England with 4 young children! Need guidance!

You might be best off by renting a cottage in the different areas in which you wish to stay. You don’t say how you plan to travel about so if not hiring a car, location for public transport would be important.

For example, Google ‘Country Cottages Pembrokeshire’ (which is SW Wales) & up will come a number of agency sites for that area. Always find any place you are planning to stay on a map such as Google or Apple.

Note that the first Monday in May is a holiday. The last week of May is also a school holiday. The main school holidays start 18 July 2025 and run through August. During those times, prices will increase so try and avoid if possible.

Definitely country cottages are the way to go. Choose some areas and stay there for a couple of weeks at a time. There are well-established companies (long pre-dating Airbnb) that offer these, and yes “place name country cottages” is the thing to google. They mostly have a minimum one-week stay but obviously you can stay for longer.

Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, Lake District, Pembrokeshire Coast, Shropshire Hills, Northumberland Coast are among my favourites. I find the Cotswolds a bit less interesting and dramatic than all of those. Do a bit of work with Google and see which ones sing to you.

You mention bus and train but for this kind of countryside trip you will need a car.

Dover has absolutely no place on a list of attractive countryside locations to stay. It’s a not particularly pleasant town blighted by lorries and ferry transport, but the castle is magnificent and could be a day or weekend trip from London.

On the accomodation front, the suggestion of rental cottages is a good one. I would also suggest the Landmark Trust and the National Trust for great holiday lets:

https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/holidays

I know it's a city, but our kids loved York when they were young. It's a nice historic city, and you can see York Minster, the National Railway Museum and the Jorvik Viking Centre. And obviously you can head from there to Dales.

I would also vote for York - not forgetting to add the Castle Museum to the list of attractions. It's comparatively small and walkable (definitely don't drive in the centre) . You can also get to the coast - some nice beaches but cold water.

If you have a car, you could very easily do Stonehenge on the way down to Dorset, Devon or Cornwall.

A lot will depend on whether you intend to hire a car or not. With a car, the coast is wonderful for children. If you prefer not to rent a car then you would do better in a town. You could take an Airbnb in a residential area of Bath that’s popular with families (eg Bear Flats) and explore the parks and museums plus do a few day trips by train.

I lived overseas and traveled with kids, my son was 5 and daughter 11 when we started traveling overseas. No problem with my daughter, but my five year old son did cause us to make adjustments. Going to museums was tough since he was bored after 15 minutes. Also, I remember we went to Parliament to see the House of Commons in session. We couldn't take him in with us, so my wife and I had to take turns sitting for him outside the building.

With very young kids, if you rent a vehicle, you probably will need car seats for the little ones. Not sure how to rent those.

Frankly, my advice is to wait to visit Europe when your kids are older, or leave them with Granny.

If you do take the trip, I can say that Great Britain is special for my wife and self. Most of our ancestors came from the British Isles and we are British history buffs.

Places to visit, perhaps for long term.
York- probably my favorite city in the UK. Much to see there and we found a nice hotel with free parking for our vehicle. Also, we were very close to the center of the city. It is called the Minster Hotel. You could take day trips to Durham, the Yorkshire Moors or Dales, Hadrian's Wall and Castle Howard.
https://discoveringyork.com/the-top-historical-places-in-yorkshire/

When we did our four week drive tour of GB, we visited Warwick Castle, just north of the Cotswolds. We saw more children there than anywhere on our trip. Check it out.

Other places to stay could be in the Cotswolds. We stayed in Chipping Campden at the Volunteer Inn.

The Lake District was nice and if you like the out of doors, it would be nice for hiking.

If you rent a car, you will need one with 7 seats (most only have 5) and all the kids will need car seats (legal requirement). Rented seats are expensive and sometimes in poor condition. It’s probably cheaper to buy 4 low cost seats, which can’t be sold unless they conform to safety standards, and ditch them at the end of the visit.

It sounds like you have lots of experience traveling with your children, but I think it will be very difficult to manage 3 children under 5 and your luggage on trains-I assume you realize that you can't check your luggage on trains?

Thank you all! Great ideas & suggestions! Yes we planned to rent a car and or have a driver if needed

Also we did not plan to travel on trains with luggage. The train idea was more if we could go somewhere in an hour or 2 on a train & then come back at the end of the day. I just think a train ride would be a fun experience for our kids!

If you want to do a train trip, make sure that at least one of your stays is in an area with a train station - this might sound obvious, but while our public transport system here is pretty good, it doesn’t cover rural areas well.

Or you could do some day trips from a London base by train - lots of lovely small cities or even pretty coastal towns.

If you go to the Lake District, you could go on one of the steam trains for your train trip-

Either the narrow gauge Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway (T' La'al Ratty as it's known locally) or on the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway (which connects with the Lake Boats, the 'Steamers' as they are still locally called, but converted to diesel many a long year since) .

If your dates were right then the other possible railway is the privately owned little Millerbeck Light Railway (one of the area's big secrets, a fun day out for children of all ages, even those of more mature years like me).

The Children may be a bit young for it, but just outside Keswick there is also the Threlkeld Quarry Museum and Railway- something distinctly different.

If you have not been to Europe before you should be aware that the default for hire cars is a manual transmission. If you want an automatic, you need to specify it on the booking.

You will need a vehicle with 7 seats to give you 6 seat belts. The type of car you are most likely to get (a "people carrier" - no idea what the term is in the US - such as a Ford Galaxy) will have 3 rows of seating 2 - 3 - 2. For 4 children, I think the best layout is two adults in front, 2 kids in the middle leaving the centre seat empty and two more kids at the back. This doesn't leave much room for baggage as the rearmost two seats take up most of the space at the back. If you can, I'd suggest bringing smallish suitcases that can go in the seatwells where the kids are sitting to make best use of the available space.

As i said earlier, you will need 4 car seats for the children. BTW - it is a legal requirement for kids to have these in private (and hire) cars but not taxis. If you do want to buy them, you need to think how you can get them to the car pick up (will you have a night in a hotel first?)

As I understand it, roundabouts aren't used much in the US. In the UK we have overdosed on them and I'd advise looking at some YouTube videos about how to successfully negotiate roundabouts. I'd also suggest getting a SatNav (or Google maps, if you have web access) with the sound on as this will help to guide you to the correct lane as you approach a roundabout.

Some of the places you are thinking of going have winding, narrow roads (sometimes "single track with passing places") and it might be an idea to get practice driving on the left early in your visit before going on these.

A lot of towns now have 20mph speed limits in the town-centres; I'm guessing York does.

We lived in London for 3 years with our younger kids, so this is my advice....

Decide if you want a city or country vibe for your every day living (which includes needing daily naps). The advantage of having a home base in a smaller city like York is that you will find tons of area walks to do with your family, lots of local sites, plus you won't need a car for everyday living. From a place like York, you can make longer day trips to other cities by train or head towards the Lake District. The other way is to rent a cottage near a smaller town along the coast (like St. Ives or in Wales) or more inland like Marlborough. You will need a car for everyday living, but can be closer to all the Land Trust parks and the ocean if you go that route. I would skip the Cotswalds (though the falconry is amazing for children), and even the Lake and Peak District are not must sees. Often the less tourist places are the real gems, including most of Wales. Just keep in mind that their road system is not as fast as in the US and traffic jams to popular destinations are common.
Enjoy your trip!