This was my husband and my first trip to England and our first trip to rent a car and drive. Driving was a bit stressful from time to time, even though my husband was ok with a standard and we were comfortable with left-side-of-the-road driving, having lived in Japan for 8 years. However it also gave us freedom to do things on our own time-frame, which we could change as we felt like it. We loved visiting the countryside and being far from cities on this trip! I am writing this report because I myself read all comments and advice voraciously before traveling. :)
Arrival into Birmingham airport in the early morning hours was fast and easy. Our flight from JFK scheduled for 7am actually arrived at 6am - an hour early! We were out with suitcases in hand by 7am.
Car We had reserved a car through Autoeurope from Europcar for 8am Sunday. According to the website, they opened at 6; however no one was there (at any of the car counters). There were several of us passengers there with reservations, one of whom was British - so he picked up their phone and called a number and within 30 minutes a whole crew was there. We think the delay was because no one had a reservation before ours at 8. (Others had either guessed later or not entered a time.) After reading lots of opinions, I opted for their full insurance coverage when I reserved. That was completely worth the peace of mind.
Navigating First step- figuring out how to change the car GPS from French to English..... (I had wanted to bring our own GPS but it is old and I couldn't get the maps to load). Second, using postal codes was easier than addresses. I just hadn't come across that info in pre-trip research. Third, GPS was both a blessing and a curse. She (I called her Gertrude) was right 90% of the time. Which meant you couldn't really relax with directions. However help with roundabouts and the fact that most of our driving was not on the big expressways made it very useful. (The first more random "turn left here" where the sign said "Crematorium this way" made us suspect she had a warped sense of humor.) I am sure that somewhere there was a setting that WASN'T "shortest distance between two points". :)
Car Parks Wonderful. I had researched them at all our stops. However we hit the Port Isaac car park on our first morning and didn't have quite enough coins yet - point being, be sure you have @£5 in coins. There was nowhere to get any at that point, unlike all the other places we went. :) A wonderful kind lady came along and actually just gave us a couple of pounds to help and wished us a good trip! That was our first experience with the wonderful hospitality we encountered everywhere.
Port Isaac We are big Doc Martin fans and loved this part of our trip. We did decide to take John Brown's tour (about 10 on it) - a little unusual for us. It was completely worth the £10/each. He did give us show gossip but also local history - both in good measure. He talked about architecture, fishing, gave us a live lobster demonstration, as well as showing filming sites. I would love to go back and have a week to spend in Cornwall!
Tintagel We also loved the beauty of Tintagel. I "street view" as much as I can before going anywhere, but I was still surprised at the distance and amount of steps. However we did almost all of them and loved it. It is definitely not for someone with troublesome knees, though. :)
Dartmore We stayed 3 nights in Moreton-Hampstead. It's a lovely little village and a good base to explore. Just a word of caution for first-timers: the roads into and out of are miles of extremely narrow road, sometimes less than 2 lanes, at a normal 50-60 mph, with 15ft hedges right at the edge of both sides - so no room to maneuver. It, more so than anywhere else we drove, was a little nerve-racking. Once you crossed into the actual park area on the main road, it was open and you just had to watch out for sheep taking a nap on the road.