My wife and I (mid 70s) are planning a first trip to Great Britain for 2 weeks in June of 2025. We do not want to rent or drive a car there. Would like to see London, Liverpool, York, and Edinburgh, at least. We are torn between taking a preplanned guided tour that would touch all of these, vs. traveling ourselves between cities and then taking local tours in each. Do any of the multiple city itinerary tours have a slower pace allowing for more personal time? We have taken a Trafalgar tour in the past in mainland Europe and it was excellent, but we spent a lot of time on a bus. What are the better companies that would offer both types of tours? Budget under $10k USD. Perhaps I can get a good travel agent here to plan an itinerary for me?
Posted by
Charleston & Birmingham
4551 posts
If you are comfortable handling your own luggage, you could do this trip using the wonderful English train system. I always get the appropriate Rick Steve's guidebook when I begin planning my trip. For you, that would be the Britain guidebook. His guidebooks have excellent information about transportation options. You can also use information on this website and ask questions on this forum to plan your own trip. I would not use a travel agent for this trip. You could also consider a Rabbies tour for York and Edinburgh.
Posted by
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA
14540 posts
Welcome to the forum!
As far as guided tours, I've done Rick Steves Best of England, Best of Southern England, Best of Scotland. None of his tours go to Liverpool but you do wind up with a bit of free time. I've also done a number of Road Scholar tours including ones in London, Wales and Cornwall. They generally have less free time. I've not looked at the itineraries they are currently offering for UK so don't know if any cover Liverpool. Both have activity levels on the website for each tour that are pretty accurate with Rick's tours being a bit more active than the Road Scholar ones.
For both of the tours you can tell how much bus time there is. In England and Scotland there may be less bus time than doing a General Tour of Europe where you are covering long distances. I've done Rick's 21 day Best of Europe too and it had some long bus days to get everything in.
Both tour companies include tips which is important to me. Rick's tours are 24-28 people. Road Scholar vary but I'd only recommend the Small group ones which are 24 or less. Road Scholar includes more meals which is not important to me as I'd just as soon not have a big sit down meal every night. Rick includes about half of your dinners.
As far as an itinerary...this is a peer supported forum so none of us are travel agents but we all have travel experience.
For 14 days I'd suggest:
Fly in to London.
5 nights in London (gives you 4 full days in London)
2 nights Liverpool (gives you one full day in Liverpool)
3 nights York (gives you 2 full days in York)
3 nights Edinburgh (2 full days in Edinburgh)
Fly home from Edinburgh
When someone says 2 weeks, I think 14 days which for myself is 13 nights.
I'd suggest flying an "open jaw" itinerary - in to one city and out of another. This is not 1 one-way tickets. On the website for your airline of choice, go to "multi-city" or "multi-destination" to work out an open jaw flight.
Posted by
OP
Columbus OH
2 posts
Thank you, this is a great start to my plan!
Posted by
Freedonia
16018 posts
All the places you mention are easy to get to by train and offer guided local tours. By doing that, you can decide how much time you want to spend in each locaion. All you have to do is arrange accomodations and get train tickets. Not difficult to do at all.