Great! Thank you so much.

toucan2, you say you're both familiar with driving on the left, but are you familiar with driving a standard transmission car? Because you're much more likely to find that in Truro. They may promise you a automatic but not be able to deliver. Something to think about.

mimar, I can drive a standard transmission, but have not tried it with my left hand, so certainly something to think about.

mimar/toucan - we have to drive cars with RH gear levers when we're abroad and honestly, after the first five minutes, it's not a problem.

toucan - we will do our best to find you an automatic!

LOL annhig, I know you will :-) I'm pretty comfortable on the left anymore.

I have only had automatics. But if I can get used to driving on the left I can probably also shift with my left hand if it comes right down to it. So if that is what I get, I'll adjust!

I should say I have only had automatics when driving on the left overseas.

I drove a stick for years, and prefer it, but they are rather hard to find in the US anymore so both our cars now are automaticfs.

Toucan - both of our new cars are automatics too! we are getting lazy in our old age.

mmm Toucan2 - that was interesting. We just had quite an interesting evening thanks to a swift moving and violent storm:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36010361

let's hope that we don't have one when you're here!

Yikes annhig,I certainly hope not!

After waiting out and waiting out the airfares, I finally bought my ticket for a grand total of $809 USD. This was much better than the 12-1400 that was pretty consistent since January when I began carefully watching. So I'm pleased about that.

We will take the train down on Sunday the 25th, going to Redruth where the very kind annhig will pick us up.

We have booked Monday September 26 with Tim Uff of Tour Cornwall. He has been very pleasant to deal with via email and got back to us pretty quickly. He also got high ratings on Trip Advisor, so I think we will be fine.

BBgt, have you had your West Cornwall tour yet?

Tim will very kindly pick us up at the cottage on Monday morning, and deliver us back to Enterprise Car Rental which is open until 6 on weekdays. I will book an automatic, and hope they really have one. If not, hopefully I will get used to it quickly.

I think we will return to London (or Haddenham) on Saturday afternoon/evening. The logistics of taking the care back on Saturday, before they close at 4, then getting back on Sunday to take the train kind of seems like a pain and will break up the day enough that we wouldn't be able to do all that much. It seems like there are plenty of afternoon/evening trains so we could have the morning, then go into Truro, drop the car, and take the train.

Unfortunately there is no after hours drop off of rental cars at that location.

Thanks everyone for your input as we looked into the different possibilities.

Toucan - that looks like a pretty good deal on the airfare and I will be very interested to discover what you think about Tim Uff.

September will come round quite quickly now i think.

Annhig, I was pretty pleased with that airfare!

We have now also booked rooms Friday and Saturday at the Hilton Paddington, which will be very convenient for taking the train down, and we booked there again for the Saturday and Sunday night coming back. Making it easy to take the Heathrow Express Monday morning.

I figure it is easy enough by tube or bus or even Uber to get around from the hotel for the time we are in London.

I got great deals there as well between the Hilton Worldwide Sale going on and prepaying for the rooms. Plus splitting it with my sister. Total for each weekend was $500 US.

London rooms are so high. As mentioned, I will be in London from the Wed-Friday for business meetings, and the Holiday Inn Express where they told us to stay are $325 USD a night. So I'm feeling pretty good about my Hilton rooms!

I also ordered my Oyster card.

I've no more money to spend until July when I book the train tickets, at which time I will also book the car as I will know the exact train times.

Yes, I think September will sneak up soon.

wow - what great deals, Toucan. the time is going to fly by.

Time has certainly flown by, and it is now less than 12 weeks until our trip!

The train ticket buying reminder never came, but I looked at the calendar and realized I could book.

So I did, but I think I may have done something wrong as we don't have reserved seats. On the outgoing route they never asked, and on the return, they asked, but then said there weren't any reserved seats left. I don't really know what that means in terms of what we will get!

In any case, I'm to pick up both sets of tickets at the station. We are going all the way to Redruth on Sunday the 25th, no change, arriving at 3:49 PM (15:49?). I've booked the return on the following Saturday afternoon as planned.

I booked the car (asked for an automatic, fingers crossed!) from Enterprise, which had a pre-pay option that saved a few bucks. 188 GPB for the week, plus 10 pounds/day for add'l driver.

And, the other day just out of curiousity I looked to see if anything was on at the Minack Theatre in Penzance while we are there. And there is! Peter Pan, and they have matinees. I've booked two tickets for the Thursday matinee. The Minack is that gorgeous theatre on the sea in Penzance. If I'm going, I want to see the sea, thus the matinee.

Oyster card came in the mail in record time.

I've booked Nopi (the Ottolenghi restaurant) in London for the first Saturday night. I was excited to get the reservation as I couldn't last year when we were in London. And as it happens, a very good friend of mine will have started his sabbatical the week before so he will join me and my sister that night.

I'm feeling very very organized :-)

It sounds like you are all sorted. :-)

Regarding the train, if you really don't have reservations, then just listen out for announcements once you board as to which coaches have spare seats. Alternatively read the little reservation tickets on the backs of the seats because you may find they are not booked for the whole route - ie you can sit in them until the reserved passenger boards. I would only do this however if there's quite a long 'empty' leg.

Toucan - I was on my trip when you posted your question about Cornwall tours and just saw it. We ended up cancelling our tour, only because we were already taking tours in Scotland and decided we'd rather have more unstructured time in Cornwall. I wrote a long trip report with some mention of our driving experiences in Cornwall.

Sounds like you've got everything lined out really well. We loved Cornwall - I'm sure you will too!

I know that this is off-topic, but HF Holidays has wonderful walking tours of Cornwall from St. Ives. We were there in 1992 and still remember it as one of our favorite vacations. HF is a membership walkers group, and the guides are HF members who receive free stays in return for acting as walk leaders. If this is of interest take a look at https://www.hfholidays.co.uk/country-houses/stives/ .

RM67, thanks so much for the tips.

BBgt, I will check out your trip report!

Joe18, those look like nice tours. Maybe another time.

Our trip has now come and gone, and a good time was had by all.

Thank you to everyone who helped with the planning, and if you would like to see how it all turned out, in a very long-winded trip report, you may see it here

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-in-london.cfm