Planning a trip to London and Scotland
 

Hello everyone,

I’ve just started research to travel to Scotland but would love to make a stop for several days, to London. For the time I’m looking for, and price, I’m planning on going in early June. My question is what is the best way to plan the trip? Take a plane to London for a few days then another to Scotland for the other few days? Is there any other way? Are their trains from London to Scotland?
Any advice would help greatly!

Thanks.

Yes, there are trains from London to various towns and cities in Scotland.

But it's a long way and it's likely to be better to fly.

It's between 4 and 4.5 hours on the train....much nicer than flying

Thanks, does anyone know if it's best to book a flight to London then another to Scotland? Or would that just cost much more?

Where are you coming from?

If you book a flight to Edinburgh or Glasgow, it may be the same or almost the same price as just into London, even if you change planes in London.

Or you could do a stopover (usually a max of 48 hours) in London as a part of your flight to Scotland.

Are you hoping to do something like fly into London, spend several days there, and then fly home from Scotland (where as yet unspecified, but to get to the US you'd have to fly from either Edinburgh or Glasgow)? If so, I'd book an open-jaw ticket (the "multi-city" option on airline sites and Kayak). So, home -> London, then a train to Edinburgh, then Edinburgh -> home.

"Scotland" is a big area with lots to see, though, so you need to narrow down what you actually want to do there, how long you have, etc. If you start in London and then base in Edinburgh, for example, I personally would take the train - it's 4.5 hours and much quicker than flying, when you add in time to/from airports and security.

How much time do you have for this vacation?

What areas do you want to see?

It probably makes most sense to do an open jaws ticket (fly from wherever to London and then from Glasgow back to wherever rather than backtracking) - and doing a train in between to see some of the countryside.

But without more info on your time, interests and budget it's hard to give useful advice.

Sorry, forgot to add that info, I'm coming from North Carolina in the United States & we are gonna have five days for this trip. For Scotland we want to take a tour of the Highlands, which I found a two day tour of so I'm thinking of taking that ontop of that we want to go to some of the castles there and i've got a list of those too.
Jent103 yeah that is exactly what I wanted to do.

Thanks for all the info guys I didnt even know I could fly to London a train from there to Scotland back home. Great advice guys thanks. This is my first time traveling so I had no clue there was an open jaw ticket.

5 days total or 5 days in Scotland?

Also, when you arrive in Britain after a long overnight flight, you will be jetlagged and sleepy. So don't expect to get much out of the first day or two. That's why 5 days total is hardly worth the trip.

If you have 5 days total pick London or Scotland. You really don't have the time to do both.

We stayed in London for a few days and then took the train to Glasgow, stayed there a few days and then drove around Scotland to end the trip in Edinburgh. You might want to look at my trip report; just click on my name to find it.

I agree with Stilldontknow, if you only have 5 days then just pick one country and fly in and out of that country. We had 2 weeks and we did England and Scotland.

Need to clarify that timeline.

With 5 TOTAL days, you are going to lose part of the first day getting from airport to hotel , checking in,etc.. And then jetlag will influence your first day, less on second,etc..

So could you give us a picture of when you arrive, when you leave?

Just another vote with the others. If you have five days, does that include travel time? If so, you really only have 2.5 days. If that doesn't include travel time, you just have 4.5 days. With that, yes, you *could* fly into London, spend a day and a half there, take a half-day train trip to Edinburgh, and do a two-day Highlands tour before you fly home from Edinburgh. But you wouldn't see much at all of London or Edinburgh.

It's your trip and you know how quickly you like to travel, but just know that you won't have time to see all that much with only five days total. I travel quickly, but I would keep it to London and Edinburgh at the absolute max. And you could very easily spend that entire time in London - plenty of day trips available if you do happen to get tired of the city.