We just returned from a wonderful 10-day trip to England, travel dates June 19-29. Travelers were me, husband (both in our 50s, very active and in good health), and our 19-year-old son, who is special needs. He is mobility-challenged; he walks short distances but tires easily and is uncoordinated, so we have a stroller for him for long distances. Cognitively, he is a mixed bag but enjoys activities targeted around the 4- or 5-year old range. He is very, very social and, despite his speech shortcomings, makes friends everywhere we go.
It was the first time to England for my husband and son. I had visited London many years ago but didn’t travel outside the city. The motivation for this trip came from my husband, who requested that we “go somewhere where they speak English.” He’s apparently a little tired of fudging his way through multiple languages to order food (which I love, but apparently he does not).
Our itinerary was:
Burlington, VT to JFK to Heathrow. RailAir bus to Reading Station, then train to…
Plymouth – 3 nights. Pick up rental car after night 1. After night 3, drive to…
Salisbury – 2 nights. Turn in rental car last day in Salisbury, train to…
London – 4 nights, fly home LHR=>JFK=>BTV
We were quite happy with this itinerary, given our 10-day overall time limitation, but we could easily have spent more time in any of the 3 locations we visited.
Transportation notes
We had a bit of a sh*t show on the way over to England. Our flight from Burlington to JFK was canceled last minute with no other flights available to get us there the same day. We wound up hiring a driver to take us the 7 hours to JFK to catch a flight there – not our original one, but at least we got to LHR the day we were supposed to. However…. We were a couple/three hours late landing and missed our pre-booked RailAir bus as well as our Advanced Fare (no changes, no refunds) connection on Great Western Railway to Plymouth. Sigh. I knew this was a risk when I booked the tickets months ago, but the savings were so huge that it was worth the chance we’d be delayed.
I’m going in to all the gory details here so that I can point out the immense kindness we encountered as we worked our way across the Atlantic. Delta was absolutely wonderful at rebooking our flights, including accommodating my son for special seating on a very full plane. The very kind driver on the RailAir bus let us use our previously-purchased tickets for the earlier bus, telling us, “well, it’s not your fault your plane was late, is it?” And the incredibly wonderful man at the ticket booth at Reading Station, who, when I showed him our very much nonchangeable, nonrefundable tickets for the already-departed train and asked how much to purchase new tickets for the train about to depart (it was going to be something like 600 GBP), looked us over, saw how exhausted we all were, and said, “I’ll write you a note. Just get on the next train and show them the note and your original tickets. Have a great journey.”
Kindness was a theme of the trip. Everywhere we went, people went out of their way to be helpful, accommodating, generous.
Train tickets were all purchased a couple of months ahead on Great Western Railway’s site (including the tickets for Southwest Rail). I downloaded the app for GWR but was not able to use it from the US, so I purchased and managed the tickets from the website. I printed our tickets from home and didn’t bother to attempt the app once we got to England.
I purchased a Two Together railcard, which saved us a decent amount of money. Because the price difference between second and first class seats was negligible for advanced purchase tickets, I purchased first class. I have found in our travels that it is much easier to navigate through a less crowded train car with my son and our luggage, so I go with first class whenever it’s financially reasonable.