We’re planning a trip in early September and need advice on number of days in England. Renting a car at Heathrow then traveling to Windsor, The Cotswalds, Cambridge then London. We’ll return the car in London before spending a few days there. We’ll then take the train to France. We’ve been to London so we don’t need to see everything again. Suggestions for how long for the driving portion please.
Posted by
Mid-Atlantic area
7272 posts
Write down what you want to see, visit, or do each place, then guess how long you think it will take to do everything and that will give you an estimate of the time you’ll need. To me, the wild card is the Cotswolds. One could spend a week or more visiting that area. In my opinion Windsor and Cambridge are worth a day each.
Posted by
Lincolnshire, UK
2379 posts
If using google maps for driving times between two places, it is recommended to add 25% to their times PLUS atime for stops. Driving can be very slow in built up areas.
Posted by
8453 posts
We did six nights in the Cotswolds, with two full days to see the Cotswolds and three days for day trips to Oxford, Blenheim Palace and Stratford Upon Avon.
Cambridge is on the opposite side of London and driving from one side to the other can be a royal pain since the orbital that circles London is usually a parking lot.
Posted by
Buckinghamshire
199 posts
The Cotswolds is an area rather than a place and consists of a number of attractive villages and small towns. It could take a long time to see them all.
Decide which you want to go to and then use Google maps (plus a bit) to work out timings, add on some time to find parking - not always easy - and then a bit of time to look around. It won't take too long to go around some of the villages, though.
Windsor won't take a full day, in my view, but be careful to check which days the castle is open.
If you simply want to see a university town, then Oxford is much closer to the Cotswolds and Windsor than Cambridge and you can easily get to Blenheim Palace from there. Beware parking in Oxford is a nightmare and I'd use one of the Park-and-Ride car parks outside the centre. A number of the colleges charge to look around (Christ Church, used in the Harry Potter films, is particularly expensive), so decide which you'd like to view.
if it's Cambridge you really want to see, then it'll take more than best part of 3 hrs to drive there from the Cotswolds, assuming the M25 (the highway around London) is reasonably clear. I'm not as familiar with Cambridge as I am with Oxford, but I think the points about parking and entry to colleges will apply there just the same as in Oxford.