Help!!! England Travel

Rent a car. It will be a lot easier. You really have a lot of ground to cover for your 4-5 day tour. You'll be passing a lot of places that really should take time to visit. For your visit to Canterbury, look into staying inside the walled grounds of Cantebury Cathedral. There's a great lodge inside the walls. We've stayed there. Nice shops and places to eat just outside the walls. Free breakfast. Oddly, it's called the Cantebury Cathedral Lodge. Here's the link. http://canterburycathedrallodge.org

You should be able to get a car for about twenty to twenty-five bucks a day. It's well less than a thousand miles of driving - - probably closer to eight hundred - - (which sucks in four days, but that's your problem - - the Cornwall to Kent day is really going to be rough - - watch the daylight). Figure forty miles per gallon or twenty-five gallons at nine bucks per - - maybe a couple hundred bucks. The deposit just goes against your credit card. Don't dent it, and it comes right back off when you turn it in. Use kayak.com and go with the best deal on the smallest, non-automatic that suits you. If you have to have an automatic, figure it will double the daily rate on the car.

As you are arriving at night, you won't have much opportunity to see anything of London. So I suggest you find a Stansted airport hotel. That normally is cheaper than one in London, though the holidays may have an affect on prices. Look at leaving London until the last nights of your trip so you can catch a bus out to the airport. You could pick up a car at the airport and drive to Oxford on your first day. Unless Canterbury is a must see for you, I would leave it for another trip. There are many interesting places between Newquay and London, e.g. Salisbury cathedral and nearby Stonehenge, that would better fit into your short trip. Use the search engines like kayak as suggested to find a car and also double check with the major rental companies. Last summer we got a car from Hertz at LHR at a better rate than the smaller companies offered. I prefer standard size cars for comfort and a trunk to keep bags, etc. out of sight when touring. Usually I get a stick shift, but Hertz offered an automatic for only a few pounds more. Driving is definitely easier with an auto. If you keep your current itinerary and haven't driven on the left before, I would normally suggest you get out of London before picking up a car. But New Years Eve will see lighter traffic so you should be all right. Be sure to have GPS or Satnav as the Brits say. In past years I always had more trouble with navigating in London than with traffic. The street signs are often placed on the sides of buildings or on fencing which makes it hard to spot them while in moving traffic. But GPS has pretty much solved that.

Yes, with that itinerary I'd be worried that you'd spend all your time driving and not see much.