jerseysusan

My son and I are planning a September trip to England. I don't think we are renting a car as we are not sure we are brave enough to drive. Hopefully I can work out my hoped for plans using public transportation or day trips through tour companies. So far my thoughts are as follows:

Day 1 - morning arrival in Bristol, take train to Bath . Stay in B&B through Day 5
Day 2- Mad Max Tour to Stonehenge, Avebury, Lalock and Castle Combe - full day
Day 3- train to Salisbury, possibly find transportation to Stourhead
Day 4- Mad Max Tour to Cotswold - full day
Day 5- Bath
Day 6-Stratford upon Avon
Day 7-Ludlow - possibly coincide with food festival?
Day 8 - fly home from Birmingham?

I am not sure how to work out trip once we leave Bath. Does it make sense to
a. Stay in Stratford upon Avon and visit a town near it on day 7and forget Ludlow?
b. Base ourselves in Birmingham? and take train or bus to Stratford and Ludlow?

I will be grateful for your help.

Sue_xx_yy

Just a thought: Oxford may make more sense for a base for the Cotswolds and Stratford than Bath. So you may want to shift your base to Oxford from Bath on day four or five. Can't help you with Ludlow.

I am a little confused about your airport gateways. Regardless of where you fly home from, I suggest you spend your last night there, much less stressful in terms of making your flight.

Sassafrass

I liked the Mad Max tour to Stonehenge, Avebury, etc. but would not want to do two Mad Max tours. Just too much time in a van with other people for me, and unless you are doing it on your own and doing some walking & hiking, you see enough cute places on the first MM trip. IMHO.

I would spend day 2 in Bath and do the Mad Max tour another day, if possible.

salisbury_matt

You can do Stonehenge from Salisbury rather than Bath if that works for you - it's a lot closer. There is a Stoenehnge tour bus that runs from the station of various other alternatives. I created a weba page about getting from Salisbury to Stonehenge here: http://salisburyandstonehenge.net/st...-to-stonehenge

I can't think of an easy public transport way of getting from Salisbury to Stourhead, I'm afraid.

I would though recommend the railway trip from Bath to Salisbury - the section from Bradford on Avon to Bath is really scenic.

Have a great trip!

jerseysusan

Sue-xx-yy - thanks for your advice. I wil check out making Oxford a base. I am not sure where to fly home from. That is why I considered making Birmingham a base.

Sassafrass - I would really like to see the Cotswolds area. Without driving the tour seems the only way. Of course a tour is not my first choise either.

salisbury-matt - thanks for your imput. There is so much to see and I have tons of thoughts I am trying to make sense of. I appreciate all the help I can get!

julia_t

You can get to Ludlow very easily by train from Bath. One change at Newport, and then a scenic journey up the Wye valley and along the Welsh borders to Ludlow.

Ludlow is a lovely town, don't miss it if you can help it.

mes2525

Ludlow is a great town and has some wonderful Michelin starred restaurants. Easy to get to from Oxford or Bath by train. The entire Wye Valley is very scenic and if you had more time Hay-on-Wye has wonderful used bookstores to explore.

flanneruk

1. As far as I can see, neither Bristol nor BHX have transatlantic flights any more. Neither have any flights at all to any of England's intercontinental airports, so to get to them you have to change at Dublin, Amsterdam or Paris. Is this really the most efficient journey plan?

From most of SW or middle England - especially if you're not hiring a car (why not? Millions of us every year drive on the wrong side, in a foreign language, with an alien measurement system, every time we cross the Channel, without months of anticipatory terror) - Heathrow is the easiest intercontinental airport to get to. Even if there are seasonal transatlantic flights to Bristol, the difference in time between the direct bus from LHR to Bath and the shlepping into Bristol to get a Bath train is rarely worth the added inconvenience of finding (and getting to) a rare Bristol flight.

2. In a country with as dense a railway network as ours, getting a train from almost any A to any B is easy (walk to station, buy ticket from machine, sit on train). It's the time that counts. It's 2.5 hrs from Bath to Ludlow (admittedly mostly pretty) and 3.5 hrs from Oxford (not pretty unless youe get off on the Stalinist architecture of Birmingham New Street station)

2.5/3.5 each way (and somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 from Stratford to Ludlow). And, if you were thinking about going to Ludlow en route to somewhere else, there's no left luggage at Ludlow station.

You're pushing the limits of either public transport or what you can comfortably see in the time available beyond what's reasonable. Moving briefly to Bham means inserting a couple of thoroughly charmfree days into what's already a pretty short holiday.

Bath has astonishing direct train links. Go to the National Rail site, press "live departure tool", tell it you're in Bath then click on each departure to see where the train stops en route.

Select the towns you're visiting from the list you've now made. Fly to Heathrow, get the bus to Bath, stay there for the week and daytrip by train (or Mad Max) each day.

jerseysusan

flanneruk - thanks for your response. You gave me a lot to think about.