using a garmin gps

That's what I do. Having your own GPS ensures you are familiar with it, there are no worries about figuring it out or switching languages.

Just be sure you have coverage for the places you plan to go to (loaded and verified before you leave from home).

Your Garmin will work but you'll need to have the correct UK or Western Europe maps installed. These can be purchased from various sites depending on how old your device is, some GPS devices are no consdiered obsolete and are no longer supported. Chek the Garmin website for compatability. The currernt price for the UK and Ireland map is $69.99, a complete Europe map is $99.99.

They used to have pre used uk Garmin SD maps on Amazon and Ebay, haven't bought one for a few years as I now have a car with an inbuilt Tom Tom satnav.

Check if your Garmin will locate addresses via Postal Code. We have a Tom Tom that I downloaded with UK and Western Europe, but it will not locate via Postal Code. We were lucky that the car we rented from Enterprise in Bath came with a GPS at no charge. The Rental car guy strongly advised to search by postal code and he was right. We started by using both to see which worked better, but trying to find addresses in the UK without a Postal Code can be very confusing when you're not familiar with the area.

I take my Garmin with European maps. Works fine. I also have a paper map and Google maps of the area I’ll be visiting, downloaded for offline use. The google maps will have some small places not included with the Garmin maps.

Our Garmin with European map set works fine with UK postal codes, which can be a big asset in areas where formal street addresses seem to be rather optional.

Do note that with older/cheaper Garmin models, you may have to add a memory card to the device to have enough storage space for all the additional maps.