My wife and kids and I will rent a car when we leave London and plan to drive through the following: Oxford/Cambridge, Cotswolds, possible Bath, Lake District, York, then Scotland, including Edinburgh and the HIghlands. What map or maps should we have with us? Thanks.

Steve

I strongly suggest you try to buy the A-Z Great Britain Road Atlas, sold in just about every gas station in England (or check amazon.com). Published by Geographer's A-Z Map Company Ltd, it sells for about $10 and it was incredibly detailed and worth every penny. I mostly enjoyed the Scottish Western Highlands portion, the area near Inverness, and the Umbria (northern England border) as it depicted castles and sights guidebooks didn't even mentioned.

Mine is now getting ancient, but it is an O/S (Ordinance Survey) atlas of Great Britain. The scale is 3 miles to the inch and offers great detail. I wouldn't do anything with a scale less than that.

By the way, are you a member of AAA. You can contact the RA in Great Britain with your intinerary and they'll prepare a sort of "trip tik" for you that puts the US ones to shame. It is incredibly detailed--"as you pass the little white church, look for the Little Chef restaurant where you'll turn left onto Wayside Lane" -- that type of thing. And there is no charge for this.

Patrick:

We are AAA members but I'm not familiar with the "RA". Any suggestions on how to contact them? Thanks.

Steve

I use the CD autoroute 2001 GB.

By RA, I suspect Patrick is talking about RAC Motoring Services, www.rac.co.uk, formerly part of the Royal Automobile Club.

The point of getting a Road Atlas rather than folding maps, is that you need the 3 miles to the inch scale, and it requires 9 such maps to cover all of England and Wales, plus 2 more for Scotland. The RAC maps for Scotland are 4 miles to the inch, which is good enough, given the lower population and road density.

You can get the Michelin Great Britain Road Atlas at Barnes & Noble. It is a very good atlas.

Duh, where was my head -- guess I was thinking of flying over with the RA?

Steve P

You can also get driving directions from www.viamichelin.com and www.theaa.com - I always check a couple of sources. The route given is not always identical. Then can look at your purhcased map and decide on the best way. Print the driving directions out prior to leaving home.

Have a wonderful time.

Sandy

We've always used the Shell maps and found them very complete.

Just about any of the road atlases will work. The rental agency might provide one but that is becoming less and less common. As said they are sold at just about every petrol station, service area, news agent, etc.

The AA, AtoZ, Michelin, O/S, etc are all god. I've used all of these over the years and each has some features the others don't. But all are accurate and easy to use. DO NOT try to do any extensive driving w/ fold up maps. You really do need a road atlas . . .

We used the AA road atlas last spring to drive from Inverness to London via Edinburgh, Hadrian's Wall, York, and Oxford with great success.
I personally like the size that's a little smaller than 8 1/2x 11. It was easier to handle in the car than an enormous road atlas.
Annette