Great Britain & Ireland - Seeking help in planning for '25 or '26

I think that you are short changing your time in Scotland and the Midlands of England. If you have Irish Ancestry you must punch your Dublin card. Are you driving? If so, it might be easier not to take a car on the Ferry to Ireland because of the cost, extra insurance, and necessary reservations. I get the impression that Ireland is more tourist centric. We really enjoyed Wales which has a different culture. Our favorite thing to visit were the English Treasure Houses which are the Great Estates that still used as homes and fully furnished with antiques and fine art collections. We loved Chatsworth which is in the Midlands near Derby. They did have some 2 for one passes. We used National Trust and English Heritage Passes which you can order online and pickup on site. www.visitscotland.com also a great gateway site.

For an E-bike self guided tour in the Lake District you could look at e-venture bikes in Keswick- https://e-venturebikes.co.uk/cycling-routes/

Will you be driving after London, or relying on public transit? Makes a big difference in what you can cover and how much flexibility you'd have. A car would help in England, but return it before you go to Ireland. You might want another outside Dublin for the "not urban" days. This website is a good way to estimate driving times and look a route options, but keep in mind that its travel time estimates don't include any stops or traffic delays, i.e. they're too short. This website can help you find other transportation options, especially if you won't be driving. It isn't always accurate but can tell you what options are, and you can do further planning on carriers' websites.

You have a good list of places to see and a good amount of time. A map will help you plan a route between those areas, ending someplace where you could get a quick flight to Dublin. My only question would be how important Edinburgh and Scotland are to you on this trip, since they're a long way from most of the other places you want to visit. Saving Scotland for a future trip will help you get more of England and Ireland. And with only "a few days" in Ireland you might want to return there in combination with Scotland later.

You totally do not use the website Rome2Rio linked by Dick above. I know this forum has an obsession with it, but it is a total bag of absolute rubbish and causes so may problems on this forum, from it's load of utter baloney.

I have just looked on it for Preston to Lancaster - a 21 mile journey. It says the only bus is the #181 once a day. That is a National Express bus at 2.25am on a longer journey from Birmingham to Glasgow. If it is charted full it won't even pick you up in Preston without being booked.
It says the fare is £13. No it isn't. It is £7.

Yet there is a citybus #40/41 every half hour during the day- 16 hours a day.

A simple journey with no complexity and it can't get it right.

I think you should consider Wales - finishing in the north. Then you could go as a foot passenger on the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. (Stena Line & Irish Ferries are the 2 operators and this is the shortest sea crossing). If you were to fly over with say Ryan Air - beware of added costs for baggage in hold as they are really stingy with cabin sizes.

https://www.visitwales.com is the main Welsh Government tourist site. This RS forum has a separate section on Wales. If you read through some of the back postings you will gain more info - if interested.

That is quite an ambitious list allowing for jet lag and time taken to travel between places. Don't underestimate time taken to cover distances in UK and Ireland. They will take a lot longer than you might expect....

The list seems to have been thrown together - why (or perrhaps how) have you identified them? What are your expectations for teh holiday? What sort of things do you like doing/seeing? How important is scenery, history, culture, shopping etc. Are you wanting the usual tick list itinerary or are you wanting to get into areas the other visitors either don't know about ot ignore as they aren't in the guide book?

What guide books have you read? My favourite are the Eyewitness guides which cover many places ignored by other guides aand also have a lot of photographs and good descriptions. Maps are detailed enough for initial planning. They do a guide to UK and also one for Ireland.

Use these to focus down on the major places you want to visit - depending on what there is to do and see in and around them you will need to allow several days per stop. If planning on 4 days in London to begin with that is beginning to use up most of your first week. How long are you allocating for Ireland- anything less than a week is probably not worth while. That is only allowing two weeks for everything else - not a lot of time.... especially if you take out a multi day ebike trip.

We love the British Isles and all four countries.
We did a great four week drive tour of England (no London) and S. Wales and love the countryside.

Some of our favorite places:
Winchester, Oxford, Bath, the Cotswolds, Salisbury, Wells, Stratford upon Avon, York (especially York), Durham, Hadrian's Wall at Haltwhistle, the Lake District and Cambridge.

South Wales, Cardiff, Tenby and St. David's in the south and Conwy in the north.
Scotland, Inverness, Loch Ness, St. Andrews, Edinburgh and the area between St. Andrews and Edinburgh. Haven't done the Western Highlands, but understand they are great.

Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Kinsale, the SW, Ring of Kerry, Galway.

Interesting responses that suggest we limit the scope, though I was hoping to find a balance that would allow both time for lingering and still allow us to see a fair bit of both islands in 4 weeks.

Wesleys — this list was only partially thrown together. It is a very preliminary sketch and, hence, the question marks. As to interests: culture, history and scenery. Not shopping.

Sounds as if Ireland might be better reserved for its own time and trip, which then allows 24 days for England-beyond-London and Scotland and, as Kathleen and James suggest, perhaps a bit of Wales.

Isn31c — thnx for the bike rental referral and bus transport comments.

In the last 2 years, we’ve spent 4 weeks just in Sicily and Southern Italy and a different 4 weeks in France (three regions only), so I appreciate slowing it down. We used a rental car just 3 days of 17 on the southern Italian mainland; otherwise travelled by e-bike, train and ferry. In France, we travelled only by e-bike and train. So, I anticipate car rental when and where public transit and e-bike travel will not work out.

Not concerned about jet lag. Starting with 3 days and 4 nights in London (where we have previously travelled and need not see many first timer’s sights) works fine; west to east jet lag to mainland Europe is just an arrival day issue for us.

Looking forward to more suggestions!

I understand the annoyance that locals have regarding Rome to Rio. But I've found it to be a good starting point in understanding possible itineraries and means of getting from one place to another. So long as one augments it with more localized tools such as British rail schedules once one has the generalities sorted out, Rome to Rio can be very useful.

Sounds as if Ireland might be better reserved for its own time and trip

That definitely makes sense as you could easily spend a month in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Think about flying open jaw - Fly into (or out of London) and then fly out (or into...) either Edinburgh or Glasgow. Then spend the 28 days wending your way between the two. There are so many different possible places to stop on the way.

For e-bike tours look no further than Saddle Skedaddle (skedaddle.com). Based in the U.K. but it seems that they now have a US presence as well. They have a range of multi-day tours in the U.K., and most other places as well.

Rome to Rio can be very useful.

It very simply has no use at all of it does not give all the options. Looking at Keswick to Penrith it only gives one of the two possible routes, so half the timetable, the wrong operator and stopping points that don't exist, and never ever have. It just makes things up half the time.

In the US it says that the Empire Builder runs 5 times daily from St Paul Minneapolis to Chicago, but doesn't know about the new day train (the Borealis). Having said that it runs 5x daily it only lists the one journey which actually does exist and actually says it only takes 5 minutes to transfer from the Minneapolis Metro green line to the EB train at the St Paul Union Depot. Is it serious about any of this? If the EB happened to be on time could you physically make a 5 minute transfer. I doubt it.

In WA state it seems to do a half decent job in King County and the Olympic Peninsula. But then just runs out of steam totally in the Cascades. For goodness sake I know far more about the local bus lines than it does. It has no utility at all up there.

Might we set aside the Rome 2 Rio sidetrack? Suffice it to say, I personally prefer to deal directly with national railroads or other actual service providers.

The Rome 2 Rio issue will not be resolved between its fans and detractors, here.

Thanks.

I seem to remember that Rome 2 Rio regularly gets criticised here, not just by isn31c. It is possibly useful to get ideas - but then google maps is too if you click on the public transport icon.

You then need to check out actual timetables with the operators.

Back to the job in hand. Omitting Ireland makes this a bit more manageable, but trying to add Wales has again over-balanced it.

One of my ideas is for you to fly BA Seattle to London. UK to Seattle are usually pretty good fares, and it's a nice late afternoon arrival time at SEA- so I presume a round trip the other way should be equally well priced (who knows, maybe not).

I've just been looking and in mid July (under a month's time in high season) there is about £900 RT LHR-SEA in Premium Economy on the outbound- PE being about £300 less than Coach, so good fares do exist. I've seen quirks like that before as I look at least monthly.

One of the reasons for that is that you could do this trip as a one way trip to Scotland, ending in Inverness. Then open jaw BA for a same ticket return from Inverness on BA to Heathrow, connecting into the Seattle flight.
A minor consideration is that you avoid UK departure tax by starting in Inverness!

So 24 days-

Cambridge I think is a day trip by train from London.
Stonehenge/Portsmouth you could either do as 2 separate day trips from London or as a 2 day trip- London to Stonehenge on Day 1, overnight in Salisbury, Day 2 to Portsmouth by direct hourly train, day there then back to London

21 days left-

Cornwall- You could take the Night Riviera Sleeper service (not Saturdays) from Paddington to Cornwall. I think it needs at least 4 days in Cornwall, if you can tweak it to closer to a week then do, but this still feels too full an itinerary to me (Days 1 to 4).

The problem here is that you are not going to take my tip of gaining more time by taking National Express overnight (from many Cornish locations) or the Stagecoach/Megabus Falcon bus (from Plymouth) to Bristol- which is how I do it. Thus Day 5 (a good half day) is train Cornwall to Bristol (for Bath). From Bristol you can day trip to Bath, and also to Cardiff. Via Bath you can also do tours into the Cotswolds- so at least Days 6 to 8 in Bristol.

Day 9- Train or National Express to Cheltenham. Then Pulham's bus #606 at 0840 to Chipping Campden (across the Cotswolds) arrive 1037. Connect there into Bus #2 for Stratford on Avon at arrive at 1152. Equally you could take the #601 at 0725 or 0830 to Moreton in Marsh connecting into Service 2 there.
The 601 is hourly and there are other Service 2 buses at 1505 and 1845. So you could take a later bus from Cheltenham and gain a bit more time in Bristol/Bath on the morning of Day 9.

Day 10 Stratford on Avon

Day 11 Train Stratford to Birmingham Moor Street. Short walk (c300 yards) to Birmingham New Street for the train to Penrith (for Keswick)

Days 12 to 15 (ish) Keswick e-bike tour

Day 16 Train Penrith to Edinburgh.

Then some kind of split between Edinburgh and getting to the Inverness area with a total of 5 to 6 days to play with. Just trying to do a rough indicative itinerary here.

Last night- Overnight at the Inverness Airport Hotel, ready for your flight at about 7am next day to Heathrow and home.

I've just open jawed the same flight as above now as INV-SEA/SEA-LHR, and it is effectively the same fare give or take about £20

Isn31c,

Thanks so much for your generosity with time and travel logistics considerations. There is a lot to unpack here. Your concrete logistical recommendations give us a lot to work with.

In addition to your Keswick cycling recommendation, I also see that cycling through the Cotswolds, either from or to Bath (or Oxford), or out of Moreton-on-Marsh is an additional opportunity. At least two providers cover that ground with self guided tours and luggage transfers and/or day trip loops out of Moreton-on-Marsh. When we spent a month in France, we spent one week cycling the Dordogne and another week cycling the Loire Valley among a number of chateaux.

Open jaw is quite sensible, as is Premium Economy.

I've just googled e-cycle tours in Cornwall (googled, so I know nothing about them) and found Cornish Cycle Tours.

I know they are only doing about 25 miles a day, so don't know if that is adequate for you. Equally on the West Cornwall tour they say that is hard going. I'm not a cyclist, so can't say anything sensible about that.

I've also found this 6 day Cornwall tour on Active England- https://activeenglandtours.com/tour/cycle-cornwall-self-guided/

I know most of this itinerary by road and it is a very attractive itinerary- although you would need to acquire more days from somewhere for it!! Starting from Tiverton Parkway at 2pm that would be a mid morning GWR train from London.

Have a look at some of the other tours as well on this Active England website- it looks like a very good resource.
Even an 11 day Oxford-Cotswolds- Lake District- Edinburgh tour.

For cycling it does depend on what type of riding you want to do. I’m guessing if you want e-bikes that you want what would generally be called leisure cycling here. There are a number like that in Stuart’s links although not the Cotswolds to Edinburgh one! Bear in mind that there can be some punishing climbs in the south west, even with e-bikes. It’s well known in cycling circles that the toughest part of the classic Land’s End to John o’ Groats cycle is the first bit getting out of the south west.

Skedaddle don’t have any Cornwall or Devon tours but do cover a lot of the rest of the country. They have tours in the Cotswolds, Norfolk, the Peak District, the Lakes, Yorkshire and Northumberland, as well as in Wales and Scotland. They are particularly strong in Northern England, unsurprisingly as they are based in Newcastle. They have no less than 3 tours to cross the country, Coast to Coast, Way of the Roses and Hadrian’s Wall. They also have an interesting one way tour from Linslade into London along the Thames valley which would make a novel way to get into London.

And Rome to Rio in my experience is laughably bad in the U.K.

John. Thnx. I guess you’d call us leisure cyclists. 50 km in a day on an e-bike with 300 or 350 m of elevation is comfortable. 65 km and 1000 m is not. Providers’ itineraries typically show daily distance and elevation. I see Stratford on Avon is quite bikeable in conjunction with the Cotswold.

You are quite right that there are many possibilities in various districts, not just those you’ve mentioned, but also out of York and environs, not a point of interest that I had mentioned but that merits consideration, perhaps, as a roundabout way from the Lake District to Edinburgh.

In France and Italy, we found providers willing to make adjustments. An extra day here or there; a modified tour based on a segment from a longer tour.

Choice choices.

Fred - assuming that you are happy with a self guided tour rather than a group tour, then you should find the providers very flexible in adding days on or off. You will see, for example, that Skedaddle have options on their site to do some of their tours over different numbers of days to fit in with your fitness levels and I’m sure they would add in extra days for you to see the areas around your overnight stops.