Liverpool, Wales and Lake District

I would say definitely rent a car from Liverpool.

Last year we did a similar route. We took the train from Manchester airport to Liverpool (apx £17 pp, as I recall), spent three nights in Liverpool, and then had arranged to pick up our rental car at Lime St Station. From there we went to the Lakes District and points north. If you have pick up at Lime St station, it was difficult to find. Turns out it was in a parking garage on the far side of the station, up one (or more) floors.

I would choose either Wales or the Lake District, not both. Wales edges it for me.

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for your reply. It sounds just like the trip we are planning. I appreciate your quick response.

Go Canada,

John

Do the math on the car. And include the train costs in the computation. Also figure Liverpool parking costs if they're a factor.

At about a week (but I rent for longer and don't know exactly where the dividing line us) cost per day drops sharply. A small car at MAN runs about twenty bucks a day for me. I've never rented one in Liverpool.

Gas this week is running about 1.30 per liter, so the cost if driving the fifty or so miles is almost inconsequential.

What you're looking for is the cost/convenience differential between getting the car at one location or the other.

Liverpool is just aound the corner from northern Wales, but a good hike in the opposite direction from the Lake District. The last time I drove from Kesswick to Caernarvon it took about five hours with just one quick coffee stop.

With a week you can't do both. You'd be twiddling your thumbs in the Lakes after three days, but not run out of stuff in Wales in a week. Alternatively, I've taken people on a Wales whirlwind in four nights starting in Newport and ending in Conwy, getting the seven best castles but skipping Cardiff and Anglessey.

I'll be back up in Wales in a few days for the gazillionth time. I've been into the Lake District exactly twice and see no need to return -- if my thoughts on the relative merits of the two areas helps.

Everyone here is correct...one week is not enough for and Wales and the Lake District...Wales and Liverpool make geographic sense to see together with the 10 days that you have.
I do have to express that the Lake District is not a thumb-twiddling kind of place at all! I've spent many weeks and months there and have never run out of things to do. It just all depends on what you like to do! Wales will certainly have more historic sites to visit, castles, towns, etc. The Lake District has plenty to see but it's more geared to people who like the outdoors - walking, hiking, climbing, ancient and literary sites and small villages where rural farming life is still alive and well.
Save the Lakes for another time. It's easier to have a car there but public transport is very good.

As I understand, you're spending 3 days in Liverpool and then a week in Wales and/or Lake District. I'd recommend a car after Liverpool for flexibility and time saving, so you don't have to depend on train and bus schedules. You could certainly fill a week in either area, but I think you could also get much from both areas in a week, especially if you focus on North Wales (where most of Ed's favorite castles are) instead of trying to get to Cardiff and St. Davids etc. in the south. If I had to choose, I'd pick Wales for the combination of history and scenery.

Hurumph to everybody that disagrees with me.

Northern Wales has two great castles -- Caernarfon and Conwy. The next best five are down south.

You can drive from Caernarvon to Swansea in a bit over four hours.

I use northern Wales rather than North Wales since the latter is an ambiguous term for which there is no consensus even among utility and transportation providers as to the area it encompasses -- there ain't no political or historical dividing line.

Wales, indeed, has some hiking opportunities. I forget exactly how long the newly designated Coastal Path is but if you combine it with the Dyke path so you can say you've walked the perimeter of the mainland, it's 551 miles and my boots have clomped every inch of it. I've probably walked a couple thousand miles in the Principality without much duplication.

but, but, but you said the bit in the northern half of the country . Wouldn't that include part of Mid Wales (also ambiguously defined and called Central Wales in the Welsh Spatial Plan)? And South Wales is also vague and not specifically delimited except by the Bristol Channel, other water and the English border.

I'm a geographer by training and a pig-headed jackass by choice.

I had unfettered access to the back rooms of the National Museum on another project and snooped around on this question but couldn't find an answer. I shoved the question at my baby sister who's head of the geography department at a major university -- she foisted it off on a grad student flunky who drew about five different lines on a map.

North Wales is a proper noun masquerading as an entity. Northern Wales a general region without specific limits.

Everybody sort of thinks they know where North Wales is, but nobody knows exactly where its southern limit is.

There's a similar problem with the Highlands of Scotland. Obscured clan and no longer extant political boundaries have been used as limits, but in reality a Highlander is anybody who says he is. Geographers have thrown in the towel and use the Boundary Fault.

When you solve your two British problems, please define The Old South in the United States.

I anticipate hitting Pembrokeshire late tomorrow and will press north a couple days later. Should I encounter a Welcome to North Wales sign, I shall mark it on my map.

Until we arm wrestle after ten beers, I shall continue to bug you with my pig-headed predilection for precision.

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Truce.

I shall henceforth use the phrase ' those counties of the Principality north of Powys and Ceredigion' in order not to offend the natives and send the Americans scurrying for a map.