England in 9 days - End of August and first week in September (Itinerary)

With just 9 days, I would forget about Paris. One night is not worth it. And all the travel time to get there.
I suggest you get some guidebooks and come back when you have specific questions. There are some great itinerary ideas in Rick Steves guidebooks. Good luck!

Unlike the previous poster (and probably most people here), I don't think it's necessarily a terrible idea to go to Paris for just one night. I've done it a couple of times myself, and I thought it was worth it.

You will, however, have to let go of the idea of seeing "all of the attractions" in the whole of England in nine days. You're going to have to prioritize based on your interests, and you still might have to leave some things for another time. Assume you will return.

When you say you like visiting castles, do you mean palaces or fortresses? Those can be very different things.

We did a 28 day drive tour of Wales and England last October. It was wonderful, but driving in the South of England, with its many, many cars has much traffic. Especially during the Summer.

Here is my review and details of our trip.
28 days in Britain and Celebrity Eclipse home
https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=599139

Forget going to Paris for one day. You will waste a lot of time getting there. To have one full day in Paris, you will waste three nights of your time, one day getting there and being able to spend a full day, two more nights.

Castles are great, there are thousands in Great Britain. Western England and Wales probably have more castles per acre than anywhere in the World. Windsor Castle is a great place to visit and it can be done on a day trip from London.

If you haven't been to London, you will need 4-5 nights minimum to see the high points.

Other places to see on a day trip from London:
Canterbury
Cambridge
Oxford
Blenheim Palace (not far from Oxford)
Salisbury and Stonehenge
Winchester
Bath
The Cotswolds
Stratford Upon Avon, if you love Shakespeare
Warwick Castle
York is wonderful, but it is some distance north of London and you need three nights there to do justice to the city.

I suggest getting a guidebook on England and/or London and trying to nail down some specific sights and things you want to do. 9 days sounds like a lot of time but it will fly by in a jiffy. Rick Steves has a very good London guidebook which I used last Sept. Also, Lonely Planet and others have decent ones as well. When you have a list, then it will be easier to plan the flow of your visit.

Let go of this:

• We are interested in seeing all of the tourist attractions in London
• We are interested in seeing all of the tourist attractions in the other areas of England

Not gonna happen in 9 days. That said, you can see some of the highlights of London, plus maybe a couple of other brief stops.

Travel itineraries are all about trade-offs and making choices.

You could choose to go to Paris. If you do that comes out of your time in/around London. I don't think "one night" in Paris is necessarily a good choice because (assuming you're just zooming there from London) you would spend half a day getting there, half a day getting back, so you would end up without a single full day actually being there. Both Paris and London are cities that deserve some time. With 9 days, you could do both, but you have a problem: it sounds like you already bought your flights, and have a round-trip in to London and back out of London. That's not wise, if you want to go somewhere else. If you want to include some time in paris, you would be much better off flying in to London, spending a few days there, then taking the train to Paris, spen a few days there, then fly home from Paris. That's what I would suggest.

If you want to "do" Paris this trip, look into changing your flights as described above. If you're going to skip Paris and save that for another trip, then leave your flights alone and focus on what you want to do/see in/around London.

Here's what I would do with 9 busy days in London and highlights of SW England:

Day 1 - London - self-guided Westminster Walk, Westminster Abbey, Parliament
(The walk will get you on your feet and help with jetlag - and has iconic views of London. But, consider - Wednesday afternoons from 4:30 to 6pm, you can get into Westminster Abbey for half price).
Day 2 - London - Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, Globe Theater and South Bank
Day 3 - London - Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, Churchill War Rooms, Trafalgar Square and National Gallery
Day 4 - London - British Museum and consider West End Walk or Albert and Victoria Museum and Hyde Park
[You can adjust your priorities for the London highlights depending on your preferences, but it makes sense to group sights together geographically]
Day 5 - London to Bath - Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, Avebury en route (sleep in Bath)
(Take the tube or express train - from Paddington Station - to Heathrow Airport. Rent a car. Driving in England is a huge part of the adventure).
Day 6- Bath (sleep in Bath)
Day 7- Bath to Cotswolds (sleep in Chipping Campden or north end of Cotswolds)
Day 8 - Cotswolds and day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick Castle (sleep in Chipping Campden/N. Cotswolds)
Day 9 - Cotswolds to London - visit Blenheim Palace and Oxford en route

Skip Paris for now.

but driving in the South of England, with its many, many cars has much traffic

This has been mentioned several times by the poster but I have to disagree. The traffic in the South of England is no different to that in the North. What is more pertinent is the roads on which you'll be driving. If you've ever experienced the misery of the M6 or M1 at rush hour you'll know that there's no distinction between North and South traffic. I can drive along many of the B roads in the South and encounter only a handful of cars likewise up North. However, if your experience has been primarily of M and A roads in the South and then primarily B roads in the North then your perceptions will be skewed.

The M25 however is always busy, even in the middle of the night.

Thank you for the advice. We are definitely planning to go to Paris but only for the day. Should we do this day trip at the beginning of our vacation? Maybe stay the first night in London and then to Paris the 2nd day? Just trying to figure out when to rent the car.

Leave Paris for the very end of your vacation and then fly home from Paris. Such an open-jaw ticket might be cheaper than roundtrip from Heathrow given the exorbitant exit taxes charged at Heathrow. See if that's the case for you.

JC,
Our experience at driving around England was our 28 day drive tour. We spent a total of 10 days in the North of England, York, Pickering, Whitby, Durham, Haltwhistle (Hadrian's Wall) and The Lake District. After heading up the M1 from Warwick to York, until we ran into nasty traffic on the M6 some miles north of Birmingham, was our least amount of traffic for the four weeks, although South Wales wasn't so bad.

We encountered far more traffic in the Cotswolds, Midlands and South on our way to Winchester and Southampton.

When I say North of England, I don't mean the Midlands. If I am wrong about that, please correct me.

I've been driving in the UK for more years than I care to remember and I've encountered no distinction between traffic in the North or South. My biggest bones of contention are the M27, M25, M1 and M6, all of which, M25 excluded, have their quiet and busy periods.

There is no reason why traffic should be heavier on the major trunk roads in the South than the North.

I hope you have a really fun time. So much of travel planning seems to be getting really specific about your own kind of "fun", so please make your own list of 6-8 things that you REALLY want to do, plan on those, and then fit in more as you can. Some people love to zoom around and do as much as they can, others love to spend some time and learn more, the travel needs of people vary so widely. Since it's your first trip, you'll learn that there's no way to see "all" of the attractions :) but we don't need to tell you that. You'll learn it :) I'm a NYer, and people who visit NYC can basically see nearly all of it in a week. Literally, if you stayed in London for months, you still could not see all of it. It's a WHOLE other thing. I guess a thousand years of world history will DO that :)

Definely try to see "all" of at least your "A-List" places. Google maps was really helpful to me when I lived there for 2 months, the option to view the public transportation was a great help for finding the bus and tube connections of the sights I wanted to see. Oyster cards were great.

The other thing on these forums is that sometimes someone's 1st trip to London is in their 20s and they want to zoom 16+ hrs a day to 6-8 sights or more per day quickly, and others are in their 60s+ and want to take it easier at 2-3 major sights per day; so the pace and focus on the travel can vary widely, you'll need to specify what works for you.

The idea of leaving/flying open jaws from Paris might be a good one, maybe make Paris a 2 day part of your trip instead of 1. Or you might love trains and want to be on the Eurostar to and from Paris in the middle of your trip to space out the travels. The Eurostar leaves from St Pancras station, and it's right next to the British Library, their treasure room is required IMHO, and seeing St Pancras Hotel is required for my trips also (my daughter adores it, photos can NOT do it justice). And that's next door to King's Cross, easy to get there, most every bus in the city goes to King's Cross it seems. So there are options for you.

Windsor Castle is great, and it's near Heathrow, so I also always try to get there. Travelodge.co.uk has a location in Windsor, and the taxi trip to the LHR airport's super easy, you can also get back in to Windsor Castle for free another day if you get your ticket validated, so if you love castles, you can go repeatedly and save money.

I found no need for driving, if there are trips outside of London and Windsor, so many have coach bus trip options (usually out of Victoria station) that were really easy and good price.

Also, if you belong to any clubs here that also have connections to people there, it can be great to set up some personal connections when you can. Also the MeetUp.com web site is popular over there, can help you meet some people who live there and know the newest details.

Have as much fun as you possibly can!
-Alison

When we were younger and both working, we often were only able to take trips of about 9 days. You can see and do a lot in that time- especially if you think of it as 'getting a taste' of somethings that you might want to re-visit and spend more time on later. You can do Paris as a day trip. There are companies that will handle all of the details for you. (personally, we did not enjoy Paris- but we are not the norm) There are LOTS of day trips you can also do from London on a 'get acquainted' trip like yours. It might be easier to plan some of those and just stay put in London this time. There is lots to see and do. We especially enjoy the markets, and Kew Gardens, and the theatre.

We NEVER drove in the UK (or else where in Europe) because 1- we actually enjoyed the train/bus rides, 2- Gas/Petrol is VERY expensive, 3- Parking is just as expensive and often very scarce, 4- We didn't want to deal with driving on the 'other' side of the road, on very small and narrow roads, and neither of us can drive straight drives- and automatics are ---guess what-- scarce and expensive!

Here are few of the trips we enjoyed doing from London by train:
Windsor (1/2 to a full day), Bath, Cardiff Wales, Brighton, Winchester, Canterbury, Dover, Stratford-upon-Avon, York

All these are good day trips and all but Windsor are cheapest if you purchase the train tickets well ahead of time or buy one of the many passes (ask Nigel about those and what might work for you).

In reviewing a couple Rick Steves' books, it appears that taking the train to Bath, on the day of arrival, seems to be a good choice. With that being said, we would like to stay in Bath for 2 nights and then travel to the Chipping Campden/Cotswolds area, then north towards Keswick and then travel to York. We are considering renting a car in Bath and then dropping the car off at York. Will take the train back to London. We also want to tour London, and take a day trip, via the Eurostar, to Paris. Just trying to figure out where to stay after leaving Bath. We are all about seeing as much as we can, knowing that we will not see everything we would like to but we are a young early 50's couple and enjoy a fast pace adventure. Would appreciate thoughts and feedback.

I’m going to guess you’ve booked your flights already.

Too bad as you might have considered flying into London and out from Paris thereby resolving which of the 9 days to “see” Paris.

C’est la vie.

Upon arrival at Heathrow head straight into London, drop off your bags and hit the ground running. Get your Oyster Card and make use of it on the tube to whisk you about the sites.

Group the sites together for example Parliament, London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Churchill War Rooms, St James Park, Horseguards and Buckingham Palace are easily within walking distance of one another. Use Google Maps satellite view to see what I’m talking about. Also remember Elizabeth’s Tower and Big Ben ( the bell) are under scaffolding and silent till 2020.

Before you go make a list of what you truly must see.
Then plot your routes via Google Maps and by researching opening times.

I’d give London a full 4 days and nights. Then head back to Heathrow, rent your car there and begin your drive to Bath or the Cotswolds.

I’ll be honest your itinerary sounds exhausting. If you must see Paris you must leave early and Spend the night there to do it just before returning to London.

Heidi -- Focusing on your most recent post, if I understand your current plan you'll spend two nights in Bath, one in the Cotswolds, one around Keswick, and one in York before the train to London. That's five nights. One more in London, then a day trip to Paris with another night in London. Now you're up to seven nights, so you're left with one or two more in London, depending on whether "nine days" means full days or nights. It looks like you have only two or three days when you're not moving somewhere else -- one in Bath and one or two in London.

Every time you move you spend time and money just moving. Most of those days you'll also be packing and unpacking, checking in and out of hotels, and such. Sometimes the time in motion will be scenic or at least interesting, but the more scenic the route the slower it's likely to be.

Rick Steves recommends Bath as a first stop in a three-week itinerary, all within England, that he considers rushed. That's not your situation. Bath is a fine destination but don't go there unless there are things you want to see and do that outweigh other priorities elsewhere.

I think you're trying to do too much. You have 8 1/2 days to work with.

You want to spend one of those in Paris, which is fine if that's really important to you. Don't do it day 2 - you may still be jet lagged and going to Paris will be a long, tiring day. I'd do it later in the trip.

You want to spend two nights in Bath - I like the idea of going right there on day one. So that gives you one day in Bath plus the afternoon/evening you get there. Another day would be better, but you don't have much time. In fact, you now have six days left.

The Cotswolds are close to Bath, so you could get there in late morning and have an afternoon and evening. So you see one village, maybe another on the way, but brief visits.

The next day you want to drive to Keswick. That's going to take four or five hours, again giving you an afternoon and evening in Keswick, maybe time for a short hike. Plus you'll see some scenery on the drive up.

The next day you drive to York, a shorter drive, so you could get there late morning. There's a lot to do in York, so you'll have to be selective.

You now have three days for London, enough to see several highlights.

Does this sound like an enjoyable trip to you? If it does, go for it. The problem I have with it is all the moving around takes a lot of time and energy - packing and checking out, driving, finding your hotel, and checking in - and you don't have time to see much.

If it were me, I'd stay in London most of the time and take a couple of day trips (ones not so far away as the Lake District), not counting Paris. I think that would be a lot less stressful.

I just got home from a two week trip to England. Three days were spent in Wales, where I rented a car. Some people are blase about driving on the "other" side of the road. I HATED it. I found it very difficult and the whole time I had the car was extremely stressful for me. I'm glad I did it because I wouldn't have gotten to see the ancestral homes that I saw otherwise. But I will never do it again. The narrow winding roads of Wales were difficult for me, and driving in Chester was awful. I found the freeway to be much easier, but it was the middle of the day on Sunday, so traffic wasn't heavy. Just want to caution you that while some people find the transition to driving on the other side of the road to be easy, others do not.

MaryC's experience is what I've heard from 95% of my American friends who've driven in England. I mean, I have American friends who have lived in England for years and refuse to drive after attempting it on vacations earlier. My husband knows like, one guy at work who didn't mind driving here, and he's Special Forces, so...

I would not advise driving on your first trip to England. I won't do it. With the right kind of research it was absolutely possible to visit country areas, such as Yorkshire, via train and bus (we went to Pickering, Whitby, and York from London and got to enjoy England's "most scenic bus ride" - it was an attraction in and of itself!) When my mother and grandmother wanted to visit the Cotswolds, I arranged for us to take a small mini-coach 2 night tour from London, and we got to learn a lot along the way from the guide in a nearly-empty bus! That would also be a good choice for the first two nights as you may be jet lagged.

If you have to do Paris, I'd get a hotel room very near your train station to save time.