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Last day help! :)

Posted by (Indiana - USA) on

Need help :) 
Last day England ideas.
We have most of our trip planned, but are having trouble figuring out the last day. We are splitting our trip between the Costwolds, York, and Bath area, but on our last day we can't really decide as all of our ideas sound fun for different reasons! We will be driving from the Cotswolds and staying overnight in London for our return flight home. We can leave Cotswolds as early as we like and we can get to London as late as we want as we will have a car. Our thoughts so far were: 

  1. Driving to the Jurassic Coast/Dorset area and exploring the area. We are huge fans of coastal towns and that will be a nice change of scenery compared to the rest of the trip. 

  2. Drive to Canterbury as we have heard it is beautiful and we would love to see the architecture.  

  3. Oxford and Blenheim palace. I love history so the Winston Churchill aspect of the palace and museums sound wonderful. 

  4. Spend the day in London. We have been to London twice so we have explored a lot of the popular spots, BUT we have never seen the Christmas displays or been to Borough Market. If we do this, we will return the car early and just use public transportation to get around! 

We are open to other ideas as well. I just can't seem to just get it together and make a decision so I need someone else to do it for me ha ha

Thanks everyone! 

Posted by
57 posts

"Spend the day in London. We have been to London twice so we have explored a lot of the popular spots, BUT we have never seen the Christmas displays or been to Borough Market. If we do this, we will return the car early and just use public transportation to get around! "

This is the way :) I love 1 and 2 but neither seems that close with heading back to London from the Cotswolds. You could do Oxford/Blenheim, but London at Christmastime is magical.

Posted by
3490 posts

A few more details might help get you good advice. What time of year? You mention Christmas so November/December? From where in the Cotswolds are you departing? Where are you staying the last night before your flight? What time is your flight out? Where do you need to return your rental car?

Not knowing the answers to these questions, given your description I myself would probably skip London, book a hotel near the airport for your last night and drop off the car. I'd select a stop or two that is on the way to the airport from where you're leaving. Some of those options are pretty far off the path for a day's drive, especially in a low-daylight-hour time of year with potentially iffy weather. But that's just me.

Posted by
424 posts

It’ll take a long time to drive to the Jurassic coast and then back to London, Canterbury would (probably) be a bit quicker but neither is practical to my mind. Oxford or Blenheim (but not both) would be quite doable. You mention Xmas displays- bear in mind that it’ll be dark by around 4pm.

Personally, I’d go for Oxford. But, a car is a liability in Oxford so park in one of the “Park and Ride “ car parks on the edge of town and get the bus in.

Posted by
6 posts

A few more details might help get you good advice. What time of year? You mention Christmas so November/December? From where in the Cotswolds are you departing? Where are you staying the last night before your flight? What time is your flight out? Where do you need to return your rental car?

We will be in London the last week of November. We will be driving from Bourton on the Water and again can leave as early as needed. We are staying at a hotel near LHR and our flight leaves at 10am. We will be returning the car that am or the day before depending upon on final plan. If we spend the day in London we will just return the car early and take public transport around the city and to the airport in the AM so we don't have to worry about it!

Posted by
1890 posts

I would say Oxford. Enjoyment of the Jurassic coast is going to be very weather dependent, and you don’t have many hours of daylight at that time of year (sunset around 4pm) so even on a nice day you want to be tucked up in a cosy pub by early evening.

Posted by
642 posts

It seems a shame to not see London in its holiday attire. Are you able to leave your luggage at the hotel near the airport, drop of the car as early as possible, and then enjoy the day (and early evening lights) of Christmastime London? And be safely near the airport for the 10AM flight?

Posted by
383 posts

You could just leave it unplanned until you get to it. On one of our recent trips to the UK, we left the last 3 days completely unplanned. We decided what we wanted to do when we got to those days and they were some of the best days we had.

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