Car or Rail from York to London

I agree with Rick about training it from York to London, but since you asked about driving....the motorway between York and London does not run in an arrow-straight line, but curves westward and runs more or less through the center of England. This being the case, you could spend some days exploring the Cotswolds, Stratford upon Avon, Coventry, Warwick, Blenheim Castle, and Oxford. That would be a lot of fun, but I don't know whether your schedule will permit it. If you just want a quick stop very near a motorway exit and plan to make it to Heathrow in, say, six hours, I think you may be out of luck. You have to remember that traffic on the roads could well be snarled, especially near London. The rail travel time, by contrast, is highly reliable.

We don't drive in the UK. We love the train system. In the past, we have used BritRail passes, so if we wanted, we could get off at a town/village we wanted to see, spend an hour or so and catch the next train. That is not possible with point to point, non-flexible tickets. However, the train ride from London to York is not bad at all. You could pre-plan some stops if you wished- just purchase multiple tickets (ex. Durham is one possibility- York to Durham, Durham to London). There are also others. Personally, the cost of gas (petrol), the cost and often lack of convient or even much parking and the driving on the "other" side of the road, along with the fact that most cars are straight drive just totally turns us off to driving over there. Also- we LIKE letting "someone else" do the navigating, etc. and being able to enjoy the ride. Hubby has taken some great pictures from the train, I do my sketching and he usually listens to his music. We don't have to stop for the restroom or snacks, they are on the train. We get where we are going when we planned to be there and have seldom had more than a 5 min. delay.

If you need to get to London that day, take the train. Either spend your spare hours in York before , or London after, your journey. Practically you will probably need most of it to get through the security lines at Heathrow. The train journey is quite pleasant If you had a few days, we drove via Hull to Lincoln (great underappreciated City), Cambridge, Oakham, East Anglia to London. But that took us quite a few days

Actually Ken, if you had at least 4-6 hours free you could try Chatsworth House in Derbyshire County. They have a great house, gardens and farm. But it will take at least 4 hours there to make it worthwhile, and probably at least an hour total travel time from and to the Motorway

There are not really any sights on that road, apart from the countryside, which is fairly unremarkable. If you're coming down the M1 from York to London, to get to Chatsworth you would leave the motorway at the Chesterfield exit - #28 if I remember rightly - it will take you an hour from there to Chatsworth. Nice countryside on that road. The fastest I ever did Chesterfield to Watford (on the northern extremities of London) was in a BMW 635 and it took 1.5 hrs. (This is not recommended behaviour!) NO WAY will you get from York to Heathrow in 3 1/2 hrs!

Thanks to all. It looks like it will be the train for us. One thing I did notice is that the cost of a rental car goes up a bit dropping it off in York. I'm not sure if that is due to a drop off fee or just limited competition with companies that have offices both at Heathrow and York.

If it was me, I might add on an extra day or two and drive east to the Yorkshire coast and then make my way south, perhaps stopping in Cambridge. That said, I would not even think about this if I could not drop the car well outside London. It is just not worth the hassle, risk and cost (parking, congestion fee) to drive in London. There are reasons people here and on other travel sites urge people to avoid London driving almost without exception. Another alternative might be to use the car to visit the Yorkshire coast and elsewhere in the area, drop the car in York, and then catch the train.

These are all great suggestions. The train would be more efficient, certainly. And it is nice to let someone else do the driving. :-) I never really understood, though, Rick's underselling of some of the areas others have mentioned here, i.e., Derbyshire. We spent 8 days in England last summer and it was my favorite place. Chatsworth was beautiful, but my favorite things were the little villages (such as Eyam), Stanage Edge, and just the beautiful country side. Enjoy your trip!

Ken- Where are you picking UP the car? You are right that dropping at a different location can raise the cost. Have you considered renting just for parts of your trip? Say- pick up a car in Oxford or Bath to "do" the Cotswolds, return the car to same place, then train to next major area and rent another car if needed? That might work out and save some money, too.

I just did that jaunt in the opposite direction, from London to York (and on to Edinburgh) at the beginning of December. It's not a long journey, about 4-1/2 hours approximately, but I found that my carriage was FREEZING, with a connecting door that would not stay shut. Plus there was a 'crazy' woman onboard who insisted there is a train etiquette no one around me had ever heard of, wherein her bag was supposed to stay unobscured by anyone else's bag, even though she was getting off at Edinburgh, and, as far as I understand it, people just simply pile their luggage on top of each others'; it's what happens, and you deal with it, unless you're off your meds. We were detained in York for 15 minutes because some poor person had taken ill leaving the train, and the train company had to be sure she was all right before we left again. I would say that if there is more heat and fewer crazies in first class, upgrade your tickets. :-) Getting off the road is nice if you're driving, but only if you've got time. Otherwise the train is the way to go, in spite of things that can go wrong on trains, and take the time of year into account. Summer is a nice time to take a car around England, but the traffic can be bad. In the winter, of course, the traffic can be impossible, as has been seen recently in Europe.

I was going to pick up the car at Heathrow and drive to Bath via Windsor and other sites on the way. I would then essentially park the car in Bath for a day but then drive to the Cotswolds. After that, it's on to North Wales, Hadrian's Wall, Durham and York. Scotland could get slipped in if I can get away long enough but I feel I'd need another week. After York, it's London. I think the car makes sense for the trip up until York. The cost doesn't seem to go up for the different pick up and drop point but the only rental agency that seems to cover both Heathrow and York is Hertz. I'm still looking into that.