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Looking for a UK travel consultant

Since RS consulting is not taking any clients, I need a reputable travel agency to help plan our trip. Any suggestions? We will be in London and will rent a car and then drive up to Inverness, so I need someone who can assist throughout UK. TIA.

Posted by
6113 posts

Unless you have a long trip here, it may make more sense to undertake at least part of this journey by train.

How long do you have and where do you want to go?

Posted by
7 posts

Yes? We need help with booking a rental car, getting train tickets, recommendations for the driving tour from Bath to Inverness, lodging recommendations, etc. Most of this we can find in our RS travel guides, but the travel logistics is what we are really needing help with.

Posted by
7 posts

We arrive in London on June 29th. We want to rent a car in Bath on the 30th and drive up to Inverness, sightseeing along the way and arrive in Inverness around the 6th-7th. We will drop the car off there and then take the train back to London. We will sitesee In London until we leave on the 13th.

Posted by
456 posts

You could probably plan this yourself (with guidance from the very knowledgeable group on this forum) unless your schedules won't permit you the time needed (less than 2 months to go before the departure date) ... trip seems fairly straight-forward but that's a heck of a drive from Bath to Inverness ... I would normally suggest dropping the car at the place you rent from to avoid the high cost of dropping in another city, but this probably won't work here unless you pick up the car at LHR (assuming that is your arrival airport) and do a 2 week driving tour (drive to Bath, maybe stopping at Stonehenge and Salisbury along the way, then up to Inverness, stopping at Glasgow on the way up and Edinburgh on the way down, then back down the middle of England to LHR to drop the car ... this would mean probably not visiting London unless you could extend the trip or finish the road trip a little quicker ... I'm curious to see how this plans out, hope you will keep us informed ...

Posted by
7 posts

You would think it would be something that one could do fairly easily, I agree. However, we are stuck on the first task, lol: renting a car. Cannot seem to find any place to call and rent in Bath. Hertz website says both offices in Bath are closed until 2023 and Avis phone numbers don’t work. So I am throwing up my hands and looking for a professional.

Posted by
982 posts

Rossrxtx,
https://www.enterprise.com/ just put in Bath GB (don't put England or UK) for some reason it won't find it.

Location: Lower Bristol Road, Bath England. Tel: 44 1225 443311. Looks like this location is closed on Sundays and closed 1/2 day Saturday. - Automatic cars are often higher priced in the UK.

Bath to Inverness is a very long journey.

Posted by
317 posts

I realize its been said already, but I feel the need to add another confirmation to the pile - London to Inverness is a very long journey, especially by car. UK traffic can be...ugly. Adverse weather or a traffic accident will make a long trip much more painful as there arent any easy ways to get around blockages. If its me, I avoid a car unless I have to get one. One thing to remember in your planning - fuel here in the UK costs 2-3 times what you are used to paying at home,

EDIT: Just read some of the responses. Do you know what sites you'd like to see? The crowd here is quite knowledgeable and may be able to help.

Posted by
1797 posts

So basically you are wanting ideas of places to stop and things to do between Bath and Edinburgh?

I've three suggestions, although that may be too much and you might want to drop one of them..

• Cotswolds and spend a couple of days exploring the small villages there. Base yourself in one of the small villages - Burford, Charlbury etc.
• North Wales (Llandudno/Conwy area) for the ruined castles, scenery etc.
• Northumberland for Hadrian's Wall or Holy Island (reached by tidal causeway so check safe crossing times ) as well as Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh, Cragside, etc. Alnwick (pronounced ann-ick) would make a good base. From there its just a short hop up to Edinburgh....

Posted by
7 posts

I have made a lot of headway since yesterday. I have hired a consultant (thanks Linda!) and we have a plan now.
Yes, we are driving from London to Inverness, but we are doing that over a 10 day span so shouldn’t be an issue.
Now I need to know the best options for cell/data. My son will be London for a month participating in a Nuclear Engineering course so he will need data and cell coverage. Then when we join up with him all 4 of us will need cell and data coverage due to school (me) and work (husband and I). AT&T only has a day pass which will cost us $20/day. If we use a UK SIM card I think we would have to change to a UK phone number which is not an option due to work. So smart experienced peeps, what’s my best option?

Posted by
456 posts

Don't know much about this but you can rent a portable hotspot for some daily cost, then pick a plan for the amount of data ... they connect to a cellular network for data just like your phone and you can share that data on your own private network with multiple devices.

Posted by
3938 posts

We investigated this with ATT before our current, month long trip to Europe. There is a cap of 10 billed days during your billing cycle for the International Day Pass—first phone $10 and each additional phone $5 but for a maximum of 10 billed days in your cycle. We called and got our billing cycle changed to match our 30 day trip. If this doesn’t work as stated this time, we will be switching to T-Mobile for our July trip. For our current trip we are expecting to pay no more than $150 for a 30 days trip. Your situation with 3 phone lines should be capped at $200 if your travel days fall with your billing cycle. If your son’s phone for a month is also on your plan that raises the price and might complicate the billing cycle. It was important for us too to keep our regular numbers.