rosetti grew up during the Little Ice Age. Since then, and thanks to some aggressive agricultural imports from the colonies, there's tons of green around even in the deepest midwinter.

The comments about Oxford reminded me of the Top Gear program where they had to race to Oxford and all three got lost in the city, but Jeremy came out the best.

Not to be difficult - but in all cases you have listed the same day in two separate spots - turning your incredibly busy week vacation somehow into 10 days.

If you're visiting Oxford on Wed - then that;s what you're doing. You can;t also be doing Stratford and Warwick Castle.

Similarly, if Thursday is touring Oxford you can;t also be visitng London.

You need to sit down with a list of the places you want to go, a map, a train schedule and some driving times from vimichelin.com. You're doing an awful lot of moving rom one place to another and not so much time actually doing or seeing much (except out of a car or train window).

Sorry - the first time we took my step-daughters (11 and 14) to London we spend 8 night there - including a day trip to Windsor/Hampton Court and another to Bath. And we still didn;t see all of the things on their list (we had both been many times before and so out list was different). A couple of days we let them do kids stuff (shop Covent Garden, explore trendy stores we had no interest in) while we saw the Royal Academy summer exhibition (I always think it's a hoot and want to buy something I have no way of getting home) and checked out a couple of galleries.

With kids, often less rushing around is more enjoyment.

Thanks ny! Our trip will actually cover 10 days with flying over Fri Night, arriving Sat Morning, leaving 8 days later on a Sunday, so we need 8 nights accomodations. Other than a busride to Bath after we arrive, there will only be 2 days where we travel from one location/hotel to the next (from Bath to the Cotswolds somewhere, then from there to London, stopping at Oxford along the way). Embarassingly, I have to admit part of visiting Oxford is for my kids wanting to visit Christ Church as they're both Harry Potter fans. ; )

I'll definitely use the viamichelin map, thanks for the link. It looks like about a 2-hour drive from Bath to the Cotswolds, and then a 2-hour drive back down to Heathrow (if we use flanner's idea). That will be a full day with a visit to Oxford "en route".

We thought about staying in London the whole time and doing day trips via bus/train, but I want to get out in the country and drive around a bit on our own. Maybe I need to condense the Bath/Cotswolds part down to get more time in London??

your general itinerary seems fine. but the trips to salisbury/stonehenge and stratford/warwick may be too much. each of those trips will take most of a day. so, maybe pick only one of them.
so,
sat: arrive at lhr, get to bath (will be atleast 11 or noon)
sun: bath
mon: drive to the cotswolds, see a couple of villages, take a walk.
tue: stratford upon avon, warwick OR salisbury and warwick
wed: oxford (during the day, spend the night in london)
thu, fri, sat: london

i'd leave tuesday open and decide on the day...

That sounds good. I could skip Stonehenge/Salisbuy myself but don't want to strike Stratford/Warwick from the trip, so that might have to give. I guess we can play it by ear as you suggest, see what's interesting and how much time we want to dedicate to driving around.

I would definitely get the kids involved before you finalize the itinerary. Have them look at some tour books as well as the Let's Go student guide and perhaps one of the better pictorial guides. That will give them a better idea of what the options are. And since you've already been to London several times, it's what they want to see there that really matters most.

We really enjoyred our trip - since we had both been to London and Paris numerous times - and were seeing things again for the first time through the eyes of the kids. We were surprised at some of the choices they made - and got to see a couple of things we had somehow never been to.

In London they LOVED Covent Garden and the museum (forget the name) of TV and movies. There were school classes going through when we went and they took part in some intreactive scenes (playing cowpokes in a bar and dance hall girls in one activity - and invited ousr to take part). The older thought it was "too babyish" but the younger enjoyed being a dance hall girl.

And their take on some things British was intersting. Apparently they were talking to some local kids in Covent Garden - and were amazed how different the education system is (not all kids assume they will go to university and have a career, some kids leave school as early as 16, there are "sorting out" tests along the way etc.) (You have to realize my step-daughters went to a private school in NYC where going on to an Ivy or similar is assumed - and at that age they were still naive about some of the advantages they had. I think they would have been surprised at the attitudes/expectations in some parts of the US too.)

But I think things like this are really what is important about travel - broadening beyond your own little world - esp for young people. Both have since gone back to europe several times - a couple with me and their father, the older with friends and last summer her fiance, the younger with friends a couple of times - even to places I've never been. (Somehow I've never gotten to Greece - it always seems to be the wrong seson when I have time - and business trips don't take me there - but usually to the Big 5 or similar.)

When we were recently in Bath (took a train from London) we toured the Cotswolds on a full day Mad Max Tour. Saw a lot in one day and did none of the driving! There were a number of stops throughout the day to walk around (eg. hiked between the Slaughter's etc). Plus with the tour, learned quite a bit about the area.
They also have half day tours of Stonehenge.
Not suggesting that what we did was better than your ideas, but just another perspective.
Enjoy your trip.
PS It will be very GREEN!

Cool, I've been thinking about the Stonehenge/Salisbury Mad Max tours, heard good things about them. I think they have both half-day and full day tours? How long were you in Bath itself? We'll most likely be driving to the Cotswolds after leaving Bath, but still trying to work through the dates/details.

I'd get a car for Stonehenge. I would also include Avebury and the nearby West Kennet Long Barrow. Way Cool. Much more so than Stonehenge.

We made a similar trip with our nine year old a while back. We spent the first few days in London, rented a car at Heathrow and drove to Bath (stopping at Stonehenge, Avebury and the WKL either on the way in or out, can't recall) then two nights in Chipping Camden. We returned the car to Heathrow and spent the last night at an airport hotel.

The only real mistake was renting the car at Heathrow and spending (wasting) our last night out there. Today I'd rent a car on leaving London and return it to the same place, spending the last night in town.

You might consider doing it this way as it avoids the long haul out to Bath on the day of your arrival, something of a slog for the kids, at least. After a bit of a rest there's always something easy -- London Eye, bus tour etc -- to fill the day.

Thinking we probably drove directly to Bath and toured the Abbey and ruins, spent the night, then saw Stonehenge etc on the way to Chipping Camden.

"<i>Thinking we probably drove directly to Bath and toured the Abbey and ruins, spent the night, then saw Stonehenge etc on the way to Chipping Camden.</i>"

Possibly (hopefully) not - totally the wrong direction. Stonehenge is a fair distance SE of Bath, while Chipping Campden is quite a ways NE.

Must have been the other way, then. Long time ago, the nine year old is in college now.