Car GPS in Great Britian

Your GPS has to be equipped with European maps - Garmin and Tom-Tom make such models. You will find the GPS to be indispensable. FYI, Autoeurope is currently running a promo for free GPS usage with a rental in the UK of over 7 days.

Use this link to get to the free GPS page..... http://www.autoeurope.com/go/specials/free-gps-rentals-for-your-next-car-rental-in-europe

Thanks, Roy. We will be traveling in September but I can check if there are any discounts for GPS closer to our trip. We are still undecided about where to hire - we arrive in Heathrow at 7:00 am after a red eye from Chicago. We could hire at Heathrow and drive to Stow or could train or bus to Oxford and hire there. Our drive time if we hire in Oxford would be less. I don't know if there is any advantage as far as cost. Any ideas on this?

We take our Garmin GPS from home with important preloaded addresses. It has European maps and can be accessed at home - you can pull up cities or other maps to peruse. A friend of mine arrived in London to pick up his rental car with a pre-ordered GPS, he was advised that they were all out of GPSs at the moment! He was stuck with the car and maps. Without a special promo offer the additional costs can be quite high. In Spain I was quoted at an extra $18E per day....that's a lot of extra money on a 3 week rental!

Cindy: The GPS deal is for rental reservations made in May, so you could book now and have your GPS! Another idea, if you plan to travel to Europe again, is to buy the GPS here and you'd have several months to get familiar with it. I did that several years ago with a Garmin 275T and love it...and if you can find one of these now, the price will have ped considerably. Concerning where to pick up the car...I have used Heathrow for return only and have found it to be no issue. However, you need to weigh your fatigue upon arrival and if you have driven in the UK before. It would be dicey to head out from Heathrow very tired and uncomfortable with driving on the "wrong" side. If you're heading right to the Cotswolds, the plan for Oxford seems best. Stow is an easy drive from there. We have made a conscious decision to start our vacations in London for 3-4 days, minus a car, then pick up the rental car elsewhere for the remainder of the trip. 2 years ago it was Bath; last year it was Penzance; and this year it is Newquay. I'll emphasize again - you'll want to have a GPS. And just think - you won't have to navigate, just take in the beautiful scenery!

Thank you so much for all the good advice! It probably would have been a better plan to train to London first and spend our 4 days there, with the Cotswolds after. But our reservations are set. We have an ideal London hotel and I don't want to risk our reservations. I think Oxford is a good idea for our car rental. Our drive on to Stow from there should be easy. My husband just said we have a Tom Tom GPS and I think we can download European maps from our computer. We will definitely take it with us now. Thanks for making this part of our planning easy.

Cindy, I have done what you are planning several times, we fly from the west coast and its true that you will be a bit tired but if your husband sleeps on the plane well he should be ok. We always pick up at Heathrow and drive past Terminal 5 and hook the M25 there and go north from there and take the A40 bypass around the north of Oxford. If the GPS route is pricey you can always order a road map online as they are well designed and you will also find that Britain is very well signed. You will have to be an active navigator though as round abouts are challenging trying to read signs and navigate around and through them. Do you have your place to stay in Stow already? Be sure to go Upper Slaughter and walk down to Lower Slaughter, visit Bourton early in the morning when its quiet too. Stanton, Broadway and all of the villages are very nice. Another nice little town is Northleach which is just south of the A40 and A429 near Bourton!

There is a public transport option from Heathrow airport to Stow, via Witney. http://www.witneyshuttle.com/stow-shuttle.htm No personal experience of this service but I was intrigued by its existence when I plugged in your route into http://www.transportdirect.info. Pricing though seems more advantageous for a return rather than single journey.

Cindy, I have used a company called Kemwell several times for arranging my car hire. They are US based. They charged $40 for a GPS and mailed it to my home in ample time before my trip. They expect you you mail it back to them within a few days of your returning. So there is no danger of there not being any GPSs available when you go to collect your car. Now we have the European chip in our GPS and so take it with us. I really do think they are a good thing to have. My sister and I would sometimes wait for the last minute before dark to locate our B&B so the GPS was quite handy.

Cindy, I just returned today from my trip to London and the Cotswolds. We did London first, took a train to Oxford rented our car there and then drove to the Cotswolds. We could not have traveled all over that area without the GPS. It was nice to know that when we turned down a country lane that looked interesting, we would be able to wander as far as we wanted without worrying about getting back on track. Even with someone else navigating with a very good map, I would not have wanted to be without the GPS. I know for years people got along without them, but they are available so way not? We didn't even use a map, we knew where we wanted to go and just plugged it in. We used AutoEurope for the car and the GPS. Getting out of Oxford from AutoEurope's rental pick up was very easy. Have a wonderful trip, wish I could do it again tomorrow!

two question, two posters, two answers: Q1
Oxford to Stow on the Wold (where the wind blows cold - according to local doggerel) is just under an hour taking either the A40 to A44 to Moreton-in-Marsh or taking the A40 through Whitney to Burford (lovely hilly town with great tearooms and an ancient stone bridge) and then cross country via Bourton-on-the-Water. Not more than 10 minutes in it either way. Use a map for both routes - the Sat Nav will probably try to shortcut which would actually be long-cuts in reality. Stick with the main roads on those 2 stretches. My father used to drive Stow to Oxford weekly. Q2 the "t" is for traffic. The 275t which I used to have has a older version of Garmin's traffic warning system. It will need activation before it can start turning roads yellow and red.

Thanks, Lisa! I appreciate your advice. We are flying in to Heathrow and taking a train to Oxford where we will rent the car. What car rental did you use there? What is Oxford like and how long did it take you to drive from Oxford to the Cotswolds? We are staying in Stow.

What is the difference between the Garmin nuvi 275 and 275t? I'm guessing the "t" model is the transatlantic model with European maps preloaded. Can't find an answer to this on the web.... thanks.

Thank you, Nigel. I think we will be driving the scenic route through Whitney. Sounds lovely.

Useless Trivia about Whitney: My great aunt used to be the Landlady at a pub in Whitney. Whitney is famous for blankets. Whitney blankets were lovely thinish warm things with horizontal stripe. Some of the mills still remain. Most production overseas now. :-( The A40 actually goes near but bypasses Whitney, it is possible to veer into town. Burford is a beautiful town, you enter the town at the top of the hill, and make your gentle descent down. Worthy of a walk around, lots of quaint shops; great wool church, then there's that bridge.

Hi Nigel Is Whitney anywhere near Witney?

Well it would be if I could spell - oops - as I'm heading off for work... hope I haven't caused an oopsie