We just completed the Best of South England in 13 Days, Mon, 5/12/25 through Sat, 5/24/25. The tour was nice, but take Rick’s activity level advice of “This is a very active tour! Most days are moderate to strenuously paced with 2-8 miles of walking, including hilly terrain and lots of stairs.” to heart. The “hilly terrain” and “lots of stairs” are understatements!
A pressing question on all tours is “how can we handle laundry?” So, this post is directed to our recent experiences in that regard. Some hotels in the UK have laundry arrangements in place at the front desk, many do not.
This tour starts on either a Monday or a Thursday. We arrived in Canterbury on Sunday night having spent time in London. We had laundry to do.
Day 1: Canterbury - The Canterbury Cathedral Hotel, our first hotel, does not offer any laundry service. However, they have an arrangement with Proctor’s Dry Cleaners, 42 Northgate wherein Proctor’s will deliver laundry back to the hotel for the guests that drop it off at the shop early in the morning. Their hours are 0830-1730 M-Sa, 1000-1600 Su. It was about a 9 minute walk, 0.4 miles, from the hotel to Proctor’s. They do regular wash, dry, and fold as well as dry cleaning. You pay when you drop the laundry off. As I recall, they take cash or cards. The price was reasonable and our clothes were adequately cleaned.
Day 6: Salisbury – The hotel in Salisbury was the Riverside Hotel, 70 Harnham Road. It is about 17 minutes, 0.8 miles, from the old town edge. Harnham Road from the hotel to the Harnham Bridge has a really good slope. The hotel is higher than the bridge. The rest of the route is pretty flat. The hotel does not offer any kind of laundry service or have any arrangements for laundry. The one laundry in town, mentioned in the guidebook, is the Washing Well at 28 Chipper Lane, 27-30 minutes, about 1.1 miles, from the hotel. It is exclusively coin operated, no card reader of any kind. It does not have a change machine; hence you must have coinage in hand with you. Hours are 0800-2100 M-Sa, 0700-2100 Su. On 5/16/25, regular wash was 5£ and large loads were closer to 10£, dryers were 1£ for 7 minutes, and soap was available for 70p and required a 50p coin and a 20p coin; no other combination was allowed. We were told by the hotel staff that the banks would give change. However, on Saturdays, the bank counters are closed, the vaults are locked and NO change is available. It is also unclear if the banks will give change if you do not have a bank account with them. We were there on Saturday and the banks close at 1300 but had no cash available. We were directed to the Post Office on High Street just past the High street gate by the bank staff and were lucky enough to get change for bills. However, the Postal employees emphasized they were not supposed to give change. It may or may not work next time. Just up the street from the Washing Well was a Tesco Express store, a great grocery. We arrived in Salisbury late on Friday evening, day 5, but had no change and waited until Saturday. Saturday morning was consumed with a cathedral tour. We packed our laundry in a backpack and carried it with us on the tour and departed from there to the Washing Well since we were half way there at the cathedral.
(continued in part 2)