England/Scotland/Ireland~first trip

First, let me say that trying to do England/Scotland/Ireland in one two week trip will only let you see a few sights in each place and have you spend a lot of your trip traveling between them. My recommendation is to focus on a smaller geographic area. The choice between guided tour, driving yourself and rail is really a personal preference. The tour only requires you to write a check and show up at the start. You will need to do a very small amount of research to actually pick the tour you want. Driving lets you get to places either inaccessible or difficult to reach with public transportation. Driving also requires someone that feels like they can handle driving "on the wrong side of the road." That really isn't that difficult but it requires a willingness to try. For driving or rail, you need to do reasonably detailed planning for a 2 week trip. No one can do it for you. You can get a good start with the RS books (copies from the library can work well, too). Here you can get a good idea of the more popular sights. Costs can also be estimated for places to stay. Once you rough out a plan, you can get more up to date prices for hotels and B&Bs on TripAdvisor or emailing the individual B&Bs. Personally, I think you can get a better trip for less money doing it yourself. To make it worthwhile, you need to spend the time to plan it well.

Since this is your first trip, if you are overwhelmed by the planning and logistics, a tour might be your best bet. Everything is taken care of - no getting lost, no worries about booking lodging, entrance fees are usually built in. Tours will hit the highlights, and in some cases (say at Newgrange in Ireland) can be advantageous in getting in. In Ireland, at least, rail service is less extensive in the west, so if you are taking public transportation you will have to rely partly on buses. Driving isn't all that horrible. It is remarkable how quickly you can adapt to driving on the other side of the road. A car is always my choice in these countries simply for the flexibility of travel - my own schedule, my own timing, my own interests. It is hard to determine which is cheaper between public transport and driving because you have to factor in the value of wait times and longer travel times for the public transport than for the car.

I can't tell you what is lower as have never compared prices. We always did the tours ourselves by doing lots of research and driving. We like to be able to stop when we want and have never had a problem with that. As Nancy said, rail transport in Ireland would involve more time to get you to where you want to go and in most cases, say Dingle or Ring of Kerry, would need a bus. You need to decide what is best for you. I would suggest you do fly into maybe Shannon, drive a loop around to Dublin, then fly from Dublin to Glasgow or Edinburgh and home from one of those places.
We always stayed at B&B's great and enough breakfast to be able to skip lunch. You should book your first night stay ahead of time if you go that route and the last night stay by the airport. Good luck.

Two weeks for all three countries is going to be a bit tight. I would recommend that you work on the idea that you can go back. ; ) Think about what you want to see. Then determine the best way to see it. As someone said, driving in the UK is not as stressful as you think provided you don't drive in London and you have a navigator. I find that the stressful part is making the right turns. Planning and a navigator (GPS and a Map) will lower that stress level. So what is interesting you about the UK? Is it the monarchy? The castles? The culture? The History? The scenery? The whisky and ale? Does one of you love English Gardens? My recommendation would be to spend a few days in London. Then take the train to Bath or some other smaller cityif you're interested in education, maybe Cambridge or Oxford are more interesting or go all the way to Yorkand pick up a car in the smaller city. Then you work your way north. You can explore the Yorkshire Dales and then head further north to see Hadrian's wall. You could either go straight to ScotlandI would see at least 1 border abbey!skip Edinburgh at first and see the countryside then ditch the car for a couple of final days in Edinburgh. Yes, I'm giving Ireland a miss. That's because I think it needs the whole two weeks. I've visited Dublin once years ago, but I really don't think I've seen Ireland. ; ) Of course, you can do a lot of the above by train, but you cannot easily see the dales, or the Lake District, or Hadrian's wall by train. You would have to factor in bus schedules and when you just have two weeks.... Pam

I suggest that before you decide on modes of transportation, you first decide what places you really want to see. Your decision about that may make the transportation question a lot easier to answer. For example, if you want to spend time in London, York, and Edinburgh, you can easily get by taking the train between cities and walking and taking public transit in the cities. If you are interested in mainly cities with a few other places, you may be best served staying in the cities and taking daylong guided tours (for example, taking Rabbie's day long tour of the Highlands out of Edinburgh or one of the day trips -- Cotswolds, Oxford, etc -- run by London Walks). But if you really want to see lots of rural areas, or explore the coasts, etc., then you might be better off in a car. I agree with the others who suggest that you focus on a few areas rather than try to see everything in 2 weeks.

With 2 weeks I'd eithe focus on Ireland alone or Engand and Scotland or either of them alone. We don't drive in the UK and have found the trains (and occassional bus) easy to use. We aren't interested in extensive exploration of the Cotswolds or Lake District or areas of the Highlands that can't be reached by public transport. We often do day trips on our own by train out of London or Aviemore Scotland. We have also done a lot of day trips using day tour companies (mainly out of Inverness).

Travelling by rail still requires some planning and luck, and being prepared for delays in getting to the stations, etc. Can be frustrating. Or it can add to the adventure. How much luggage makes a difference too. A tour is nice for the first time with a plan to go back another time on your own, though more expensive than rail. I haven't traveled in Europe by car so can't say about that option. If you go by rail, the earlier you can book your trips the cheaper they are - huge difference in costs.