England Itinerary

With that itinerary you'll spend most of your time driving and packing and unpacking. The conventional wisdom is to spend at least two nights in each place. Some of these places are not car-friendly and if you haven't driven in England before, this could be quite stressful. And train travel can be much quicker-York is only a 2 hour train trip from London.

You will be spending far too much time in the car and not out and about seeing places. Far too many one night stays.

Sunday - probably 4.5 - 5 hours driving depending on where you pick up the car. At least 2 hours to see Stonehenge means say a 7 hour day plus lunch and coffee breaks. You may still be jet lagged. You won’t have much time to see Bath.

Monday - day in Bath followed by a 1.5-2 hour drive to Cardiff.

Tuesday - depending on where in the Cotswolds you are staying, it’s another 2.5+ hour drive. Oxford can be covered from the Cotswolds rather than moving accommodation.

Thursday - the Cotswolds to York is a 4.5 hour drive or 4 hours from Oxford. You aren’t going to have much time to see Oxford.

Friday - it makes no sense to drive from York to London which will take c 5.5 hours when you can take the train, but even this will only give you a few hours in York.

You need to halve the number of stops. Personally, Stonehenge would be a cut for me, but this may hold more interest for you, but you haven’t given us any clues as to your interests. Drop Cardiff and York, as these are geographical outliers. Personally, I would drop the Cotswolds and Cardiff and keep York, but York needs 2 full days to be worth the time to get there.

I agree with Jennifer about prioritizing York and dropping Stonehenge, Cotswolds and Cardiff. If Bath, Cotswolds and Stonehende are top priorities, I would stay 3 nights in Bath and do a Mad Max tour to Cotswolds and Stonehenge(or Avebury), skip Cardiff and Oxford and spend 2 nights in York. If you stayed longer in London, you could do Cambridge as an easy day trip. I would do everything by train and not rent a car-I think that will save you a lot of time and energy. All your destinations, except the Cotswolds, are easily and quickly reached by train. I have been to all these destinations except Stonehenge, so clearly I agree with Jennifer about cutting Stonehenge.

You have 8 days. Your itinerary includes 8 locations. And you want to spend two full days in London (which most would say is not enough time there). You ned to cut at least a couple places, and probably more.

Your trip also consists entirely of "one night stands" except for London. For every one night stand you get to spend almost no time "being there" and all your time "getting there." It's possible to string together a few days like this (over short distances) but not every day, and not when crossing long distances (tale a look at a map..."spend the day in Oxford then drive to York"?)

The most obvious outlier is York - it's too far for this trip (if you really want to include York, then you need to cut out pretty much everything else other than York, London and day trips from there). I'd start by cutting York and Cardiff, but you probably need to look hard at Bath/Stonehenge/Costwolds too.

I agree with the others. This is too much driving and not enough time visiting the things you came so far to see. I would eliminate the outliers (Cardiff and York) and save for your next trip. I would not go into London just to spend the night and rent a car. I would suggest either taking a train or bus to Bath when you arrive and renting your car there when you are ready to go on to the Cotswolds. You could also increase your nights in London and take a train to see Oxford from London. This would be another way to cut down on the stress of driving in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar roads and not being on the side of the road you are used to.

I also would not spend the single night in/near London upon arrival. Why not go straight to Bath, or else Salisbury, to be close to Stonehenge? National Express has a few buses per day running directly between Heathrow and Salisbury. Hertz, Thrifty, and Enterprise are all available in Salisbury

If this were a Brit trying to visit America with a similar itinerary it would sound something like this:
Arrive Miami, see Miami and spend night.

Drive to Charleston, tour and spend night
Drive to Washington, see city, spend night
Drive to New York, see Philadelphia on the way, then see city spend night,

You get the drift. AND, as others have mentioned, you will be driving on 'the other' side of the road, in an unfamiliar and much smaller car than you may be used to (and it will most probably NOT be an automatic), AND Petrol (gasoline) is very expensive as is parking.

Personally, I love Cardiff and York. Bath is fun. London deserves much more time. In fact, you could base yourself in London and easily do several of your chosen destinations as day trips by train. If you are really interested in the Cotswolds and/or Stonehenge, check out London Walks. They do train day trips to both, I believe. Here would be my personal day trip priority list: York, Bath, Cardiff (choose 1, 2 or try to do all 3) Then I'd spend the rest of the time exploring London. I'd add at least 1/2 day to a full day in Windsor if possible (drop one of the others if needed).

Thank you guys for all your help! It's difficult because we want to see everything.... Right now we are spending our nights in Bath, York and London. Spending two full days in Bath and York and three in London. I'll have to just go back at some point to see what i want to see!

Good for you, reducing your number of destinations. I think an 8-day trip can reasonably cover those three (Bath, York, London). But you'll still have to narrow down the places in each of these cities that you most want to see/experience.

Does this mean you'll be traveling by train? If you're still on the fence about whether to rent a car, I will say having driven around England that I'd take the train. I found that it is easy to take a wrong turn and have to stop and reconnoiter, even with GPS, as the signs at roundabouts are not always self-explanatory. It is also somewhat stressful to be mindful not just to stay to the left but also to observe UK driving etiquette, like how to enter & exit a roundabout, and stay out of the inside lane ("fast lane," in American parlance) except for passing. As another example, when you make a right turn it's the equivalent of making a left turn in the USA -- you're cutting across the path of oncoming traffic -- but since we're very accustomed to making a right turn unimpeded it may be easy to misjudge when it is/isn't safe to complete the turn.

We're going to take the train most of the time but my Boyfriend is a big car guy and wants to drive at least once. So we're going to be driving from Bath to York. He says he really wants to so we're mixing it up.

Sorry but driving from Bath to York is a mistake. That's a long way. It would make much more sense to train to Bath, rent a car there, and use it to see the Cotswolds, which are difficult to see by public transportation.

You are making the classic mistake many planners make. You are not accounting for the travel time. Also, you are trying to see too much.

For example, you plan to drive to Bath, taking in Stonehenge on the way. This will take up most of your day. When you arrive in Bath, you won't have much time to see the city, just find your hotel or B&B, a place to park, which is an issue there and plan for the next day. The next day you plan to see Bath and drive to Cardiff.

Suggest you do some research and determine about how long that drive will take. Also, consider parking and finding your place of lodging. How much time will you have to see Bath. We spent three nights there, including a full day visiting Bath, the second day we drove to Glastonbury and Wells, the next day we drove to Cardiff and did visit an Tintern Abbey and a nice castle in route.

You aren't planning to visit interesting sites that are on the way. Next you plan to leave Cardiff and go to the Cotswolds. Are you planning to visit the Cardiff Castle and museum? That will take about half a day. I don't think you will try to see the wonderful other sites nearby like the Museum of Welsh Life or another castle.

It gets worse, you plan to see Oxford and drive to York in the same day. You won't see much of Oxford.

Do some serious planning and reduce your planned sites.

Here is what we did for our 28 days in South Wales and England in 2017.
28 days in Britain and Celebrity Eclipse home
https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=599139

I'm an advocate of multi-destination air itineraries. In your case, consider, flying into London and home from Bristol, a regional airport with international connections. Bristol is close to the southern Cotswalds and Bath.
Sometimes it is more comfortable to fly into the smaller airport, requiring a connection, on the start of your journey and fly home from London at a reasonable departure hour. Standard warning: These itineraries require a multi-destination search function; they are not a set of one-way tickets.