Driving from Cotswolds to Heathrow

I’d go the night before and I think this is the advice you’ll get from everyone here. You’d need to arrive at the airport at 9.30am at the latest to give you time to return the car. That means travelling through the absolute worst of rush hour so you’d need to allow 3 hrs for the journey. Even then you could end up cutting it tight.

Adding to the above…you can guarantee that the car rental company’s computer system will be down if you do day of flight.

Stay at Heathrow and don’t miss that flight.

Come in the day before and if you have not been to Windsor than stay there and enjoy the evening, literally 20 minutes away form Heathrow.

I’d vote for driving in the day before and staying by Heathrow. Less stressful than dealing with traffic the day of your flight! Even while staying in London with friends, with a morning flight to the US we always head to a hotel near Heathrow the night before returning home. We have now stayed several times at the Courtyard by Marriott Heathrow—very reasonably priced, comfortable, clean, quiet, helpful staff, and a shuttle to the airport in the morning. Highly recommended!

Don't try to stay your last night that far from the airport.

The London Orbital perimeter highway is terrible. We found it was a parking lot most of the time we had to use it.

don't count on getting to Heathrow from Chipping Campden in as little as only 2 hours in Wednesday rush hour traffic.

If this a flight home you'll need 3 hours prior departure = 9:20, plus an hour for car topping up, examination for scratches and return, and transport to the terminal = 8:20 plus an hour fudge and traffic time = 7:20 plus 2 1/2 hours driving = 4:50am.

That's not as wise as I'd want to be.

If you're on a short haul, you might get an hour back.

I think you are better returning the prior evening.

As Nigel said, 2 hours is optimistic. The few times I drove from Heathrow to Cheltenham, a similar distance, it has taken 2.5 hours. Any congestion, getting behind slow moving vehicles, or construction and it could take well over 3 hours.

Yup, same answer. We found in the UK the travel times were always more than the estimates. We love the Cotswolds--have fun! If you are a Fr Brown fan (BBC, Mark Williams, not the older series), his church is in Blockley. We spent a lovely week in Blockley in spring 2017, love that village vibe!

Some of the routes you could take are more prone to build up of traffic than others but this can start to become generally heavy as early as 7 am for example on the Oxford Ring Road and approach roads. If there is no specific incident on your chosen route or the others you would be OK but if there was one it could slow things down significantly across the board.

Thanks to everyone for confirming what I was thinking. We will plan to return the car night prior and just stay at a hotel near airport. Thanks!