England/ Ireland Itinerary Help

Maybe you could forgo Harry Potter so as not to rush the countryside ...

June 1- Travel to Oxford by train. Oxford sightseeing. Night in Oxford.
June 2- Pick up hire car in Oxford. Spend your day in the Cotswolds. Night in Bath.
June 3- Bath sightseeing in the am. Excursion to Stonehenge in the pm. Night in Bath.
June 4- Return hire car at Bristol Airport before flight to Shannon, Ireland. Night in Limerick.

England has more than enough for your vacation & I would suggest Ireland as a separate holiday.

Apart from driving around the Cotswolds, Bath, Oxford can both be easily done by train. See www.nationalrail.co.uk

Look at the places you plan to visit on Google Earth.

The London Pass is generally a rip-off - overpriced and many of London's main museums are free entry. Buy an Oyster card for travel and buy admission for attractions as you go.

Definitely rent your car in Oxford. Oxford city centre is very difficult to drive a private car in and car parking is very expensive unless your hotel has its own private spaces.

For the return from Bath it is probably better to drive the car all the way to the airport you're leaving from, but make sure the airport does have an office for your chosen car firm and that it'll be open when you arrive. (Ryanair sometimes has very late departures.)

While in the Oxford area, I would recommend visiting Windsor Castle. We added it to our English countryside trip several years back at the last minute, and my wife counts Windsor as her best experience in England. The Sunday we were there, a flea market was going on outside the municipal office on High Street, so we bought some old books cheap: five pounds of books for five pounds sterling! When Prince Charles later married Camilla, they had a civil ceremony at the same municipal office. Your train from London to Oxford may pass right through Windsor and the train station is a short walk (uphill) to the castle.

Hi, Shabug,
It is so much fun to plan a trip and you have made a great start. Everyone ere, of course, has a slightly different take on how to proceed and I do encourage you to read the suggestions but do give a lot of thought to your wishes, hopes preferences when you plan.

So, take my suggestions as only that, things I have done and how I did some of it. First, although the London Pass is often disparaged, we did use it for one trip to London very successfully. We bought the 3 day pass after having looked carefully at what we wanted to see and what admission costs were. We did carefully schedule 3 days of our 7 day trip to include, in what we thought was a sensible order, those sites covered by the pass and it worked great. We did NOT include the travel pass. That was about 12 years ago.

At this time, assuming you are not traveling alone, you might look at the 2 for 1 scheme sponsored by the National Rail. Look here for a complete explanation http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g186338-c195600/London:United-Kingdom:2.4.1.Travelcards.Step.By.Step.html This is the scheme we have used the last 2 times we were in London and while it sounds a little complicated, it really was very straightforward.

We were in England for 2 weeks this fall. We landed in Heathrow from the US and took a cab (short not expensive ride) to Windsor. We saw the Castle on our arrival day, had dinner and slept in Windsor. The next morning, we returned to the Castle, wandered about town and then picked up our rental car. If you went to Windsor the first night, with your list of places you want to see: plan A; You could drive to Bath from Windsor, stay over and then the next day wend your way from Bath through the Cotswolds ending and dropping your car in Oxford to train to London for your days there. Plan B is skip Bath(where I have never been), take the train from Windsor to Oxford and explore the city, the next day pick up a rental car and drive in the Cotswolds, return the car to Oxford that evening or the next and take the train from Oxford to London. I have taken the liberty of replacing Stonehenge with the Rollright stones which are very cool and in the Cotswolds near stuff you might want to see http://www.rollrightstones.co.uk/ .

But remember, my trips go where we want to go and see what we want to see. Yours should too and it should make your heart sing!

Thank you so much for the help! Has anyone visited the Harry Potter Studio Tour? If so, is it worth the trip out? I've visited the Harry Potter sections at Universal Orlando. Are they similar? We are trying to decide if we want to nix this or not.

Why don't you turn in the car on arrival in Bath? Then you could see Bath on foot & stay a night or 2 before flying to Ireland from Bristol Airport. Aer Lingus have cheap flights from Bristol to Cork - but only on certain days. Go to this website & choose the route & then select 'month view' to find these flights.http://www.skyscanner.net

We want to fly Aer Lingus from Bristol to Ireland. The problem is that it only flies into Cork and Dublin. Which city would you suggest we fly into based on our current itinerary? What would we need to change by flying into either of these cities?

I have never been to Ireland but looking at the map, I reckon that you could fly Bristol > Cork as that will land you very near the south-west (Killarney). You then arrange your original schedule for Ireland in reverse to end up in Limerick. Then straight across central Ireland to Dublin.