Grand Tour of Great Britain

Thank you for the suggestions. I will look up the Lonely Planet book you suggested and put Chester down as a site. I will be driving, except in London. I'm thinking of next September or May. Trying to maximize when things are open the longest and when it will also be picturesque (good light wise) as I will be water coloring along the way too. As for budget, I am saving like mad but expect I will not be able to stay at very expensive places, nor eat at sit down restaurants often. In other words, frugal....especially if my stay is longer. ( I am allotting six weeks however and then with a good itinerary, will be able to see if it can be done reasonability in a shorter time.)

" that will include London, Stonehedge,"

BTW, it's Stonehenge.

I echo Emma on looking at other guidebooks. Rick Steves does a very good job with the small part of the country he covers but he does leave most of it out. There is a real wealth of medieval history here, and other important stops, but they don't hit his radar because he fits the books around the tours he takes people on.

Are you going with a friend or on your own? Have you driven on the left previously, and with a standard transmission car? Are you planning on renting a car for 6 weeks, or will you lease?

Trains can be your friend.

Will you have a whole painting set with you including easel?

Do you like Jane Austen?

How about Constable's rural paintings?

I didn't see Lacock on your list.

Why do you want to be sent to Coventry? (I lived there for a decade; there must be a reason...)

Emma has good advice, as usual, but I'd be skeptical about over-relying on trains. You may want more flexibility than those advance-purchase tickets can give you, and you want to go some places without that good train service. A train from London to your first non-London destination, wherever you'll pick up the car, might be worthwhile since you can have a firm date and avoid driving in or near the big city. Be sure you're comfortable with left-side driving, though. I'm a little older than you and I found it more challenging than I'd expected.

You listed 39 destinations for 42 days or so. Some of those wouldn't be full-day stays, but others like London would surely be longer. You probably should pare down. Take a map and mark every place you want to visit. Then plot the most efficient route between them. (Your list above is all over the place, e.g. from York to Cambridge, then Lindisfarne way up north, then you're suddenly down in Sussex and Kent. At least line them up in order.) Look for clusters where you could stay in one place for a few days and visit different sights from that base. Look for outlying locations that might not be worth the time and cost to reach them.

Also consider open-jaw ("multi-city" on search engines) flights, like into London and home from Dublin or Glasgow, to save the time and cost of backtracking. These flights need not cost any more than a round trip to and from London, but could save you a day or more.

I'd suggest May rather than September simply because you'll have more daylight. September is the equinox, May is a couple of months into the long-day half of the year.

I am a real Rick fan, especially of his tours, but I think his advice to head to Bath first is dumb. It does depend on where you fly from, but I fly from the Western US which means a huge layover after my flight from my teeny airport waiting at the hub for the International flight so I've had about an 18 or 19 hour journey counting my drive time to the airport. It's all I can do to get to my hotel in London and get out in the afternoon sun. There is no way I could manage another 2 hours or so getting to Bath. Don't get me wrong as I LOVE Bath and will be spending 5 days there in a couple of weeks. but do your body a favor and spend a few days in London first.

I would also cut Ireland from this trip.

Do look at the London Walks website (walks.com) as they may have some walks that cover the time frame you are interested in.

I just recently did a trip in June much like yours. I did ten days and did a fairly large circle around Great Britain (London, York, Lake District, North Wales, Bath, Stonehenge, Brighton). When I did my planning I looked at the key areas that I wanted to see and figured out how much time it would take to travel between the areas as well as how long it would take. You just need to take your time and let it evolve. You will figure out what areas are important to you and which ones not so much. A big part of the fun of this trip is the planning.

My suggestion is to do part train/part automobile. When I was in England in June, I had an 8 day unlimited Britrail pass for $396 which was way cheaper than renting a car. There were a couple of areas that I did rent a car since public transportation was limited and the scenery spectacular (Lake District/North Wales). My three days car rental was more than the eight day train. So maybe you can intersperse train with some stops with a car? I also did not make any reservations with the train and had no problem getting seats on the next train. I also found driving a car very nerve wracking and not that enjoyable at times, like most. The roads are small and I was so nervous about driving that I was unable to really enjoy the scenery. I much preferred the trains where I was able to enjoy the beautiful scenery. Some of the trains even serve wine which made it even more enjoyable.

Your trip sounds absolutely fascinating. I am so happy for you and hope that you will let us know how the plans

I don't know how helpful this will be, but my style of trip planning involves reading a LOT of guidebooks. The Internet is great, but I still use guidebooks. While I like Rick Steves' books for some things, especially general travel advice and how-to, I combine them with others.

Go to your local library and get a librarian to help you locate (request/inter-library-loan/whatever) everything they've got. With the kind of trip you are talking about, you want guidebooks for countries/regions as well as cities. I suggest Frommer's, Fodor's, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Moon, the Blue Guides (those are indispensable for history and architecture), DK Eyewitness, Cadogan, more that I'm not thinking of right this second, and likely a bunch of smaller, one-off types of guidebooks. Don't be afraid of something that's a little out of date; you can get better accommodation, restaurant, and opening hours/prices off the Internet anyway. Major landmarks don't change as much or as quickly.

You don't say when you are planning to take this trip; you will want to consider the time of year in terms of minor sites being open, gardens being at their best (if that's an issue), and daylight hours. That matters more, driving around the countryside, than a stay in London.

You have a lot of places on your list and while six weeks sounds like a long time, there's a lot to see. You could spend weeks in London and not see all the major attractions, so you will have to pick and choose. I'm a theatre fan myself, so I applaud your desire to see plays in London. You will want to plan ahead (and book tickets in advance) if there are particular shows you want to see, especially if they have a big name actor. At a minimum I'd plan on one show at the Globe (preferably Shakespeare) and/or Wanamaker, depending on when you are there, one show at the National Theatre (pretty much anything), one show at another theatre (Old Vic, Young Vic, Almeida, Trafalgar Studios, too many to name), and a musical if you enjoy musical theatre and you don't have access to it in the States, ideally something you can't see in NYC (but that's just my opinion).

I've not planned the sort of driving trip you are considering, but can say that generally, you need to leave yourself enough travel time so you are not rushed just getting from place to place. You also might think about whether you'd prefer to change locations every night, or stay in one place for a few days and see the area, or not. You don't mention a travel partner, but obviously that can help to share costs as well as driving/navigating. I think you'd want GPS/sat nav for sure, plus back-up paper maps. You could do a combination of trains and driving, perhaps. You may also want to consider an open-jaw ticket so that you fly into London and out of somewhere else (Edinburgh?) and don't have to backtrack, or else you'll want to design a circular driving plan, I think. I hate to say it, but even with six weeks, I'd consider saving Ireland for another trip, especially if you want to spend a couple of weeks in London.

I don't know if this is frowned upon on RS or not, but you might also want to have a look at the travel forums on TripAdvisor and Fodor's. At least find some trip reports that are similar to what you're planning, and have a read. Both will have trip reports of varying length and detail, but I'd especially search for UK driving trip reports on Fodor's and ask for help on both sites.

At the end of the day, never mind what Rick likes, you should see what YOU want to see. I'd do more research and narrow down your itinerary before I started worrying about places to stay, to be honest, especially if you have time to plan.

Good luck!

If you are looking to use British Rail for your journey, then these two loops from London would work, though 6 weeks might be a tight time frame ...

London to Cambridge
to York
to Edinburgh
to Inverness
to Glasgow
to Windermere
to Manchester
to Bath
to Penzance
to Exeter
to Salisbury
to London

London to Oxford
to Chester
to Holyhead where you catch the HSS (Fast Ferry)
to Dublin/Dun Loaghaire
to Rosslare
for Ferry to Fishguard, Wales
to Cardiff
to London

You didn't say where you're flying from, but in addition to London, there are nonstop flights from some North American cities to Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Shannon. With a plane change, there are many more possibilities.

Flying into London and home from another airport will save you a lot of time (possibly a whole day, if you would otherwise have to return to London a day early to catch your flight). It may not cost more, or the extra money may be made up when you calculate what it will cost you to get back to London. Or, you may want to start in another city and end in London (particularly if you want to do Ireland first). Flights that use different cities on each leg (e.g., Chicago to Dublin and London to Chicago, all on one ticket) are called "open jaw" or "multi city."

As you plot your itinerary, keep looking at different flight options. To find these, use Kayak and look at "multi city" rather than "one way" or "round trip." Don't look at two one-way fares, as that's often much more expensive.

Remember that there is no longer much, if any, logic in airfares. For no clear reason, you may find that starting in Glasgow and ending in London is much cheaper than the opposite. If this doesn't adversely affect your itinerary, you can sometimes save money by such flexibility (I just did this for Spain: starting in Madrid and ending in Barcelona, rather than the reverse, saved me about $100).

In other words, don't lock yourself into an itinerary and then buy airline tickets, or lock yourself into non-refundable airline tickets and then plan an itinerary. Look at both together before making any final decisions, so you can change one if you can make it work better (or cheaper).

For Medieval sites, check out English Heritage as they have many places open to visit - it may be worth taking out annual membership.

You need to plot your proposed destinations on a map - you will notice that there are some places that are a long way from your other destinations, such as Cardiff / Tintern, Dover, Portsmouth and Ireland. Where is Irongate? Never heard of it.

You have too many destinations for your allotted time, particularly as you haven't added in southern England yet, so you will need to scale down, otherwise you will spend all your time in transit rather than visiting places. The Scottish places are reached by smaller, windy roads and this will take much longer to navigate than anticipated. You would have plenty to fill your time even if you didn't cover much of Scotland.

May would be better as there is more daylight and the universities and schools will not be on holiday.

Here are some useful websites:>
http://www.castlewales.com
http://cadw.gov.wales/daysout/maps-and-itineraries/?lang=en
www.visitengland.com
www.visitwales.co.uk
www.visitscotland.com
www.nationalrail.co.uk
www.traveline.info
http://www.theaa.com/route-planner/index.jsp