2 weeks in England, Scotland, late March, early April 2023

Head on line, to a bookstore or a library and get the Rick Steve’s Britain Guidebook.

Makes planning a travel itinerary based on your interests easy. Talks about car rental, weather, public transport, sites and restaurants.

I’d encourage you to also use the search aspect of this website. Countless posts about England and Scotland.

Lots of time to research and plan for March/April 2023. Be sure each member of the group expresses their “ must sees.”

Sorry, but 5 places and 2 regions in 14 days including at least half a day’s travel between each location doesn’t make for a relaxing trip. You will need at least 2 drivers to share the load. Please don’t hire a car the minute you arrive after a long flight.

You need to all work out what your priorities are. Cornwall/ Devon is the geographical outlier. I would suggest that you either focus on the west county or you head north.

Without knowing your interests, it’s difficult to advise on places. Do you want cities, coast or walking in the countryside?

There’s enough stuff in York to fill 2 full days, at least 3 in Edinburgh, which are both easy to do by train from London then tour Scotland by car, return the car and take the train to London. The drive from Scotland to London is tedious and with car hire prices and the cost of fuel, buying advance train tickets may work out cheaper. It would make more sense to fly home from Scotland rather than waste a day back tracking to London.

Alternatively, head west, having 3 nights/ 2 days for Bath then visit Wells - also nearby is the excellent Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Museum which is worth half a day if you are interested in military history or old planes. Stay in this area for a couple of nights - there are several National Trust properties in the area including Montacute. From there, you could head to 2 bases in Devon (I much prefer Devon to Cornwall) - say Chagford for walking in Dartmoor and Bideford for the coast.

I think you're going to find two weeks isn't long enough to visit so many widely-scattered destination swithout rushing. Don't forget that every time you change hotels you'll lose at least half a day. Your first day will be of limited value due to jetlag (and possibly sleep-deprivation on the overnight flight). It sounds as if you're starting with thirteen full, non-jetlagged days. That leaves ten days after you allow three for London. That's not much time for Bath, Wells, Devon or Cornwall, York, Edinburgh and a bit of rural Scotland.

Cornwall can be challenging going without a car--doable, but time-consuming. London-York-Edinburgh is fastest by rail, but I think getting to York by train from Devon/Cornwall/Bath takes quite a bit longer. That transfer will definitely chew up a lot more than half a day.

Your timing is a bit early in the year for Scotland, I think, unless you just want to focus on Edinburgh and Glasgow. You can take a look at the climate-summary charts for your key cities in their Wikipedia entries. For a better sense of what sort of conditions are likely, I prefer to check the actual, historical, day-by-day weather data on timeanddate.com. Be sure you're OK with the possibility of chilly, wet weather and limited hours of sunlight.

Depending on what origin airports are convenient for you, flying into Edinburgh or Glasgow might be viable. You're smart to try to avoid a time-eating London round-trip.

I'm concerned that you have such a packed plan, in many cases you'll spend longer getting there than enjoying "there", and it doesn't look like you have made any allowance for the storms that tend to roll in from the Atlantic in March and April. You may well find you need to hunker down for a couple of days when they come through, and they can be wintery.

Way too much on the agenda.
You have two weeks, do some specific planning and you will see that going from place to place in Britain will take more time than you anticipated.

Just to vist Bath, Wells, Cornwall and Devon will take up about 10 days.
York is wonderful, we spent three nights there and were busy.

Forget Scotland and the north of England if you plan three days in London and what you stated in SW England.

Thanks, all for the suggestions. I always pack too much in at first. Travel time, enjoying what we see without a ridiculous schedule and some rest are all important parts of a successful trip.

I like Jennifer's first plan. You don't want to drive in London, York, Edinburgh when train travel is so easy and quick.

If the three of you identify what are your very highest priorities to see, you'll have an easier time of narrowing it down. Cornwall and Scotland are very far apart, but it's good to have the discussions of what you all want to see, there could be a southern trip in March and then a northern trip the next year in the summer, whatever works for you all. I find that if I'm flying into Heathrow, and go straight to Windsor (VERY nearby, often see the castle while landing), it's a great way to rest up, still have some historic walks right there, and good shopping, and then can get a train to London easily avoiding the rental car on the other side of the road stress. If that's a must, it can be better to do it after a few days of resting and public transit.
Could be fun for the 3 of you to have a planning dinner with a map on the table, so you can see what would really work geographically, and which places might not be important enough for days of driving.
I find it's always better to plan the very most important things, then if I can add in other things later, so be it. :)
Remember to bring binoculars :) Have fun!