My wife and I, with two of our late teen children just got back from a 13-day self-guided tour of parts of England and Wales. Sharing the itinerary (over several posts) here for others to use. From what we experienced, it never seems to rain in the UK. :^) Everyday was Sunny and 80.
A sub theme of our vacation included hiking the highest mountain peaks in England (Scaffell Pike) and Wales (Snowdon), which we did on two separate cloudless days and gave us views all the way to places as far away as Ireland. But you can easily reuse this itinerary removing those day activities, which we launched from Keswick England and Conwy Wales. We also did more low-land hiking in Chipping Camden. Tip to other hikers, these peaks listed here are treeless and on hot days, you need to start early and avoid the heat of the day. On this trip, our interest was more about enjoying the countryside and seeing a few things in London that we wanted to see.
General Trip Itinerary Summary –
• (PART 1 - WITHOUT A CAR) 3 days in London (with an immediate side trip directly from the airport right to Windsor Castle) and 1 day/overnight in York.
• (Part 2 - WITH A CAR) Rent a car Day 5 in York, then drive on to Keswick, for 2 nights Conwy Wales for 2 nights, Iron Bridge Gorge for 1 night, Chipping Campden for 2 nights, near Heathrow Spa for last night. Generally a counter-clockwise rotation from London and back again.
Having been to the UK before, although 25 years ago, I knew that keeping us moving Day #1 was going to be important, so we could make a single night conversion to the new time zone. So I preplanned the first few days heavily and let the rest of the trip float as to what we would do each day. This included getting my wife and daughter tickets to see Hamilton at the Victoria Palace Theater, which end up costing us about 1/3 or what we would have paid in New York if the tickets were available.
Notes: By shopping months in advance, I prepaid for as many things as I could that I knew for sure we wanted to see/do. For example, a full month before the trip I bought the 4 London Underground/Tube cards with 20 pounds on each and had them shipped to me. Eliminates need to use on-site machines. Just tap and go at the Tube entrance turnstiles. You can order them here: https://www.visitbritainshop.com/world/london-visitor-oyster-card/. I also made sure before I left home that my credit cards would work (without foreign transaction fees), my cell phone would work, and I paid more to make sure my rental car had Sat Nav and was an automatic.
TIP – DON’T TEXT ON CELL NETWORKS: Depending on the plan, there can be massive texting fees for people using US phones in the UK. Use WhatsApp for texting, which texts using a WiFi connection (not cellular). It’s free. I was texting a buddy in the UK for the first few days, and he said they charged him 6 pounds for every text he sent me.
Also made some advance ticket purchases from these sites:
http://www.left-baggage.co.uk/ (to leave bags at the airport for our first day of touring)
https://tickets.royalcollection.org.uk/ (tickets to Windsor Castle)
https://www.theoriginaltour.com/ (24-hour hop-on/hop-off bus tour of London, from which you can also buy Tower of London tickets and includes Thames evening Boat Cruise)
https://hamiltonmusical.com/london/ (Info on Hamilton tickets)
Many of the hotels offered special rates if you prepaid at least 50%, which has a deposit that you lose if you don’t show up. I also stayed in a Marriot at Regents Park for 3 nights as I’m a frequent traveler and I could 3 nights for practically free/low cost in London by moving my London home base slightly out of the major tourist area. Not an issue since the Swiss Cottage tube stop was 2 blocks away. So I sacrificed charm for economy.
More details in my next post.
Bob