Heading to England in April on RS Tour and have extra days in London. I am interested in visiting Bletchley Park. Preliminary research suggests one can rent a car (not something I want to do); hire a car for the day (quite expensive); or take a series of trains, buses, and old fashion leg work taking roughly 2 hours.
Has anyone taken such a day trip? Are there options I am missing? TIA...
I don't think its a "series of trains", etc. Actually it's fairly straightforward.
https://bletchleypark.org.uk/visit-us/find-us
Hiring a car would, I think be more complicated since you need to pick it up, drive, park, return, drop off, etc.
I suppose the main question is whether, if you have some extra days, you really want to spend them in London or whether you'd prefer to stay somewhere nicer and visit Bletchley from there.
Get an early start; you may find you want to spend a lot of time there. I was there nearly the entire day and didn't go into the separately-ticketed National Museum of Computing.
That's right. No "series of trains." Could hardly be simpler than it is. Just a straight journey from Euston Station. And a surprisingly short walk from the Bletchley train station to the entrance to Bletchley Park.
I went last year, and posted about it on this discussion thread in this forum. (My only error in my main post there, was that I referred to my £17 off-peak return (round trip) train ticket as an anytime day return ticket.) The Virgin Trains service from Euston doesn't stop at Bletchley; you ride on to Milton Keynes and have to take a train for the short ride back to Bletchley. I took the Northwestern train which does stop at Bletchley, so no doubling back was required. Off peak travel from Euston (I think it's after 9:30 am) is cheaper than going earlier.
I very much enjoyed Bletchley Park, spent quite a few hours there, including lunch in their cafe, and would like to visit again.
Ah! I did miss something! Appreciate the help folks - looking forward to Bletchley Park.
Definitely one of my easiest and most thoroughly enjoyable day trips of all my travels--I spent about 5 hours total exploring the grounds, outlying buildings called huts and the Mansion, the museum plus a small exhibit on Ian Fleming at Bletchley, finally a snack and good poke around their excellent gift shop...they were playing the Andrews Sisters and thus I lingered a bit longer!
I did this as a day trip from London last April. As others have noted, it is an easy train ride. The walk from the train station to the visitor's center is just a few minutes. Make sure you sign up for one of the tours. It was extremely interesting listening to the tour guide and it helped make Bletchley Park come alive for me. I enjoyed poking around at the exhibits on my own as well. I really enjoyed Bletchley Park and it was not in anyway crowded.
There was an onsite cafeteria that worked well for lunch.
I thought the audio guide was very helpful, in case the tour times don't work out for you.
hd,
As the others have mentioned, it's a very easy trip from Euston to Bletchley Park by train. It would be absurd and unnecessary to rent a car for that trip. The Bletchley Park site is right across the street from the station so there won't be a lot of "leg work" involved (except for walking around BP of course). As I recall, the cafeteria there offers both cold items such as sandwiches and also hot items from a buffet.
If you have time, the National Museum of Computing is also in that area. I spent so much time at BP that I didn't have time to get to that.
