March weather and day trips from London
 

Have 10 days in London starting March 8th.
1.should we plan for cold and rainy days?
2.can one do a day round trip by train to the Cotswalds from London?
can it be combined w/day trip to Bath?
3.should Bath be done with trip to Stonehenge?
4.or should Bath be combined with trip to Windsor castle or Stratford-On-Avon?
3.Or,am I truly geographically challenged?

1) I'd be surprised if you didn't have any - but this is the UK where you prepare for all types of weather at any time of the year
3) Stonehenge should be combined with Avebury & Salisbury
4) Bath should be combined with a trip to Bath
3) Numerically challenged

2)You can do a same-day rail trip to the Cotswolds by getting a train to Moreton in Marsh, then taking almost connecting local scheduled buses either around the area, or back to Oxford. Requires a fair amount of planning and the train company, FGW, no longer put details of how to do this on their website. I'd happily email you the notes on how to do it. You can't include Bath in the same day: you can easily finish your one Cotswold day in Bath and then travel on the following day.

4. Look at any map. Bath and Windsor are sort of possible, but getting in and out of each is time consuming. Stratford's in completely the wrong direction for Bath. The nationalrail site has maps of railway lines.

Two days in a car will take you round a substantial proportion of all these places.

Weather: we have a saying:

March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers.

It holds pretty true. But in all honesty, March can be breezy, wet, cold, mild, dry, sunny and anything inbetween. It won't be hot, and you'd be very unlucky to see snow, but that's about all I can say. Pack layers and buy a small collapsable umbrella to keep in your handbag.

You mention quite a few places. Do you want to see them all? If so your best bet would be to rent a car for three days/two nights and drive. I'd go to Stonehenge, then up towards Bath stopping at Lacock and Castle Combe (both beautiful Cotswold villages near Bath) and spend the night in Bath. The next day you could stop at a few more villages driving up to Stratford where you could spend the second night. You could stop at Windsor on the way back to London. Or better yet, do this at the end of your trip and finish at Heathrow (assuming you fly out of there) which is near Windsor.

But if you want to do actual day trips it will be hard to do all that. Bath would take a whole day (but be worth it). The Cotswold villages are hard to do by public transportation - they don't all have train stations with frequent service. Your best bet in that case would be an organized tour which would go to Stonehenge and a few other places, or just Cotswold villages. There are tons of day tours and your hotel should have info.

Easy independent day trips, by train, from London include Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick Castle, Bath. In the other direction, but an easy day trip is Canterbury. Windsor should only take about a half day, very easy by train from London.

thanks to one and all for the advice
this is a great site for feedback
thanks again