UK Itinerary
 

We will be spending a month in the UK in May and have just started planning. I would welcome your comments on this tentative itinerary. After seeing Edinburgh, we will rent a car. The first day of each leg includes driving. I`ve listed only general areas and need to identify a base in each area from which we can make day trips.

Day 1 Arrive in Edinburgh
Days 2-3 Edinburgh
Days 4-6 Inverness area
Days 7-8 Oban area
Days 9-11 Lake District
Days 12-15 Yorkshire area
Day 16 Cambridge
Days 17-18 Kent
Days 19-23 London (turn in car while we´re in London and rent another for remainder of trip)
Day 24 Blenheim
Days 25-26 North Wales
Day 27 Manchester
Day 28 Depart Manchester

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Hi, I'll try and help with Days 12-15.
As you are probably aware, 'Yorkshire' covers a very large swathe of Northern England. Most visitors come to NORTH Yorkshire as that is generally where the 'sights' are (Dales, Moors, Castle Howard, York, Fountains Abbey etc). However there are of course lovely places to visit beyond North Yorkshire (Bronte Parsonage at Haworth for instance, West Yorkshire).
From the above you'll have worked out that no one place is a base that will easily get you everywhere, but you have a car which is great and will give you so much more freedom. Many of the more rural Yorkshire areas have patchy (or non existent) public transport.
York is used as a base by many. It's a beautiful city with much to see. However, if you wanted to stay somewhere more rural then there are many towns and villages which would suit.
Do you have any idea what you want to see in Yorkshire?
There's normally a school holiday (a week) for all school children at the end of May which always makes everything so much busier, plus a Bank Holiday weekend at the end of the month. However, in 2012 it is the Queen's Jubilee so these holidays will be the beginning of June instead for most(which is good news for you!)
A general comment about your itinerary - looks fine with a car. Busy of course - but perfectly doable. Yorkshire to Cambridge will take you about 2 and a half hours by road.

Camille - you'd think that you could see a lot in a month, wouldn't you, but what you will mostly be seeing is the inside of a car and a lot of different hotel rooms. I would strongly advise you to rethink and go for longer stays in fewer places, with perhaps little stays in between as staging posts.

i would also lose Inverness, cambridge and Kent unless you have some very strong reason for going there.

what about this?

Day 1 Arrive in Edinburgh
Days 2-4 Edinburgh
Days 5-8 Oban area
Days 9-15 Yorkshire area or Lake District - not both.
Day 16 -19 - North Wales
Days 19-21 - Oxford for Blenheim, Cotswolds [return car in Oxford]
Days 22 - 28 London

you could swap Edinburgh with Oban [if you arrive in Edinburgh early in the morning] so that you don't have such a long drive south between Oban and Yorkshire/Lake district.

Wow, a whole month! Lucky you. And wise-you for starting the planning and getting feedback from experts like the two above. I think busy itineraries, like your initial one, are doable, if that's what you choose, but staying in less different places as annhig suggests is a good (you'll have to decide if a better) option.

Only suggestion from me at this juncture of your planning--what are you using to gauge/guess times needed to drive? Whatever you are using (like Googlemaps perhaps?), I'd suggest you DOUBLE the times suggested. We found in our driving that generally it took 1.5 times as long. Occasionally it was close to suggested times but not often. We did not run into major traffic or major construction or major accidents, so we had no major delays which was a blessing. But because I'd allowed double the time suggested by the mapping programs, we always arrived with enough time to get done at least most of what we hoped/planned to do.

You are planning on a lot of great areas but unfortunately you are cutting a few VERY short.

there are just TONS of things to see in Kent/East Sussex. But in barely over one day you won't see much.

Same w/ North Wales--only you'll have even less time there after driving up from Woodstock.

Same for some of your other destinations.

28 days (which is essentially 26 because day one is mainly for jet lag recovery and day 28 is your departure) may seem like along time but it really isn't when you are trying to hit three countries. Inverness to Kent via Oban/the Lakes/York/etc is about 800 miles. And much of the route is 35-40 mph territory . . .

Are your flights already booked? If not there might be better options and you could avoid the hassle of multiple car hires.

Thanks all for your responses. Per your advice, we are cutting back on the number of destinations and spending more time on the remainder.

hi Camille,

thanks for taking the suggestions in the spirit in which they were meant - we really want to you have a good time.

let us know what you decide!