Three simple questions for an England trip I am planning in x1 month - mid May to end of May 2025):

1.) How many days for London to see "all of it" and by that I mean all the major museums, royal sites, squares, gardens, attend a Shakespeare play, etc.? Is 5 days or 7 days the better choice? I move fast, do not care about food that much and am fascinated by art, history, architecture, etc.

2.) Rent a car on the way out of London for other sites in southern UK? - my interest is Hastings, Dover, Canterbury, Oxford, Cambridge, Cornwall, Windsor castle, Salisbury, Lincoln, if not feasible to also see Norwich, York, etc. Never driven left side of the road - is it as much of a learning curve/risk as I imagine it could be or you quickly adapt? Any car rental agency recommended in the UK - I have used Enterprise in the past in the US, Italy, and Turkey.

3.) Airbnb or hotels? I had a great experience with Airbnb in Italy, a good experience with hotels in Turkey, just not sure if people have had equally good experiences with the UK?

Thanks!

1) 7
2) car hire for Cornwall. All the rest the train probably is easier
3) Airbnb is the UK is fine. Hotels in the UK are fine. B&B in the UK are fine. But use something like booking.com or tripadvisor.co.uk for the reviews

Lincoln is not southern England. Don't forget you need an ETA to visit the UK now.

Not simple questions at all

OK -- bit of a reality check . . .

1). seven days is not long enough to see even just a majority of the major sites. Not nearly. But seven days will let you get a decent taste of London and its major sites.

2) It sounds like you have about two weeks give or take. That is not enough time to see London PLUS " Hastings, Dover, Canterbury, Oxford, Cambridge, Cornwall, Windsor castle, Salisbury, Lincoln, if not feasible to also see Norwich, York, etc." You really do need to look at a map -- these locations are spread over more than half of England. Two weeks would be OK for London / Dover / Hastings / Salisbury Canterbury and a bit of the south coast. . Cornwal is a looooong way from London -- basically it takes one full day to get there and one full day to get back so you wouldn't have time unless you did JUST London and Cornwall. Cambridge/York/Lincoln is close to a week's worth right there. (Windsor and Oxford are easy day trips from central London by train). PLUS -- the end of May is a Bank Holiday 3.5 day weekend (Fri afternoon through Monday) and the roads will be VERY congested, many sites quite crowded, and much accommodation booked up ages ago.

3). I always wonder when folks say they've had 'good experience' with airbnb. Since one is dealing with individual owners/properties what happened on a previous trip has nothing to do with the next place you rent. But the same can be said about hotels.

Tell us how many days you actually have on the ground (not counting travel days)/ Re a car -- I alsways start with AutoEurope since they are a broker that deals with all the majors.

Is it hard to get? Should I wait on that before I purchase tickets?

Thanks. I'll come up with an itinerary and come back. I agree Cambridge seems out there but the rest may or not be feasible with proper efficiency. I am extremely efficient and do not get bogged down with sentimental long lunches or quirky minor museums. You can check out my Turkey and Italy post-itineraries here and here. I'll have to make do with 6-7 days in London and try tackling things in the Oxford > Bath > Cornwall direction, then zip along the coastline back up to Canterbury and London.

The ETA is very easy and usually approved in minutes, you might as well do it now. Here is a thread about it.

ETA for the UK

Please clarify -- what are your actual dates? this is very important because of the Bank Holiday. Much of Cornwall especially will have booked up ages ago. Plus if the weather is decent, the tail backs (traffic jams) down to Cornwall can be MASSIVE -- adding hours to the drive times. The Bank Holiday isn't really an issue in London -- except that major sites like the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and the big museums will be very crowded.

" . . . try tackling things in the Oxford > Bath > Cornwall direction, then zip along the coastline back up to Canterbury and London."

That is easily 10 days to two weeks by itself.

" . . . I agree Cambridge seems out there but the rest may or not be feasible with proper efficiency"

Cambridge is not the outlier here -- Cornwall is. It is far from London and the roads are very narrow/slow.

Do come back with a basic itinerary -- and we can help you with it.

May 17 - June1. The bank holiday appears to be Monday May 26th? If I went first with an overnight in London and picked the car rental up on Monday the 19th, that gives me 5 days before the weekend begins. I could first head straight down to Cornwall as you feel it is the highest risk of losing time due to congestion. Is 3 days sufficient to get a good view of things, so Monday-Wednesday Cornwall then Thursday-Friday try to tackle Bristol, Bath, Glastonbury, Salisbury, Stonehenge.

What area do you anticipate NOT to be crazy/congested for the bank holiday - the southeast down by Dover/Canterbury, or London, or someplace else?

You can not do Bristol Bath Glastonbury Salisbury and Stonehenge in two days, no matter how efficient you are. Even just driving between them will take a lot of time.
Where in Cornwall do you want to be? Driving from London to St Ives for instance takes a minimum of 5 hours. Driving out of London and coping with British motorways for the first time is not for the fainthearted. Such a long drive when you are still jet-lagged is asking for problems.
Driving along the coast is slow.
Bank Holiday you are best off in London where you don't have to drive.

I still think you have an awful lot on your list that you will be too pressed for time to try to do. I wouldn't try to drive the day after you arrive as, at least for us, it was quite an adjustment to get used to driving the "other" side of the road.

What are your top of the top priorities? In other words, your 5 star "can't miss" places?

"Is 3 days sufficient to get a good view of things, so Monday-Wednesday Cornwall then Thursday-Friday try to tackle Bristol, Bath, Glastonbury, Salisbury, Stonehenge."

No way no how. Like impossible Not a prayer. 3 days for Cornwall will give you just ONE day for the entire county.

• Monday will be spent driving down -- it will take the entire day when you factor in getting out to Heathrow to collect the car (or just as long if you were to rent from a central London location fighting your way out of town - day time traffic is extremely congested in the city)

• Tuesday see a teensy bit of one corner of Cornwall

• Wednesday spent driving back.

And "Bristol, Bath, Glastonbury, Salisbury, Stonehenge." is not two days - it would be four days minimum when factoring in driving up from Cornwall. and dropping the car at the end. Bath alone takes most of a full day if you are just rushing through 'efficiently'. Salisbury & Stonehenge is close to another full day.

I don't think you are getting what we are saying. Cornwall is a very long way from London.

The sleeper train to Cornwall would probably give you a little more time on the ground, but then you either have to get a car when there, or rely on public transportation.

Check your Google drive times. I know some of this stuff looks like it's very concentrated on a map, but UK roads are very, very different from US ones, and some of these drives with be SLOW by US standards. We took an Uber from Bath to Avebury, which is about 20 miles. It took an hour (we knew it was going to), and then to get back we had to take a bus from Avebury to Swindon, and then the train back to Bath. Absolutely worth it, but not fast. And Swindon's bus station is kind of gross. Did see a chalk horse from the bus, though.

5 hours London to Cornwall east. Or 8 hours.

To Cornwall west you can add another 2 hours unless it is busy.

There is no road along the south coast that lets you speed along.

I go to Cornwall annually, I take the train and hire a car there.

Look at Oxford, differently. Stay over a night or at least stay an evening and go to evensong in a college.

Sorry to pile more gloom on to you but you also need to bear in mind that it's not just the Bank Holiday weekend that will be busy. The whole week starting on the Monday is a school half term holiday for most schools and given the better weather we would expect then (no guarantees, it's the UK), a lot of people will be away all week at the sort of places you will be visiting.

If your flight gets in early enough it should be possible to get a train down to Cornwall on the same day, which would at least give you a head start. You can hire cars in Plymouth (just in Devon), Truro or Penzance.

Thanks guys, very helpful. I'm thinking of scratching off Cornwall and just going as far west as Bath-Bristol, then cut down to Weymouth. After that drive along the coast zigzagging to the interior for certain sites. I would hope to see Wells, Winchester, Salisbury cathedrals as well as Canterbury and Westminster abbeys.

My biggest tip for you is to open Google Maps, plan the routes between the places you want to visit and note driving the time Google Maps says, then add on 25% and then add on time for finding parking, working out how to pay for the parking, finding the sites you want to visit and the time you think you need to appreciate those places, getting back to your car, refuelling the car and yourself, finding your way to your lodgings etc etc.
You cannot do it all, certainly not in less than 2 weeks.

A few posts that were in response to a deleted post were removed

Is this your first trip to the UK and to London specifically? You have too many places on your itinerary and clearly not enough time. I've never been to Cornwall although I've been to London several times over the course of many years. I've done train trips for one day trips outside London on each trip but usually just one day trip outside London itself. There is so much to see and do in London that even a full week with one day trip possibly to Bath or to Cambridge will just about scratch the surface of what there is to see and do.

I know you've said you like to go at an active pace but, as I recall, you had some health issues on one of your trips. As a nurse, I often have to remind patients to "listen to your body." You do need to take some time to rest and refuel.

I think/fear the OP may not be listening to any of us -- just looked at two trip reports (Italy and Turkey) and they read like laundry lists.

Italy Trip
Turkey Trip

Just wait til he hits some of the roads in Cornwall . . . just sayin'