10 days with London as home base

[Anonymous]

Would love any itinerary suggestions using London as a home base for a 10 day trip in June. Have considered a side trip to Scotland. Kids are 15, 13, 10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would love any itinerary suggestions using London as a home base for a 10 day trip in June. Have considered a side trip to Scotland. Kids are 15, 13, 10.

What are you most interested in doing/seeing? Anything that are must do/sees?

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by home base? I would assume you’d stay in London and do day trips or maybe an overnight. But if you’re considering Scotland and only have ten days then it sounds like you’re just splitting the trip between two places. Have you decided how many days you want to stay in London?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by home base? I would assume you’d stay in London and do day trips or maybe an overnight. But if you’re considering Scotland and only have ten days then it sounds like you’re just splitting the trip between two places. Have you decided how many days you want to stay in London?

+1
We did this trip when our kids were about the same ages (perfect ages to go, btw!). We started in London and stayed there for about five nights. Saw all the city sights, then took day trips to Stonehenge and Oxford/Blenheim Palace. Then we took the train up to Newcastle where we rented a car. Stayed one night in Carlisle, right beside Hadrian's Wall. Then drove up to Scotland for the remaining days (I think 6-7). Stayed on the Isle of Skye, Mull, Loch Ness, and ended in Edinburgh. Flew home from there. Wonderful trip and my kids (in their 20s now) still talk about it!

[Anonymous]

Great input before!
Decide how many days you want to do things in London. Let everyone select an activity. Decide where/if you are going to Scotland and where and how you would get there. If you wanted to go far north, train would eat a day.

Agree with PP about side trips. Could also do Bath. See if there are seasonal events when you will be there (eg Wimbledon or Henley or Trouping the Colour) and be aware of impact on travel.

Have the best time!

[Anonymous]

I’d suggest you get out of London to mainland Europe. London is not a nice place post pandemic. Like NYC, it’s full of anger and suffering. I go there a week a month for work and it seems more and more run down every month.

[Anonymous]

A day to Greenwich
A day to Windsor
A day tour trip to Stonehenge/Avesbury/Glastonbury

A whole day for Tower of London
A whole day for British Museum

We liked the London Walks tours

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by home base? I would assume you’d stay in London and do day trips or maybe an overnight. But if you’re considering Scotland and only have ten days then it sounds like you’re just splitting the trip between two places. Have you decided how many days you want to stay in London?

+1
We did this trip when our kids were about the same ages (perfect ages to go, btw!). We started in London and stayed there for about five nights. Saw all the city sights, then took day trips to Stonehenge and Oxford/Blenheim Palace. Then we took the train up to Newcastle where we rented a car. Stayed one night in Carlisle, right beside Hadrian's Wall. Then drove up to Scotland for the remaining days (I think 6-7). Stayed on the Isle of Skye, Mull, Loch Ness, and ended in Edinburgh. Flew home from there. Wonderful trip and my kids (in their 20s now) still talk about it!

PP here ^^ - forgot to mention we also took a day and saw Windsor. The whole trip was very much go go go, as we wanted to see as much as possible. If we were to go back, we'd probably skip London and just stay in one place the whole time - rent a cottage in Scotland, for example.

[Anonymous]

Consider stopping in York on your way up to Scotland. Go and see the Roman bath there. It’s in the basement of a pub. Lots of cool Roman ruins there. I also love Durham.

[Anonymous]

Harrogate is also amazing. Great little museum and a great spa.

[Anonymous]

Just got back from a family trip to London with teens and we added a trip to Edinburgh. We went by train and then went back to London to fly home It was beautiful but I wish we had just done a day trip to Oxford or Bath instead and had saved more time for London. There is so much to do in London and we didn’t even acto the surface. We loved Tower of London (beefeaters were wonderful) and British Museum was incredible (get there early, crowds!) we did both in one day. That was enough time for our teens. We also threw in 2 shows at the last minute and it was so fun! Theaters felt smaller and more intimate than broadway. Westminster Abbey was fascinating too. Enjoy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just got back from a family trip to London with teens and we added a trip to Edinburgh. We went by train and then went back to London to fly home It was beautiful but I wish we had just done a day trip to Oxford or Bath instead and had saved more time for London. There is so much to do in London and we didn’t even acto the surface. We loved Tower of London (beefeaters were wonderful) and British Museum was incredible (get there early, crowds!) we did both in one day. That was enough time for our teens. We also threw in 2 shows at the last minute and it was so fun! Theaters felt smaller and more intimate than broadway. Westminster Abbey was fascinating too. Enjoy!

Would add we had only 9 days. Note the PP whi did a lot in Scotland had more like 2 weeks.

[Anonymous]

We loved a side trip to Portsmouth. Nelson's flagship the HMS Victory is there, as well as the HMS Warrior (a 19th c. ironclad), which can both be toured. They're right next to the Mary Rose Museum, where they have the remains of the only Tudor ship ever recovered, along with some amazing artifacts that were preserved in the wreck. You can also take a boat tour of the harbor. We took the train and spent one night there, and we wished we had stayed longer.

[Anonymous]

Assuming you’re flying into London? Windsor is fine for a day trip, but I think Bath and Oxford are too far for just a day. Could you immediately hop on a train out to Bath? Hit Oxford on the way back (don’t have the train map in front of me so not sure if that’s exactly possible given geography) and then camp out in London?

I once flew into Manchester, trained down to Bath, trained to London (did day trips from there) then stopped in Oxford on my way back up to Manchester. It was perfect.

[Anonymous]

Throwing out a recommendation for the Salisbury Cathedral tower climb tour. (If stairs aren’t an issue for your group.) It’s really cool to see the way the cathedral is put together. You get a view of centuries-old graffiti, construction debris, and other random bits and pieces. Read or listen to Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth” before you go — he was inspired by this cathedral.