Home base for slow travelers in March

It would help to know where you plan to daytrip to before recommending a town.

If you’re using public transport, you need to be aware that in England a lot of train lines radiate out of London - and to a lesser extend Birmingham.

So we could suggest a nice town like St Albans, or Bury St Edmunds, or Saffron Walden, or Rye, or Market Harborough - all of which would fit the bill - but if you want to take a day trip somewhere you might find yourself travelling back into London every day to catch the train to your destination.

If you’ll have a car, again it would be good if you could tell us the kind of places you’d like to take day trips to. It’s a small country but roads are often very congested and it’s not quick to get to places.

Winchester is just over an hour from London by train and would make an excellent base. Another would be St Albans, which I have only visited for one day but I fell in love with it.

Oh, Winchester is a good shout as there are some good day trips that wouldn’t involve going back into London - like Portsmouth or Salisbury.

Winchester, Bath, Oxford, the Cotswolds (Chipping Campden if you rent a car).

Are you looking to rent a house or stay in a hotel? I'm going to recommend Teddingon, it's essentially part of London but is Zone 6. It's a very nice town by the River Thames, close to Hampton Court and Kew, walking distance to Bushy Park. 30 minute cheap train ride into London but accessible to the M3, M4 and M25 motorways for exploring further afield. There's a Travelodge that does rooms from £37 a night!

Thank you everyone for your replies. As far as where we want to day trip to ... well, we plan to go into London a few days. After that we're pretty open. We will probably rent a car for a few days to reach places not accessible by public transport.
We've been staying in Airbnbs and hotels since August, so again, we're very flexible.
Time to start researching your suggestions and make a decision.
Again, thanks!

We have six weeks. Figure to stay two weeks probably in Perth, Scotland, two weeks yet to be determined in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
A few things important to us:
Not moving around a lot, we don't want to pack/unpack every couple of days, so that's why the home base. As full-time travelers we have the luxury of being very flexible. But since we're carrying all of our belongings with us (two large suitcases, two carryon bags and two backpacks) we really prefer not to move somewhere new every couple of days.
Need to stay in budget. Ideally would like to hit $50-75/night. We've been pretty lucky with that so far.
I know it sounds wishy-washy as far as where we want to explore, but the place we set up as home base will help to determine where we wander each day. We really don't travel in a highly scheduled manner.

Emma, what about the east coast? We found some places in southend-on-sea that were reasonable.

The east of England has an awful lot to offer - further north in Essex, then Suffolk & Norfolk are very nice.

Southend itself though is a rough-around-the-edges resort town that doesn’t have a great reputation as a visitor attraction. It’s a bit bleak, people tend to poke fun at it - that part of Essex is seen as a bit “chavvy”, for want of a better word.

Some are predicting it might have an artisan renaissance but it wouldn’t be top of my list for a night, let alone a few weeks.

This is exactly the kind of information that is so helpful to a visitor. Thank you so much.

March can be cold - especially in the east and north. How about Exeter in the south-west?
https://www.visitexeter.com

Most seaside resorts will be dead in March. There are places on the coast such as Brighton that are bustling all year round.

The further west you go, the wetter the weather and the further north you go, the colder it will be. You will need a place with good heating.

Southend wouldn’t be my choice of where to spend a day, much less a week or 2. It’s handy for the airport there and there is a big student population, plenty of vacant shops and office buildings, but has no other redeeming features.

Norwich, Exeter, Lewes, Chichester, Winchester, York, Chester or Lincoln would be good bases, although properties in some places such as Winchester are expensive and may not fall within your price range.

There are several towns within spitting distance of London that are great!
St. Albans is absolutely beautiful and you can be in central London within about 40 minutes.
Oxford is a place I've spent a significant amount of time and I have found it to be very livable and beautiful with lots of things to do in the immediate area and for longer jaunts out for the weekends. It's a little over an hour from London.
Anywhere down in Surrey is lovely!