I only recently realized that my car hire and Cotswolds portion of the trip falls over a weekend, which makes my original plan more challenging — both in terms of rental car pickup logistics and crowd levels at popular sites. I’m now trying to work around that and would really appreciate input from local experts to confirm if the updated plan below is feasible, or if there are alternative places along the route that might be better for avoiding weekend crowds (the goal is to see pictures-tic British villages, and it doesn't have to be Cotswold if that area is too crowded):
- Friday: Leave London and take train to Oxford. Spend the day touring Oxford and stay overnight.
- Saturday: Pick up a rental car in the morning from Oxford. Drive to the southern part of the Cotswolds to visit Castle Combe and another less-touristed village nearby. Continue to Bath and arrive early afternoon (targeting at ~2pm). Spend the rest of the day visiting sites like Bath Abby, Royal Crescent, etc. Overnight in Bath.
- Sunday: Visit the Roman Bath in the morning and, if time allows, whatever we don’t have time to see from Saturday afternoon. Leave Bath and drive through the busier part of the Cotswolds in mid afternoon. I don’t plan to stop at the most crowded villages but may drive through one or two (e.g., Upper & Lower Slaughter) just to get a feel for the area, if time allows. Does this kind of drive-through approach make sense and is it worthwhile? Then continue on to Bakewell for the night.
The question is: is the plan to drive from Bath to Bakewell in one afternoon too aggressive? Ideally it would make sense to take train to Bath and from there drive north to Oxford, but weekend car rental from Bath is a lot more difficult than from Oxford (especially that I would have to hire an automatic car). I am hesitant to cut Bath altogether from my itinerary. Any other way I can optimize this portion of the itinerary? Adding another day would be ideal, but not at all possible with the very limited number of total travel days.