jgourdji

My husband and I are senior citizens, planning what will probably be our last trip to London and southern England. We are going to see all those sights we have missed in our previous four trips. We want to see the Cotswolds, Oxford and Cambridge, possibly Dover, Blenheim, Bletchley Park plus the little museums in London such as Kenwood House etc. My question is this: should we spend two weeks in London and take day trips to the places above, or should we spend a few nights elsewhere? We do not drive, will probably hire car/drivers outside of London, and want to maximize the value and efficiency of our trip. We would also welcome other suggestions for must see places that we should not miss (not including Bath and Stonehenge, which we have seen on previous trips.) We plan to go in March or April, 2016. Thanks.

nanabee

Trains might be faster depending on the distances you want to go. If you can afford a driver to take you places then that might work. Is there some reason you want to make London your home base everynight?

bilboburgler

I'd try and fit in http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury/
Looking at your choices you might want a few days based in Oxford/Bath

janisj

jgourdji: For most of those locations, London is the most convenient.

For the places you list -- London makes a lot sense except for the Cotswolds everything else can easily be done as day trips from central London.

Or, you could go to Oxford by train (or better yet by express bus) and stay one night then head to Moreton-in-Marsh and take a local bus or cab to another Cotswold town/village to base for a couple of nights. Hiring a local cab/driver if you wanted to go farther afield. The local tourist information office can connect you w/ a driver if you need one. Say you stayed in Chipping Campden -- nearby are Broadway, Hidecote Manor, Kiftsgate Court, and Snowshill.

Some of the London Walks day trips would be great (the Cotswolds, Oxford, Brighton, etc) but unfortunately only run in the late spring through summer.

janisj

Meant to add - another 1 night/2 day trip could be train to Canterbury, stay the night, train in the morning to Dover and spend most of the day exploring Dover Castle - train back to London. This could be done a a day trip w/o staying overnight but the castle takes a lot of time so it would be very rushed.

If you had accommodations set up in London it could even make sense to 'eat' a night and do and overnight Canterbury/Dover trip.

janisj

bilbo -- per the OP they aren't including Bath -- been there.

bilboburgler

thanks janisj, didn't see that

jamikins

London Walks run the Cotswolds and Oxford walks in the spring and autumn as well, it's not limited to late spring/summer. The trips are just not as frequent.

janisj

Oh -- good to know - I thought they started in May.

ESW

Have you visited Knole House in Sevenoaks - frequent trains from Charing Cross. It's 1.5 mile walk from the station along the high street to St Nicholas Church and then turn left into the grounds.
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/knol...r-information/

jgourdji

Thanks for the suggestions. The reason we are thinking about staying in London is just to minimize the packing and unpacking, luggage transfers etc. When I said senior citizens to describe us, I meant the late seventies, not sixties.

flanneruk

Messing about with unpacking and unnecessary luggage-hoiking can be a pain for anyone. The best connected place in the UK is London by a gazillion light years.

Assume you're staying put in London, work out what you then get to see (in your shoes, I'd do Canterbury and Dover as two separate day trips for example) then come back to the problem of dealing with anywhere you want to see and can't from a London base.

Even then: "the Cotswolds" (or other parts of ROSEland - Rest Of the South East) don't necessarily constitute a real, or coherent, destination. If it's gardens you really want to see, Hidcote and Kiftsgate need little more than two taxis to and from Moreton station, and are probably best visited from London. You'll easily get your fill of honeysuckle-girt cottages in the rest of your trip.

If you decide you do need a few days elsewhere, Bath has some, though not always frequent, terrific rail connections to much of southern and western England (as, bizarrely, does Bradford on Avon, a near-idyllic rural exurb of Bath): Oxford's are currently - by our standards - little more than OK, and its road links are approaching saturation.

Virtually anywhere else is likely to offer very limited links or be hideous - though a few places in Kent, and Winchester, have great links within an 70 mile radius and are pleasant.

annhig

with only 2 weeks, I would suggest rethinking Oxford and Cambridge.

Oxford fits in with your Cotswolds possible overnight idea, Cambridge really doesn't; they are both lovely but from a tourist's pint of view, quite similar - Colleges and gardens. also in term time it might be difficult to see as much of the colleges as you might like so if this is important to you, you may want to make sure that your trip [or part of it] co-incides with the university Easter vacation.

I'm not sure how much of an attraction Hidcote and Kiftsgate are in March/April - the best place for spring gardens is Cornwall, but we're a bit far for a day trip from London!