We will be picking up our rental car from Edinburgh and dropping off two weeks later - we will around Windermere and after car drop-off, will be taking a train to London.

It seems to me that York is the nearest big town to drop the car and take the train. Am I right?

Hi Ahmed - From Windermere I would think your easiest drop off point might be Preston.

Easy access from M6 and direct trains to London.

Hope this helps ...

Steve

If you visting the Lake District, then there are nearer big city options including Manchester or Liverpool. You would be better off looking at these unless you fancy the nice drive across to York

Which rental company - I would be surprised if any of the majors don't have a place somewhere near Windermere

Kendal is close, and Oxenholme railway station just outside the town is on the London-Glasgow route.
Or maybe Lancaster, which is also on the London-Glasgow line.

Thanks,

Kendal and Windermere are not an option with the majors. Preston is, Lancaster with some.

When I chose these (including York) as the drop-off location, the choice of cars gets limited!

Anyway, the idea is to get on a train to London after our holiday in Windermere and preferably be able to drive to the station and drop off the car there. This seems possible only in York and of course Manchester/Liverpool. Don't want to turn this into a trek unto itself - so looking for the closest place (in driving terms). Would that be York or Manchester or Liverpool? If they are more or less equidistant, I presume the scenic route would be York!

Another thing - apart from AVIS (I've tried National, Hertz, Europcar, Thrifty and Autoeurope), none offers GPS on cars - or at least I can't find any option on their websites. Any idea on what the norm is?

When we rented from Avis we dropped our car off at the Rail station in Barrow-in-Furness and took a direct train to London from there. So if you go with Avis for the GPS , BIF is only about 20 miles from Windermere.

Windermere to Manchester is going to be shorter and quicker than Windermere to York. I'd only consider York if you particularly wanted to see the place.

Otherwise consider driving south and dropping it off nearer London. It doesn't take that long to drive from Windermere to London, especially if you use the M6 toll section.

Thanks all,

Given that we were thinking of going to Alton Towers during our 7 day trip in Lake District, I am now considering spending the last night at one of the hotels at Alton Towers. That way, unless I can manage to drop the car off at Altone Towers (still researching) and hop on a train to London - I can dash to Manchester to do that.

Again if you are using Avis, you can drop the car off at Stoke-on-Trent from Alton Towers and train to London from there.

Youd'd be better off in Stoke, Derby or Birmingham than going back up to Manchester.

I'd consider just driving all the way to somewhere like Heathrow - you've already paid for the car that day so all it's costing you is petrol, then you can get the Tube into London

Takes about 3 hours most of which is on motorway

Thanks - this makes sense. I think I should drive to London.

Anywa, one thing I still can't figure out is that AVIS seems to be the only one that offer GPS on their cars. That would've been fine had they not been seriously more expensive too! What gives? I would have thought GPS would be a standard extra - I've sent a couple of emails, got one response back (from Alamo) saying they don't do GPS.