mini uk road trip, local advice needed

Fry and fly into Manchester rather than Heathrow or th London airports.
What var your expectations of these three places - are you wanting to walk, sightsee (what sort of things)? Quite a few attractions may still be shut until Easter. The sme may apply to B&B accommodation
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The Peak District is on the outskits of Manchester and allowing for a day to recover from jet lag, you could easiy spend a few days there - depending on what you want to do.

Then hed for the Lake District. Again decide what you want to do/see ands that will determine where you book accommodation. Plans for walking may depend on how much snow thre is still around by then (and also how wet it is underfoot and if there has been flooding over the winter...)

Ar you planning on spending time in either Edinburgh or Glasgow? Again what are your expectations of Scotland. Don't be too ambitious with plans as although Scotland may not seem that large, it will tke a lot longer to cover distances than you might ec=xpect and you also need to consider the short day length at that time of year.

in that time of year sunrise in Edinburgh is about 07:00 and sunset is 17:45, further south gets a little more daylight and anywhere can seem much less with heavy cloud. Generally buses in very touristy areas may be reduced (and pure tourist routes may be off) but otherwise they should still be usable. You don't say where you are coming from but Edinburgh airport is very easy to reach the Lake district and Manchester.

If you're going to major tourist sites, you'll mostly be ok with bus and train. If you want to get off the beaten path a little bit, and be able to make your own schedule, I would hire a car for those areas. As someone who takes buses a lot they can often be quite infrequent and you have to plan your whole day around their schedule. In terms of best bases, it will depend on what you want to see in each area.

As mentioned above, buses and/or trains will get you to bigger cities, places where you likely wouldn’t want a car anyway (traffic, parking, navigating).

A car might get to where you want to go, and definitely on your schedule - not someone else’s. But again, big cities and a rental car may not be an ideal combination, especially if you’re not too familiar with driving on the left side of the road, and driving from the right side of the car. There’s also the consideration of an automatic transmission (potentially more expensive) or manual (potentially cheaper and readily available, but you’re shifting with your left hand, and do you use a clutch at home?), on top of the other U.K. driving issues.

As for a mini road trip, if you did drive, you could literally make it a MINI road trip, driving a MINI, which was originally a tiny, iconic British car in the 1960’s, with a groundbreaking front-wheel-drive design, but is now a brand owned by BMW, with a similar appearance to the original.

One of the highlights of the Peak District, anyway a year ago for me, is Chatsworth House. You can find interesting info on their website about getting around there with the bus.

https://www.chatsworth.org/visit-chatsworth/visitor-information/how-to-get-here/

The time you are planning to visit is still very much winter rather than spring especially the further north you go. It is therefore worth having some back up plans for if the weather doesn’t play ball.
Roads can be treacherous and even the lightest dusting of snow or ice can cause roads at higher elevations, including main routes, to close.

Between the Peak District and Lake District you have the Pennines which are also worth a visit. My brother lives just outside Holmfirth which is a nice small town on the edge of Saddleworth Moor with some good shops and bars etc. Very easy links to Manchester and Huddersfield.

Thanks everyone, helpful tips. It terms of expectations of areas, we really just like seeing countryside, small towns, learning history, visiting local shops, cafes, museums, sites. Understand that the weather, and time of year means some more popular places, like Chatsworth, appear to be closed.

We did look at training between main centres, says Edinburgh, Newcastle, etc, and hiring cars to visit smaller places, but Im cautious also about the time it might take take to pickup multiple rental cars over the trip, or wait for buses, verses keeping one for the whole time and basing ourselves in smaller towns.

For example, if we went Edinburgh (city visit portion), and then Alnwick, Bakewell, Ambleside as some smaller place bases to base ourselves for a couple of days each, would it be possible to train, and sight see without a car, in winter? Or not being main centres does train travel become just as time consuming once you add on changes etc. Or are smaller town visits not really recommended in the colder months.

Ambleside Station, although seriously planned for, was never built- on a line once projected to run from Windermere to Keswick, and Bakewell station closed in 1967.

But, yes, Ambleside even in mid winter, has half hourly buses to Grasmere and Bowness/Windermere (even on 26 December and New Year Day) and hourly on to Keswick. They operate for far longer hours than the 9 to 5 that most tourists keep to, being there mainly for the use of locals.
There are also two hourly winter buses to Langdale and Coniston (assuming Government money isn't used to keep them hourly, as in the summer).
The boats on Windermere and Ullswater run 364 days a year- at least on Windermere there is a very heavily discounted locals commuter ticket between Lakeside/Bowness and Ambleside- about £200 a year (so about 75p per day). With all the buses I don't imagine many people use it, but the ticket exists. The Coniston and Derwentwater launches will also have restarted after a brief winter break.

Frankly you would be surprised how many of the workers in the guest houses and hotels where the tourists staying there insist they can't manage without a car, are using the buses and travelling long distances at unsocial hours, partly because they can't afford to run cars, or actually afford to live in the Central Lake District.

Buxton station is open, for Bakewell (trains from Manchester). There is the hourly Trans Peak all year round bus service, and generally very few seasonal buses in the Peak District. Almost every route in the area is year round. For instance while Chatsworth House has an extra open top tourist bus in the summer, it also has 3 buses an hour all year from Bakewell, even on days when the house is closed to the public- partly due to the other villages served on route, partly for the use of staff who don't have cars, and partly because the locals know how to use the bus on days when Chatsworth is open.

As someone has already said, you will be travelling in the back end of winter. It's probable that you won't have any disruption due to adverse weather, but there is a small chance. The countryside will be very bleak too, bare trees, muddy, devoid of colour apart from brown and yellow/green. Still plenty to see in the towns and cities though.

Consider changing to sites in southern England or Wales.
Cornwall and Devon are wonderful.

I really enjoyed Cornwall and especially Devon, but I wouldn't recommend driving there in the winter. It's a hard place to drive through on a good day, much less during periods of snow and rain and cold weather. I was there in March and it was tough then.

The Peak is relatively easy to drive in, although there are a number of single-track roads that you will need to be more careful on. I stayed in Castleton and really enjoyed it, but I had a car. If you decide to go with public transportation, I would probably recommend staying in someplace like Bakewell or one of the larger towns. I would second the recommendation for Chatsworth. It is incredible and definitely well worth the visit. Don't miss it if you go there.

It's been 30 years since I've driven through the Lake District, so can't speak for that. That said, if you are up that way, it might be worth a quick drive through Hadrian's Wall to visit some of the forts and ruins. It's best done with a car, though.

If you did rent a car, what areas in Scotland were you planning on driving to? The Highlands and the islands are probably the most difficult to drive around in (IMO), but most of mainland Scotland isn't bad.

For example, if we went Edinburgh (city visit portion), and then Alnwick, Bakewell, Ambleside as some smaller place bases to base ourselves for a couple of days each, would it be possible to train, and sight see without a car, in winter?

One way you could do this without a car is to base yourself in Edinburgh and take day trips (or even multi-day trips) using a tour company like Rabbies, which many people here have used and highly recommend. They have tours that will pick you up in Edinburgh and take you to places like the Lake District, Hadrian's Wall and the Scottish Borders, Alnwick Castle and the Scottish Borders, and even York and the Dales. They range from one day up to five days. I don't know how many of them operate during late winter, but you can always contact them to ask.

You can find more information here: https://www.rabbies.com/en-us/tours/england?departure=Edinburgh