My wife & I are working on an itinerary that would take us SW of London for the first time. I intend to rent a car at Heathrow Airport and head south and southwest on Sep 7. At this point, I think we would like to spend the nights of Sep 7-9 in the vicinity of Portsmouth. We could see Portsmouth on the 8th and then take the ferry over to the Isle of Wight on the 9th.
From there I would like to head SW to the vicinity of Truro, Falmouth, Penzance, & Land's End. The schedule is blank from the morning of the 10th until we have to be in Cheltenham by the 18th. I understand it will be impossible to see everything but I sure would appreciate any advice you might have. Exeter needs to be worked into this schedule somewhere. As we head NE toward Cheltenham, I would like to work in a detour through Wells and Cheddar.
On a previous UK trip, we did take day train trips out of London to Salisbury and Bath so we don't need to include those places.
At this point, I doubt that all of these can be squeezed into the 10 days (7-17) without spending all of our time driving! I just know that many of you will have experience traveling in SW England and will have suggestions. Thank you!

If you want to take your car on a ferry may sure you can do that under the T&Cs of the rental.
I feel you are trying to see far too much.
10 days and you have to deduct time for jet lag, booking in and out of hotels, time for boarding ferries etc.
If you are intent in heading for the IoW then other places to visit without too much time wasted on travelling will be.
London, Winchester, Stonehenge and Avebury, Marlborough, The (River) Test Valley, Lacock, Oxford.
These are suggestions of locations and not necessary overnighters. Use a base to get to see some locations.Are is a lot of things to see near or in these locations. Explore on line an choose what suits your interests.

It's a perfectly workable itinerary.

What time are you arriving at Heathrow? Are you likely to be arriving jet lagged? If so you may want to build in a night close to Heathrow to recover before heading to Portsmouth for two nights.
Heathrow to Portsmouth is a couple of hours drive.

Assumimg you leave Portsmouth on Sept 10th as planned...

Sept 10 drive to Exeter - about three hours drive. How long are you wanting to spend here? It may be necessary to build in an extra night in this area before heading to Falmouth. Exeter to Falmouth is going to be about 2.5 hours drive. Go via Okehampton which takes you along the north side of Dartmoor rather than through Plymouth. If you want an overnight then Okehampton or one of the small villages on Dartmoor would be a good place.

Arrive Falmouth either on 10/11th September. Use this as your base for Cornwall. Land's End which is the furthest point is just over an hour's drive. Land's End is now very touristy and you may actually prefer Sennen Cove instead. Explore the Helford Estuary. Visit Truro, Penzance, Lizard, St Michael's Mount, St Ives, St Just....

17th Sept Leave Falmouth and drive along the north coast through Tintagel, Bideford and along the north of Exmore to Minehead, heading for Wells. This is going to take 6 hours plus stops so is a full days drive.

18th Sept Do Wells, Cheddar gorge and then head for Cheltenham. This is probably about a couple of hours drive.

I'd avoid Land's End. It's a nasty money grubbing mess. There are much places to go in Cornwall

Thank you all for the quick replies!

Let me further clarify our schedule. We will arrive in London on Friday, Sep 3, in the morning. There is no way I'm going to attempt to drive that day. In fact, we plan to spend the weekend in London and take the tube back out to Heathrow to pick up a rental car Monday morning. The last few times we have been in London, we have stayed in the South Kensington area not too far from the Gloucester Road tube station. It has been a convenient tube ride out to LHR.

That clarifies things and makes sense - so head to Portsmouth on 7th September and follow the plan.

Here I am again with a little tweaking to the above discussion. Friends from Texas are leaving this coming weekend and will spend a week in Cornwall & Devon. They will be staying in Fowey and St. Ives. I've taken a look at Fowey and it might be an attractive alternative to Falmouth. If we stayed there for 3 or 4 nights (10-13), we could do day trips using that as a base. From Fowey/Falmouth, we could head up along the north coast using A39. Since we want to be in Wells & Cheddar on Sep 16/17, we might spend a couple of nights (14 & 15) on the north coast between Barnstaple and Minehead.

OK, that is the tweaking I mentioned. Thoughts?

Sounds good. Fowey is a delightful small settlement, much smaller than Falmouth with a lot of character. There is some lovely countryside close by and if you like walking there is some good walking along the coastal path. One of my favourites is to get the ferry from From Fowey across to Bodinnick and walk to Polruan and get the foot ferry back to Fowey. This is a lovely walk, the real essence of Cornwall.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/item379352/

As you've probably worked out, it will be a lot further to drive to Penzance and Land's End, but these are still do-able in a day.

Two nights on the north coast would give you chance to see something of Exmoor, which is one of the less popular and therefore quieter National Parks. This is where the classic story of "Lorna Doone' was based. Don't miss Lynmouth and Lynton.

Hi bu67,

Not sure how I missed this first time round as I keep an eye out for threads mentioning Cornwall [where we live] but it's nice to catch up with it now.

one of the problems of visiting Cornwall is that it's quite a long stretched out place, so if you pick, say Falmouth, and spend a week there, you will inevitably miss quite a lot. OTOH Falmouth is a very good place to stay and you can easily fill a whole fortnight with things to do and see in the area not just with drives, but also a lot of boat trips.

Fowey IMO is not such a good base as it really is quite a lot further to the aest where there are not so many things to do and see. True Fowey does have the Hall walk [as linked to by ESW] and some other nice walks in the vicinity and a beautiful position on the estuary, but overall, I think that you would be pushed to fill more than a couple of days there. [we spent a week there before we moved to Cornwall and a week in Falmouth too so I know whereof I speak!]

You could of course split your time between there and, say, Penzance, which IMO makes an excellent base for exploring the far SW - Porthcurno, the Minack, Bottallack mines, the Gurnard's Head [great pub] Mousehole [a number of great pubs and restaurants] st Ives etc.

As for options in north Cornwall/Devon, I would strongly recommend seeing the lovely village of Morwenstow [the home of the Reverend Hawker who wrote the Cornish anthem, Trelawney, and spent a lot of his time rescuing seamen who had been wrecked by his parishioners!], Hartland Point where you can see the waves crashing against the most amazing rock formations, and Appledore, which is a delightful ship-building village on the Torridge estuary.

I would either stay there or in the village of Instow opposite where there is a very nice hotel - the Commodore - from whose windows you get a great view of Appledore on the other side of the water.

I agree that another option is Lynton/Lynmouth on the northern Coast - the Valley of the Rocks is very picturesque and the track railway up the cliff is fun too.

Fact is that there are too many lovely places to see in a week or so - so you have some difficult choices to make.

Still working on this. I'm going to list overnight stays that I have penciled in on a calendar:
7-9 Sep Portsmouth/Isle of Wight
10-13 Sep Falmouth
14 Sep "Open"
15-16 Sep Minehead
17 Sep Wells. Cheddar Gorge on the way to Cheltenham.
18-19 Cheltenham (Committed for brass band event)

Obviously, there is too much to see in too little time. Minehead will give us an opportunity to see north coast and Exmoor. 14 Sep could be somewhere between Falmouth and Minehead or just add another day to Minehead.

IMO, the more time spent in Cornwall, the better. Your itinerary, however, looks pretty good. Just not a great fan of Portsmouth as compared to Cornwall.

"Just not a great fan of Portsmouth as compared to Cornwall"

Then you have an inappropriate screenname !

14 Sep could be somewhere between Falmouth and Minehead or just add another day to Minehead.>>

if you take the wonderfully [but somewhat misleadingly] named Atlantic Highway which follows the north coast out of Cornwall and into Devon, it will take you past many of the lovely places I described above. Any of those would make an excellent spot to break your journey.

you can pick it up by taking the A39 turning off the A30 as you travel north and then just follow your nose.

We've been to a few of these places so see if these TRs are any help:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...sh-holiday.cfm

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...ay-weekend.cfm

We just cannot see everything so this trip will give us a taste of Cornwall, Devon, & Somerset. We can build a future trip for places we miss. The next thing I need to do is find places to stay in Portsmouth and Falmouth. We have certainly enjoyed B&Bs in the past. I'm trying to schedule us so we don't have to pick up and move every night or two. If we were still in our 20s and 30s, it would be different!

Portsmouth...

http://www.fortitudecottage.co.uk/

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_R...e_England.html

The Fortitude is close to the Old Portsmouth camber and seafront, only a few minutes flat walk to Gunwharf Quays [shopping/restaurants/marina, the Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth Harbour train station, and Wightlink ferry to the Isle of Wight.

BU67 - for B&Bs in Falmouth, have a look at ones near Gyllingvaise Beach - there are quite a few down there, some of which look very nice; in fact I seem to remember that there was a thread about this. Try doing a search for Falmouth, within the last 3 years.