My husband and I have a very short trip planned to the city (May 14-17) and would like to consider a "countryside" venture. Since we are so limited on time, I am wondering if we might accomplish some countryside sight-seeing by taking a coach to Greenwich or Cambridge.
Has anyone done this and would you recommend one location over the other?
Thanks!
Check out Original London Walks www.walks.com as they do great day trips out to Cambridge and also Greenwich. You show up at the designated place, the tour group leader will have a Original London Walks pamplet so you know who he is(they are all Blue Badge Guides-real pros), usually there are people milling around waiting for the tour also. They do nice 2 - 3 hour tours of places in London also, but for the money their days out are the best as they charge a minimum fee and you pay for a train ticket. We did Cambridge with them last June and it even included punting on the Cam, along with the American military cemetary in Cambridge along with the usual sites.... Rick likes them too!
They are doing a "Cotswolds in Spring" day out on Saturday May 16 (not to be missed) this is probably the best way to see the Countryside and the lovely Cotswolds, I don't think you can go wrong with this one( 16 pounds plus your train fare), May 14th they are going to Bath on a day out trip, I can recommend the Along the Thames Pub walk (it's not a pub crawl, but a history lesson with historic pubs thrown in), Sunday morning Hampstead Village for a look at a London village where some well know people live, but check out their program at www.walks.com
Greenwich as Emma notes is not really country side but if you take get there using the River Boat transportation option its a pretty and scenic transportation option. You didn't mention your starting point, but the Transportation for London planning tool is a good start for sights in the greater London area:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/
The planning tool allows you to select mode (e.g. Tube, River Bus, Bus etc.) and screening criteria (fastest, fewest changes, least walking).
We did the route from the Victoria Station area via the River Bus and returned by walking under the Thames to the DLR station.
We didn't visit Cambridge but did do a day trip to Oxford, the other university town with the Inspectors Morse and Lewis settings. Even had an expensive drink at the Randolph Hotel's Morse Bar while waiting for a friend. We took a coach from Victoria Station to the Oxford Gloucester Green Bus Station that took less than 2 hours.
http://www.traveline.info/
PS Don't know what you mean by "countryside". Oxford is away from London but isn't in the bush.
To give you an idea of how not far out in the country Greenwich is, that is where the London Marathon started yesterday.
Thanks everyone for your helpful replies! I suppose the "countryside" would be anything that is not urban/industrial. We were thinking that traveling by coach would afford us some relatively inexpensive and nice views of the "country". All of your feedback and suggestions are very much appreciated :)
I think that if I were looking for a countryside adventure not to far from London, I would think about The Broads. I saw a write up on it somewhere recently and it sounded lovely. I don't think that you can get there by train and once there would need to rely on buses. It looks lovely.
Pam
Greenwich is more or less considered London and is 30mins along the river from Tower Bridge. A nice place to visit but not really 'countryside'.
Oxford might be preferable to Cambridge, it's much closer and very similar. On a trip outside London, you will mostly be on the motorways anyway, and yes you will see countryside, but it's going to all start to look the same after 30 mins. Oxford will give you a 'quick fix' of greenery, without consuming too much trip time.
You could also consider a trip to Windsor, closer still. Then you have the Royal Castle and Windsor Great Park. This is 5,000 acres of parkland, which includes a Deer Park, and is a varied landscape of formal avenues, gardens, woodland and open grassland.
http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/windsor/windsor-great-park/
You didn't mention if this was your first time in London, but I'd definitely consider spending a half day wandering around Hyde Park. This is really lovely on a nice day, and as you get towards the middle area, you can really lose yourself in the nature, feed the squirrels (officially, don't feed the squirrels, but a handful of monkey nuts will have them eating out of your hand, literally! it's a bit of fun). 'The Flower Walk' running for 0.5m from Kensington Palace, past the Albert Memorial to the Serpentine Gallery is also really nice (squirrel central!).
As you have such a short time, and there is so much to see and do in London, maybe staying locally is a good use of time, and you could combine Hyde Park and Greenwich.
Hyde Park is more than just 'a park', it covers 350 acres and has many cafes, memorials, fountains and statues, 2 lakes and a Palace. It's 4 miles to walk around the outer path, 1.8 miles around the inner path.
If you want some 'real' countryside and take in Oxford, get off the train and walk some of the 'Thames path'and get back on again.
For a rural destination that is more used by actual Londoners than tourists, try Epping Forest. Various walks are described here. Depending on your starting point, you can use the Central Line tube or the train from Liverpool Street station (but make sure you are aware of the correct fare).
Cambridge is out on the fens which is a fairly typical East Anglian landscape - flat, damp, windy, flat and dull. The city itself is very nice, Ely is diverting, Peterboghorror is where you'll end up no matter how hard you try to build escape velocity^, but Anglia is not exactly spectacular countryside for the casual visitor. Unless that is you have an unusual obsession with drainage ditches. There's a reason I now live anywhere else but. Did I mention it's quite flat? I hope so.
If you want more interesting scenery from the window of a coach or train, you should head to the chalk - either south to Brighton (though a lot is in cuttings and tunnels, so maybe not so thrilling) or go west through my patch. Chiltern Railways to Princes Risborough goes through nice countryside from the moment you get out past Ruislip. Sit on the left of the carriage and you'll get views across Wycombe and of the Dashwood mausoleum on the top of West Wycombe hill, sit on the right and you get views up the vale, and of Bradenham on on the way through the Chilterns. Risborough is a nice enough small town - potter about for an hour then hop the return train remembering to sit on the other side to see the things you missed going out...
^ This is a law of physics. Cambridge Uni has the Physics research reputation that is does only because students get trapped by the Ring-road Event Horizon and it takes 10 years of degrees, research and a post-doc paper to figure out how to escape...
As you can imagine, people will have different opinions. We spent a week in East Anglia/East Midlands and loved it. Scenery and history galore. Cambridge is a wonderful day trip.
I've often noticed that the many fabulous Brits we have on these forums are fairly honest about places in the UK, not shy of saying a place has 'little of interest' or is 'dull'...
Our tourist friends from around the world are often full of praise for even the most basic of destinations in the UK.
Is it possible that 'us Brit's' no longer see the wonder and magic in what we have, what we have come to take for granted?
It's possible...
I grew up outside Chicago Illinois and thought that the landscape was pretty boring--corn fields mostly it seemed to me. But then one summer we drove our normal route to O'Hare airport and picked up my cousin from Ireland who was coming to visit for the summer. As soon as got off the highway and headed through the Barrington country side, Hildegard started oohing and ahing. "It's so beautiful!" So, I sat up and looked around and lo and behold it was! We were driving through the horse farms and the hills were rolling and the fences were wooden and white. It was an eye opener.
It happened again 8-9 years later when I was living in West Lafayette, Indiana. I had an editor coming to work with me. She had lived her whole life in Northern New Jersey and now was in Manhattan. She flew into Indianapolis and then drove north. When she got out of her car she was almost stuttering. "The sky!! The horizon! The farms! It's magnificent!" She just was not used to the openess of the midwest and the far west.
Both these experiences have prompted me to keep an open mind about places and beauty. It really is in the eye of the beholder.
Pam
Emma, what an interesting link! For some reason I burst out laughing when I saw the picture of the Highland cow. Even in a park setting with some wildlife, the cow seems incongruous.
