Please sign in to post.

London and Bath itinerary advice

Posted by (California) on

We are a couple in early sixties, planning a short trip to England in early September this year. We are flying in from US and in London around 11 am on day 0, have booked our stays in London for three nights, Bath for three nights, flying out from Bristol to Belfast (longer Ireland trip). Previously posted request for the longer itinerary review in Ireland forum, and now trying to get input from England forum for this part of the stay (got some advice there as well, thank you!).

We have been to London couple of times before and have done the usual main attractions, so we will focus on a few things (Wimbledon visit, small walks, food). General plan
Day 0: Reach hotel in Bermondsey area by taxi from Paddington. Walk around the area, just stroll over Tower Bridge, Maltby market (was told this is better vs. Borough), relaxed wandering along the river and rest
Day 1: General walks to see Big Ben (last time it had scaffolds), Whitehall, Downing St. Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden. Enjoy food Seven Dials/Covent Garden side streets, if have energy Soho or Mayfair. All based on energy and getting adjusted to new time zone.
Day 2: Wimbledon tour in the morning. Rest open, may be Leadenhall market, open to suggestions.
Day 3: Take early morning train to Bath. Enjoy city strolls , architecture. Actual Roman baths visit is optional, and won't prebook.

Day 4: Take a tour of the Cotswolds and Stonehenge or just Cotswolds. Looks like Mad Max has both options. Pretty sure wife not interested in Stonehenge and I am also lukewarm, but we may be in for a surprise. Also keep hearing mixed opinion of the Cotswolds as shown in tours as well. Would love your thoughts from those who visited before.
Day 5: Trip to Oxford. The interest is multi-fold. One is I have not seen a single university campus in UK and fascinated by them everywhere else in the world. The architecture looks great from photos/videos. Also very much interested in any unique commemorations of great scientific minds, etc.
Day 6: Fly from Bristol to Belfast. Flight at 3:45, so need to account for the travel to Bristol and we may have a little time in the morning for a relaxing final morning.

Also wondering if it makes sense to just go to Oxford from London, keep the luggage near the station somewhere (others have suggested places) and then go to Bath. This saves a day and possibly opens a day for a morning tour to Stonehenge if we just do the Cotswolds on day 4. A little busy vs. gentle London days, but all of these areas will be completely new to us.

Any feedback, additions, changes welcome! Thank you all.

Posted by
120 posts

If you have no interest in Stonehenge then skip it. The Cotswolds is an 800 square mile area of beautiful towns and villages with lots to see and do. Stonehenge is very much rocks in a field.

Oxford is fabulous, although not a campus university in the UK sense. But there is tons to do, a tour of the Bodleian including the Radcliffe Camera, climbing St Mary's church tower will give a fabulous view of the city, the Pitt Rivers museum, probably the best collection of pubs in a small city, a chauffeured punt along the Cherwell from Magdalen Bridge, wander along Christ Church meadow. And so on.

You will need to be at Bristol airport at about 2pm, and it is awkwardly located with poor public transport, you will have time for a leisurely morning in Bath but you won't get time to explore Bristol.

As someone that his lived in both places, I would kindly suggest that 17 days in Ireland and 2.5 days in non-london England is a shame and somewhat unbalanced. England has so much to see, and most tourists just scratch the surface with a handful of well trodden places.

Posted by
12102 posts

On Day 6 there is a regular hourly bus direct from Bath to Bristol Airport- the A4. It takes 75 to 80 minutes and is the same price as the one from Bristol to the airport.
For a 3.45 pm flight, probably the 1130, arrive 1251.

Oxford and Canterbury are not campuses, but individual colleges- each with their own history and architecture. Bristol University is more of a campus. Modern Universities like Lancaster (my alma mater) or Canterbury are on green field sites, so very different and actually interesting and scenic in their own right, and in a very different way.

Oxford to Bath now has direct trains every 2 hours.

Posted by
23 posts

@OliviaHoughton. Thank you and we may just skip Stonehenge as you suggest. The Cotswold villages do look pretty and we know we won't do justice to them in the time we have. Agree that our itinerary is more heavily weighed towards Ireland. Turned out that we were planning an Ireland trip for a while, and addition of England was more of an afterthought with less available time. I agree England (and Scotland) have a lot to see and we will definitely return on a focused trip. We plan to leave pretty early in the morning for Bath, so we will aim to get closer to 3 days :-).

@isn31c. Thank you for the details about the bus. Regarding campuses, I had also considered Cambridge instead of Oxford, but was not sure how to fit it in as it is in another direction. Oxford does seem extremely interesting for my interests. In fact, I have dreams of registering for some type of summer course/workshop in one of the UK universities and take a class in say world history during retirement.

Add Reply

Please do not reply to violations of our Community Guidelines.