Heathrow to Bath or overnight in London?

The best way to get straight to Bath from Heathrow is neither train nor driving yourself (please don’t, for safety reasons). The simplest way directly to Bath is the National Express coach (bus). Unlike the train, it goes directly to Bath from Heathrow.

However, there is no rule that you have to go directly to Bath on arrival.

I’d head into London for the night, then if you want to start your tour in Bath you can book yourself a train the next day and travel in comfort.

I wouldn’t normally recommend the Heathrow Express into London, or Paddington as a place to stay, but it would work for you. Get into Paddington, stay the night, then direct trains for Bath leave from Paddington station and you can catch one the next morning. Book an Advance ticket for the best prices.

Spend some time in Bath (where you won’t want or need a car) and hire a car when you leave Bath.

Please don’t rent a car at Heathrow - it’s dangerous for you and other road users, even if you have had some sleep. You will be hitting one of the busiest sections of motorway in the country at rush hour. No.

There was a post a few weeks ago from an American that had done exactly what you are suggesting and he nearly fell asleep at the wheel.

Either stay at Heathrow or head to Bath by public transport. Why anybody would recommend a long journey to Bath immediately after a flight from California is beyond me. It’s the last thing I would want to do!

It doesn't matter how well you sleep on a plane (I always fly business or first when travelling long haul and always manage a fair amount of sleep but I'm always tired and exhausted when I arrive) you will not be in a fit state to drive even more so if you've never driven on the left before. Renting a car at Heathrow in order to drive to Bath will put you straight on the M4 out of the airport, a very busy motorway. Are you sure you want to handle three lanes of 70mph+ traffic at a busy time in an unfamiliar car where most of the controls are in a different location to what you're used to?

Whenever I visit the States my first night is either at an airport hotel where I would collect the car the following morning or a transfer straight to my accommodation even though I've driven over there on countless occasions I just know I'm not safe to drive straight after a long haul flight.

Previous posters are correct in being concerned about driving after a transatlantic flight.

It depends on the driver. I have driven after such a fight twice and managed just fine. Also, I don't sleep on long flights. Of course, we always fly tourist. If you are in Business, perhaps you can sleep. If you are going to drive after you arrive, suggest no more than one glass of wine with your meal. No more alcohol.

I am always so pumped up about our trip that I don't have a problem driving after such a flight. I usually get tired later in the afternoon. Also, I plan to drive only a short distance.

I drove from Heathrow to Bath on our last car rental in the UK. It was a little over two hours. It wasn't a difficult drive. Make sure you have a nav system on your car for directions or your partner has access to google maps for the UK.

If you decide not to drive, consider where you rent a car. You can rent one in Bath, but it is a bit out of the way from the city. You could go to Oxford on the train and then rent one there, then head to Bath.

I usually go with the recommendation for the National Express coach from Heathrow to Bath but to be honest, with flights having the potential of being screwed up as they are this year, I'd head in to London for at least the night OR divide your London time in half and do half at the beginning and half at the end. The late afternoon arrival from the West Coast also means you will have been up all day the day before so I vote for not driving right away as well. Your jet lag/circadian disruption will be more than someone flying from the East coast of the US.

This is one of Rick's suggestions that I think is dumb....no need for any kind of "soft landing" or whatever he calls it. They speak English (mostly, lol!) in London and it's not onerous to start there.

I DO love Bath, by the way, so I'm glad you are spending time there. I don't have the England guide book right now so I'm not sure what his current 3-week plan is but it probably moves too fast. I'd do 3 nights in Bath without day trips.

I would stay in London for a few nites at the start of the trip. You can get over some of the jetlag and don't need a car.

I'd also recommend being a bit cautious about trying to follow the RS itinerary pace. While his guidebooks are great on describing what a tourist might want to do, they are ambitious on the time it takes. Guidebook authors have what psychologists call "the curse of knowledge". They show up in a town to revise the book and they know the way around, it's difficult for them to put themselves in the shoes of a first-timer. You've never been to any of them so it's going to take longer to get around, find the museums and other sights when in town, and just generally be more wearing as you follow maps and try to find street names.

Bill G, thanks for the advice on being careful about following a busy travel guide itinerary! We mostly actually end up liking things that are a little off the beaten path, so we won’t be doing a whole lot of time in museums and things like that (although we will certainly do some). We’re more interested in pubs and distilleries and local color than museums at this point! I spent a lot of time in England, mostly London, when I was much younger, so I’ve seen the changing of the guard and most of the museums there and so on, and honestly my wife isn’t really into that type of thing (Tower of London being an exception—she is definitely interested in that). We do like to be fairly leisurely when we’re on vacation, and not rushing from place to place, so we will definitely be thinking about the itinerary with that in mind. We will take our time and see and do what we can, with the knowledge that we can always return in a year or two to catch up on what we missed if we really want to. Cheers!

As others have said, forget driving right after the flight. You'll have been traveling for about 14 hours by that time and you don't want to be driving after that especially having to drive on the other side of the road, having the driver sit on the right side of the vehicle making everything seem strange, and doing it all in rush hour traffic.

As far as see it, you have four choices:

1) Stay at an airport hotel and take the National Express bus to Bath the next day.

2) Stay at an airport hotel and rent a car the next day to take you to Bath.

3) Take the train into London (Paddington) and get a train from Paddington to Bath the next day.

4) Take the bus from Heathrow to Bath the night you arrive.

Are you committed to doing the tour that way round? How about reversing it and starting in London and finishing in Bath?

I would not drive the day you land. You are assuming there will be no issues with flying but as we have seen, there have been a lot of issues at Heathrow and just with flying in general. I recommend getting a hotel in London and then head to Bath. We did that and enjoyed it more.

I recommend No. 15 Guesthouse on Putney in Bath. They will meet you at the train station and take your bags so you can start touring Bath immediately. It worked out great for us.

Itsv - thanks for the recommendation for lodging in bath. We will check it out.

"We’re more interested in pubs and distilleries..."

Reason #55 for not driving a right side drive car with shifting on the left on the left side of the road when you have no experience doing that.

On often one-lane roads with tiny pull-outs for people to pass.

Or with with tight curves you can't see round.

Or with hedgerows that you can't see over.

Or at night in locations where there may not be any street or road lighting.

Or around traffic circles that are clockwise.

Or making right hand turns across traffic. As a passenger in the front left seat, that was the one that freaked me out the most. It just felt wrong.

Did I mention in the rain?

Walk to the pubs. Better yet, stay in pubs with rooms so you only have to walk upstairs.

Take tours to the distilleries so that you learn more and someone totally sober will drive you home.

When I lived in Germany, I drove in many countries on my own. I've navigated for my husband while in Iceland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. But all those places had left side drive cars and right side roads like in the US. Even he who loves driving did not want to drive on the left side of the road when we were in GB.

Having spent time in Bath, York and London, I can agree with those who say you don't need a car in any of those places.

As for getting to Bath, the bus already mentioned is the fastest way to get there from Heathrow. It goes on multi-lane highways and through small towns. You see a lot along the way and it arrives in Bath right next to the train station.

And if you absolutely cannot imagine a trip without driving, spend some time watching in-car driving videos so you can imagine it.

Something I didn't mention.......the UK takes drinking and driving very seriously. If you plan to be hitting pubs and distilleries, think twice before getting behind the wheel.

If it were me, I'd go with the suggestion of taking the National Express Coach to Bath on arrival. It saves the time (hours) you'd spend, going to and from London, and makes more efficient use of late afternoon/evening time on a day when you wouldn't be able to do much anyway. You'll see from the coach, that its not a scenic drive.

As you plan on starting your trip in Bath, I'd just get on with getting to Bath on the day of arrival. You don't land until late afternoon, so the day is just basically a travel day anyway.

And the National Express bus seems, to me, the best way of getting from Heathrow to Bath.

I wrote a post yesterday thanking people for sharing their experience and advice, but it seems to have disappeared. I’m not sure why – I can’t imagine that I violated any community guidelines or anything. But in any case, thanks again everyone for sharing your advice. The bus from Heathrow to Bath does sound like good advice and is probably what we will do if we decide to get to Bath the night we arrive. I do want to say, Lo, that it’s a fairly gross and unwarranted assumption that we will be drinking and driving. We may be foolish and stupid enough to rent a car to drive around England and Scotland for three weeks, but we’re not foolish and stupid enough to drink and drive, either in Great Britain or here in Southern California. We’re going to drive from town to town and place to place, except perhaps for the bus from Heathrow to Bath, but we don’t have any intention of driving to or from pubs or distilleries or within the towns once we’re there. (And my wife and I are also long past the days when we would overdo it in a pub. I’m pretty sure that a pint in a local pub will not have us stumbling through the streets.)

Thanks again for all of the advice on the bus to Bath the night we arrive. It does sound like an easy and convenient way to go.

Bob, I forgot to mention that we picked up our rental car in Bath. There is an Enterprise/National location about 15 minutes from Bath that was easy to get to via taxi. The rental agents were very helpful especially in telling me that you need the zip or postal code for locations to use the car's navigation. It worked better and we always got to our locations. From Bath we headed to Southampton to attend an Premier League Game, and then we went to the New Forest for a multi-day stay. I recommend doing that since the New Forest and all it's villages are so pretty and charming. With respect to driving, it was nerve-wracking at first and I was thankful my college friend was a great navigator. The tough parts were going through villages where the roads were very narrow. I just had to pull over to let others pass before I felt comfortable at proceeding. Before we stared every drive, we always planned out on our gps where we were going to park.

itsv - thanks so much for the suggestion for New Forest. I think this is the first time anyone has suggested that, and it certainly wasn’t on our radar. We will have to check it out. And thanks also for the good advice on rental cars and the GPS system. Much appreciated. Cheers!

(Edit: I just took a quick look at photos online in the New Forest area. Wow! It looks beautiful and quaint—just what we’re looking for. It just might throw a wrinkle in our plans, which are very much still in progress and up in the air, but I think we might have to head down there. Thanks again!)

I'm glad you've picked up on the New Forest, there's a reason it's been voted the number one National Park in Europe in the 2022 TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards for Destinations. I love it there and would choose it over Bath and The Cotswolds (although the Roman Baths are absolutely worth a visit).

One of our primary travel rules is no one night stays. We did the same itinerary several years ago - a late evening Virgin Atlantic flight from LAX to LHR, then on to Bath. We took Heathrow Express to Paddington and got on the next train to Bath. It takes very little energy to make the trip via train, and you're sleeping in Bath your first night. Not the cheapest option, but convenient. Bus from Heathrow to Bath would be another option, and less expensive, but I'd be a bit concerned with frequency of bus departures, especially if the flight was delayed. If Bath has limited rental car availability, Oxford or Bristol are relatively short train rides away...