One week itinerary for The Lake District, Yorkshire and the Cotswolds

That’s a lot of time driving, hours every day. I would stick to Southern England. Plenty to see in Hampshire, Dorset and Devon.

If you were doing this you would want to fly into a Northern airport, such as Edinburgh, Glasgow or Manchester then work your way south.
In the Lake District you are not going to find non congested rural roads in September at least in the areas most tourists go to. And quite a few of the roads (even main A roads in some cases) are not even one lane in each direction. It is a good sport around here (just on Wednesday when I was in the Central Lakes) to watch the frightened tourists who don't know the width of their vehicles, or are not accomplished in reversing in a straight line.

In any event the Lake District has good trains to its edges, and excellent bus services to get around. A car is far more of a hindrance than a help.

Yorkshire is a huge county with a variety of landscapes, divided into North, West and South Yorkshire You kind of need to narrow that down.
I guess you mean North Yorkshire, but then you need to decide Dales, Moors or Coast. Each is good, so you need to get a guidebook to decide.
The Lake District needs a minimum of 3 nights (especially if done first) then you will have at least half a day to transfer to whichever part of Yorkshire. Again 3 nights will give you two useable days.
Transferring to Southampton, by whatever mode, will take most of a day.
So those two destinations have eaten up your week.

After the Lake District you could instead visit Hadrians Wall country or Northumberland.
And to save a long journey south there are then flights from Newcastle and Manchester to Southampton.

Two other very good options would be the Peak District or North Wales- both very easy to access from Manchester Airport.

With only a week I would definitely stay south. I could spend a week in just the Cotswolds (I have spent a week in just the Cotswolds LOL). But you could also split your week and see some of South Wales. If you've never driven in England and are worried about it, I recommend using public transportation. I have very successfully done that in both the Cotswolds and South Wales.

Thanks for your response! You may be right but for us that's not a lot of driving. Being from the US, we frequently (several times a year) drive over 1000 miles. It looks like the longest stretch would be from Yorkshire to the Cotswolds and that is still less than 4 hours. The other stretches; Manchester (we're considering flying in there) to the Lake District, the Lake District to Yorkshire, and the Cotswolds to Southhampton, are all less than 2 hours. Please let me know if I've made an error in my calculations. And we are still considering taking the train.

Driving in the UK is a very different experience to driving in the US.

I’m sure that you have driven these distances and more often in the US. But doing it in the UK is completely different. Pretty much all the time you will be driving you will either be on congested motorways or on much smaller roads on which you will need all your wits about you - you can’t just switch on the cruise control and relax.

Today I went to watch a cricket match in Liverpool. It’s about 35 miles to drive. I chose to take the train. Both routes would take about 90 minutes. I didn’t even think of driving, the train is so much more relaxing.

I would fly into Manchester and take a train straight from the airport direct to the Lakes or to Yorkshire. There’s a station right at the airport and you really don’t want to drive straight off a red eye flight from the US. If you want to hire a car to get to some more difficult to get to places when you get there then that would make more sense anyway, although you don’t need to with some careful planning.

I would stick to the north for your week. It looks like you have visited a fair swathe of Southern England already. The scenery in the 3 or 4 national parks in Northern England is for me more impressive than the Cotswolds anyway.

The first time I drove in England was several years ago when I flew into Manchester. I got on the motorway and it was an easy way for me to learn to be on the opposite side of what I was used to. I had intended to start out on small regional roads, but the guy at Avis convinced me it was easier to start with a motorway. We drove to York and other than finding a place to park, it was no problem. I love York and have been back several times. If you also wanted to do the Lake District a car would probably make it easier to see more of the area, but there are buses. If you then returned the car to Manchester it looks like there is a direct train to Southampton, but I'll let our train experts chime in on that.
If you have a car, Castle Howard and Thirsk or just driving around the Yorkshire moors are some of my favorite experiences.

What Trelawny said. Many roads in the US have multiple lanes on each side. Plus you're driving on the opposite side of the road-don't underestimate the difficulty of doing that.

This Thursday it took me just over 2 hours to drive the 64 miles between Hull and Leeds for a rugby match. This was along the M62 which is the main motorway that runs east to west. I thought that was good and quite quick. I’d timed 3 hours to get there before kick off.

Google has the trip as 1 hour and 20 minutes which I would never believe.

The train would take about an hour and if there had been a train home at the end of the game (it didn’t finish till 10pm) I would have gone by train.

Re- train from Manchester to Southampton - it runs every hour, at 25 minutes past each hour. It takes 2 hrs 50 minutes to Oxford for the Cotswolds, and 4 hours 20 minutes to Southampton.
It would be a pretty good day on the roads if you could match either of those times driving, and far less stress on the train.
The flight is once daily in the early afternoon- 1 hour duration + 2 hour check in + 30 minutes transfer at SOU- about 45 minutes faster, nominally, add 30 minutes from central Manchester and it's identical time effectively.

Please reevaluate comparing UK driving to USA. Totally much slower experience in every aspect, which we enjoy. However impact on drive time goes up with adverse consequences to time out of car visiting desired locations.

As others have said driving in the UK is very different from driving in USA. To give an example a few weeks ago we drove from Dorset on the south coast to just north of Manchester - about 270 miles. Google maps states 4.5 hours but it took us 10 hours - delays and congestion everywhere. Our return journey was slightly better at 8 hours. September will still be relatively busy as the schools will have gone back so those without children will be taking holidays.

The Lake District, Yorkshire and Cotswolds are way too much for one week, or even just over a week.

There are vast swathes of the South of England you have not visited (unless you haven't mentioned them) Hampshire with the lovely new forest and Winchester. Dorset with its stunning coast and picturesque villages. Devon with a lovely coast and Dartmoor.

What are your interests ? This may help in narrowing your choices down.

We appreciate everyone's comments about driving, that's just what we wanted to know, so we'll not be doing any driving. We'll probably fly into Manchester and take the train to the Lakes District. Some of you have commented that it's even more scenic than the Cotswolds which it seems like should wait for another trip to the UK. We're planning to visit the home of the Bronte family, and see the Beatrix Potter home and museum, and take a tour around the lakes. If anyone has any wonderful hotels or B and B's they've stayed in in Yorkshire or the Lake District, we're most interested. Keswick seems to be a favorite but we're open to other villages. We hope to find a great one near the train. We are interested in seeing the Yorkshire Dales (including the area where they film "All Creatures Great and Small"). Then we'll return to Manchester and plan take the train from Manchester to Southampton after visiting the Lakes District and Yorkshire. We'll have one day in Southhampton for touring so are open to suggestions about how to make the best use of that time. Thanks again for all your replies. We are happy not to have to worry about driving in England!

You might want to look at Mountain Goat Tours of the Dales and the Lake District. I haven't taken a tour with them yet, but they're on my bucket list.

If you are in Southampton, Portsmouth is practically adjacent.

Lots to do there including the ancient and modern navy yards with appropriate ships if interested, ferries from Portsmouth and Southampton, and a hovercraft from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight which can take you back to the 1950s and 60s.

Or Winchester with its cathedral and lots more is a little further the other way.

Are you planning on visiting Haworth (the Bronte Parsonage) while you are in the Lake District? That is really not a quick trip from the Lake District. Or, are you going to visit it on your way to Southhampton?

Haworth is certainly possible as a day trip from the Lake District. I've just done it (or something way more complicated) today. As I went past Haworth road end I wished I was going there instead. As it was I was going to a place well beyond Haworth called Bradshaw for a working visit then to the suburbs of Leeds for an American's genealogy visit.
You take the 0855 train from Windermere, and change at Lancaster for Keighley then steam train or bus to Haworth.
I did it today for £20 railcard discounted including all buses in West Yorkshire, although it suited me to route through Carlisle.