lhowlett

Living in Maui , and having 3 kids, we haven't done much traveling over the years except bact to Calif. to visit friends. ( very expensive since we are so far away)
My daughter is graduating from High School in May. We (the 2 of us) are planning a trip to England & Scotland between Aug. 5-19th. We were looking at a Globus tour from London to Scotland (highlands) & islands, for about 11 days ending in Glasgow. (it doesn't seem to be super fast paced, we hope) then maybe taking a train to Stratford, or Cambridge for a few nights. My question is ,is Stratford too touristy now, any better ideas? Is it difficult to get from Glasgow to there by train? Can we do day tours from there to Stonehengege, Oxford to Cambridge? I know its easy to do from London but we were hopeing for a more small town experience. How would be the best way to seen some nice sights coming back from Glasgow? My daughter loves ,art, music, literature.
also, how the weather in Aug. & is it super crowded?
Thanks so much for any suggestions,
Lorraine

palmettoprincess

What is your interest? Do you like theatre? The world famous Edinburgh festival will be in full swing and yes very crowded.

lhowlett

Yes we like theatre, art, music. Just wouldn't like things to be too crowed but we are pretty restricted on early to mid August. Maybe we should avoid Edinburgh, maybe check out Dublin.

ribeirasacra

But Dublin is in Ireland and it will take a good part of a day to get there and then another day to rerun...that is 2 days lost sight seeing. Not worth it save Ireland for another trip.
All the places you have mentioned are touristy, the least touristy is Cambridge.
Maybe you should hire a car and look at driving to spots near the places listed and if you find them busy drive out to somewhere more peaceful.
Have you seen the cost of train fares for 5 persons?
PS I thought I read somewhere that there was going to be a lot of engineering works on the U.K. railways this summer….can any resident shed some light on this for us to read please?

WillTravel

Edinburgh during the festivals, with my then-15-year-old daughter, was an excellent destination. If I had the opportunity to go again, I would definitely consider it. You have to decide your tolerance for crowds, but I didn't think it was that bad, particularly if you set up your visit to occur during the week.

If my daughter and I were going again, I suspect her favorite trip for August would be one week in London and one week in Edinburgh.

WillTravel

If train fares are bought well in advance, they can be quite reasonable in price. British rail passes may be a good deal (I haven't checked lately). But there are often cheap flights too.

flanneruk

" I thought I read somewhere that there was going to be a lot of engineering works on the U.K. railway"

Is there, and who cares anyway? There's always work going on, and it's of no concern to anyone whether there's more or less than usual. What matters is whether your plans are going to be disrupted. 95 times out of 100 they won't be, and the only way of telling whether yours will is to check the engineering works calendar at http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/servic...AndFuture.html

ribeirasacra

Flanner...I only pointed this out because if a family of 5, with luggage, has to transfer from train; wait out side the station put said luggage into bus; ride for a few hours (with the possibility of no drinks etc); decamp from bus wait to pick all the luggage and walk to through the station with the luggage; then wait for the next train. Or have I got it all wrong and everything happens as though you walk on a magic carpet?

Mimar

Fortunately this is only a mother and daughter. I hated Stratford. It was full of tourists and tourist traps. Cambridge is nice; Oxford is a small city.

How about Salisbury? It's a nice smallish town with a famous cathedral, and it's near Stonehenge. Lots of nice walks along waterways. Also it's a 1.75 hour train trip from Oxford.

However the train trip from Glasgow is a long one and you'd have to change stations across town in London. That's true for Cambridge also, but the stations are closer.

It's important to make your train reservations well ahead of time for a considerable savings.

rogeruktm

I am totally confused..Day trip from Glasgow to Stonehenge?

Glasgow to there by train? Where?

bilboburgler

Might try Glasgow, York, Cambridge London over say 3 days stopping at each. York very pretty, Cambridge ok ( i went to the other place)

LAwoman

We were in Edinburgh last August too, during the festival, and my daughter was 15 at the time. She loved it. You should book lodging now if you are headed there, though.

flanneruk

"Or have I got it all wrong"

Yes.

No-one's disagreeing engineering's a pain. If you'd read what I wrote - as opposed to fantasising about something else - I'm telling you it doesn't matter a toss how many engineering works there are.

All that matters is whether there's one that affects you. And instead of indulging in your self-pitying whingeing, I've given everyone a website where they can check whether their plans are likely to be affected.

ribeirasacra

flanner, thank you for your input, you are one of the most understanding and helpful posters here.

caroline_edinburgh

If you travel by train during the week, you're less likely to be disrupted than at the weekends. I travel by train (long distance) as little as possible as IME it's nearly always hideous. I hadn't done it for a couple of years so had forgotten how bad it could be, until I went down to Sheffield for the weekend a couple of months ago. (Incidentally the fare was more than I'm paying to fly to Venice next month.) Going down was OK but coming back was another matter. Even though no disruptions were advertised on my service, only 4 carriages instead of 8 turned up and they'd cancelled all seat reservations. I was lucky enough to be able, just, still to grab one of the last seats in the 'Quiet' carriage; but it ended up heaving with people standing and sitting in the aisles and full of screaming kids. Never again.

Anyway, I'm a bit confused by what you want. If you don't want touristy, why are you taking a Globus tour ? It certainly won't be fast-paced, though, as it will almost certainly be nearly all senior citizens.

And I don't really understand what you want to do in each place after your tour, if you want to avoid tourist crowds. If your daughter loves art, music & literature, so those are things you'd like to experience, then Edinburgh is the best place in the world to be in August. Have a look at the website which has links to all the festivals - http://www.edinburghfestivals.org/.

laurie_ann

People I know, even great Shakespeare lovers, have been very disappointed by Stratford. Basing in Oxford or Salisbury would be much better.

From Glasgow I would say York would be also be a great choice. Great little city, ancient walls, cathedral, history, great for a few days. Cambridge is also great. We did a trip London to York to Cambridge a number of years ago and that combination worked well.

palmettoprincess

I think we lost our poster. If you are still out there, please consider this comment. Teenagers typically like doing not seeing. Sitting on a tour bus would not be my 16 year olds idea of a vacation.
We are doing a similar trip in a couple of weeks. We will do an open top bus tour of the city of Edinburgh> Its one of the hop on hop off tours. It will give us an overview of the dity. Then we will explore on our own.
I've built in some time to walk on the beaches in Fife. We will rample around some ruins.
We will do some quirky things like go to boot sales and thrift stores and of course the hip high street stores.
Godo luck with your trip planning. I encourage you to involve your dauther in the process.

sheila

I was going to try to head you off the Globus idea too. You'll have much more fun and flexibility NOT on a bus.

Given the raft of ideas up above, might I suggest you move your plans forward and bring us up to date?

My tuppenceworth? You'll love Edinburgh in the Festival- but get rooms booked soon; and you should go to Stratford, and see a play there. Stay overnight. It's a much nicer place when the day trippers have gone (OTOH, it's not that easy to get to from Glasgow by train)