London to Bath with Highclere or Windsor Castle?

If you mean to leave London in the morning and arrive in Bath by dinner time, I'd say either Windsor or Highclere is possible, not both.

The thing about Highclere is that they're only open to the public on certain dates, and then only during limited hours. The year we went to England, if I remember correctly they had no dates in May at all. Windsor Castle, of course, is much easier to gain entry to.

If you choose Windsor I would consider going by train (yes, even given that you'll have luggage) and renting your car from there or Heathrow. For Highclere, picking up your rental at Heathrow would save a lot of aggravation navigating out of London. (I don't know where you live in the USA, but think of the potential confusion finding your way out of, say, Boston or Chicago or Los Angeles, with multiple highways crisscrossing each other and the need to be in the proper lane to merge onto the one you want. It's a challenge even when you're familiar with the route.)

If you drive the A4 to Bath, it is slower than the Motorway but more scenic (chalk horses!) and allows an easy stop at Avebury. If you don't have time to walk the Avebury stone circle (1 mile circumference), you can still have something to eat at the Red Lion pub -- good food and very affordable.

How long will you be spending in Bath? I wasn't sure whether this was a day-trip to Bath or the start of another part of your trip.

Thanks for the responses, this will be on the way to a 3 day stay in Bath.

It’s too early for any information to be available, but there may well be engineering works on the major train routes over the Bank Holiday weekend, so there would be a bus replacement service, which would add significantly to the time taken to get to Bath.

Having a car in Bath is often a disadvantage as parking is difficult and expensive.

Highclere has limited opening days, so may reduce your options.

If you don't have time to walk the Avebury stone circle (1 mile circumference), you can still have something to eat at the Red Lion pub -- good food and very affordable.

I couldn't disagree more! The food at The Red Lion was very poor. It's a Greene King pub, not a chain famed for their food. The majority of it is brought in and reheated prior to serving. I ate once, the menu was uninspiring and I wasn't confident that many of the dishes were cooked from scratch in the kitchen (I also watched the chef toing and froing from an outdoor area where the freezers were and bringing containers of pre-cooked frozen meals) so I went for the usually safe bet of a burger. It tasted like those cheap frozen disks of meat from a dodgy burger van that I used to eat late at night after the pub in my youth.

My wife had the chilli......I wouldn't bother. My eldest made the best choice and opted for a BLT sandwich, it was probably one of the few things they made fresh.