Share your itinerary for Scotland, England and France

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fly into Paris. Stay 5 nights. Train to London. Stay 5 nights. Train to Edinburgh. Stay 4 nights. Then you’ll have to take the train back to London to fly back home.

There aren't nonstop flights from Scotland to here currently but there are plenty of one stop flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that probably would be better than getting back to London just for a flight (or you could put London at the end and try to get a cheap flight from Paris to Edinburgh).

United operate a direct flight from IAD to EDI in summer, or at least they did pre-COVID.

But if that does not work out a good alternate is to fly via Dublin, to avoid entering the UK at Heathrow, which can be a bit of a horror show.

Dublin isn't part of the UK. Did you mean the EU? And now...the UK isn't part of the EU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fly into Paris. Stay 5 nights. Train to London. Stay 5 nights. Train to Edinburgh. Stay 4 nights. Then you’ll have to take the train back to London to fly back home.

There aren't nonstop flights from Scotland to here currently but there are plenty of one stop flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that probably would be better than getting back to London just for a flight (or you could put London at the end and try to get a cheap flight from Paris to Edinburgh).

United operate a direct flight from IAD to EDI in summer, or at least they did pre-COVID.

But if that does not work out a good alternate is to fly via Dublin, to avoid entering the UK at Heathrow, which can be a bit of a horror show.

Dublin isn't part of the UK. Did you mean the EU? And now...the UK isn't part of the EU.

If you fly from Dublin to London, you will not go through passport control/customs because the UK and Ireland are part of what's called the Common Travel Area. Flights for those routes are functionally the same as domestic flights.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area

PP was making the point that this type of routing will help you avoid the sometimes massive passport control lines at Heathrow right now, which you would have to go through if arriving from the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56209431

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do something like: Fly into Paris. Eurostar to London. .Pickup a rental car on the outskirts of London. Drive to Scotland. Concentrate your time in old town Edinburg. Drop the car in Edinburgh. Overnight train back to London and fly home.

We flew nonstop to Edinburgh in the fall of 2019. At least I think we did. Maybe it was via Newark - seems so long ago now. In any event I’d just fly back from Edinburgh rather than a train to London, even if it requires a plane change in the US.

I’d spend time on the way to Edinburgh in the north of England. York and/or the Lake District. Cities are great and I love all 3 of those cities, but the smaller towns can be more charming and less touristy (maybe not York).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fly into Paris. Stay 5 nights. Train to London. Stay 5 nights. Train to Edinburgh. Stay 4 nights. Then you’ll have to take the train back to London to fly back home.

There aren't nonstop flights from Scotland to here currently but there are plenty of one stop flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that probably would be better than getting back to London just for a flight (or you could put London at the end and try to get a cheap flight from Paris to Edinburgh).

United operate a direct flight from IAD to EDI in summer, or at least they did pre-COVID.

But if that does not work out a good alternate is to fly via Dublin, to avoid entering the UK at Heathrow, which can be a bit of a horror show.

Dublin isn't part of the UK. Did you mean the EU? And now...the UK isn't part of the EU.

If you fly from Dublin to London, you will not go through passport control/customs because the UK and Ireland are part of what's called the Common Travel Area. Flights for those routes are functionally the same as domestic flights.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area

PP was making the point that this type of routing will help you avoid the sometimes massive passport control lines at Heathrow right now, which you would have to go through if arriving from the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56209431

Ok so say: the passport control lines are better in Dublin vs Heathrow when coming from the US.

It just gets irritating on every UK travel thread for at least one person to not get the ROI/NI situation right. Esp since so many Americans claim to be "Irish."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would do something like: Fly into Paris. Eurostar to London. .Pickup a rental car on the outskirts of London. Drive to Scotland. Concentrate your time in old town Edinburg. Drop the car in Edinburgh. Overnight train back to London and fly home.

We flew nonstop to Edinburgh in the fall of 2019. At least I think we did. Maybe it was via Newark - seems so long ago now. In any event I’d just fly back from Edinburgh rather than a train to London, even if it requires a plane change in the US.

I’d spend time on the way to Edinburgh in the north of England. York and/or the Lake District. Cities are great and I love all 3 of those cities, but the smaller towns can be more charming and less touristy (maybe not York).

Isn't it usually much more expensive to not get a return flight and just have basically two one ways?

I loved the train from London to Edinburgh the countryside was so pretty and I find it relaxing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.frommers.com/destinations/england/suggested-itineraries/in-two-weeks

If we just stay in England for two weeks, this itinerary could work with modest tweaks. I have no desire to go to Stonehenge or Stratford upon Avon (btdt). I’d prefer to see more of the coast and Cotswolds aiming for off the beaten path. Thoughts?

This is insane. Who the hell drives to Cornwall for one day?

Out of that I would do maybe do London, Oxford (maybe), Bath, Cornwall, Cotswolds.

Other south of England options would be Brighton and the south coast or the Norfolk Broads. Another option might be to jump over into Wales to visit Cardiff and the Brecon Beacons.

That Frommer's itinerary really is insane. Blenheim Palace and Hampton Court in a single day would put me on complete palace/castle overload and you would not be able to either one justice, really. Certainly not with kids.

With two weeks, and wanting to not just be in two or three primary cities (London, Edinburgh, Paris), a couple of strategies come to mind, all roughly split two-thirds, one-third:

a) Fly into Edinburgh, spend a few days there, then rent a car and either explore Scotland, or visit some combination of Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, York. Return to Edinburgh, fly to Paris, and fly home from Paris. I would imagine splitting maybe 9 or 10 days UK/4 or 5 days Paris.
b) Fly into London, spend several days there, then rent a car and head to the southwest. Lots to choose from -- I love Dorset and Devon, and you could also go on to Cornwall. You could hike the Coast Path, eat lots of cream teas, hunt for fossils, go paddleboarding or surfing. On the way (or way back), you could visit some cathedral cities (Winchester, Salisbury), or do a bit of a detour up to Bath, Cotswolds and Oxford. And then the Chunnel to Paris.
c) Fly into Paris, spend time there and in the French countryside (I have only been to Provence, so can't provide many suggestions here), for a total of 10-ish days, then chunnel train or flight to UK for final four days of vacation in London.

Note, if you do rent a car and intend to go to the Lake District, rent the absolute smallest car you can. The roads are incredibly narrow.

Yes! I returned a rental car early after driving in the Lake District! My nerves were shot. Also get an automatic so you can focus on driving and not on gear shifting. But worth it in the end because you can’t get around that area without a car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would do something like: Fly into Paris. Eurostar to London. .Pickup a rental car on the outskirts of London. Drive to Scotland. Concentrate your time in old town Edinburg. Drop the car in Edinburgh. Overnight train back to London and fly home.

We flew nonstop to Edinburgh in the fall of 2019. At least I think we did. Maybe it was via Newark - seems so long ago now. In any event I’d just fly back from Edinburgh rather than a train to London, even if it requires a plane change in the US.

I’d spend time on the way to Edinburgh in the north of England. York and/or the Lake District. Cities are great and I love all 3 of those cities, but the smaller towns can be more charming and less touristy (maybe not York).

Isn't it usually much more expensive to not get a return flight and just have basically two one ways?

I loved the train from London to Edinburgh the countryside was so pretty and I find it relaxing.

Yes, one-ways internationally are generally very expensive. But you can book this as an "open jaw" flight, say IAD-LHR and EDI-IAD, and it will price the same as a roundtrip. Just select "multi-city flights" on the booking screen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fly into Paris. Stay 5 nights. Train to London. Stay 5 nights. Train to Edinburgh. Stay 4 nights. Then you’ll have to take the train back to London to fly back home.

There aren't nonstop flights from Scotland to here currently but there are plenty of one stop flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that probably would be better than getting back to London just for a flight (or you could put London at the end and try to get a cheap flight from Paris to Edinburgh).

United operate a direct flight from IAD to EDI in summer, or at least they did pre-COVID.

But if that does not work out a good alternate is to fly via Dublin, to avoid entering the UK at Heathrow, which can be a bit of a horror show.

Dublin isn't part of the UK. Did you mean the EU? And now...the UK isn't part of the EU.

If you fly from Dublin to London, you will not go through passport control/customs because the UK and Ireland are part of what's called the Common Travel Area. Flights for those routes are functionally the same as domestic flights.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area

PP was making the point that this type of routing will help you avoid the sometimes massive passport control lines at Heathrow right now, which you would have to go through if arriving from the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56209431

Ok so say: the passport control lines are better in Dublin vs Heathrow when coming from the US.

It just gets irritating on every UK travel thread for at least one person to not get the ROI/NI situation right. Esp since so many Americans claim to be "Irish."

PP here- I get it. Have family in Northern Ireland so understand it very well. Post-Brexit has been pretty bad. My personal hope is that they will have a referendum and NI will leave the UK and there will unification on the island of Ireland. The current setup is unsustainable with the UK out of the EU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would do something like: Fly into Paris. Eurostar to London. .Pickup a rental car on the outskirts of London. Drive to Scotland. Concentrate your time in old town Edinburg. Drop the car in Edinburgh. Overnight train back to London and fly home.

We flew nonstop to Edinburgh in the fall of 2019. At least I think we did. Maybe it was via Newark - seems so long ago now. In any event I’d just fly back from Edinburgh rather than a train to London, even if it requires a plane change in the US.

I’d spend time on the way to Edinburgh in the north of England. York and/or the Lake District. Cities are great and I love all 3 of those cities, but the smaller towns can be more charming and less touristy (maybe not York).

Isn't it usually much more expensive to not get a return flight and just have basically two one ways?

I loved the train from London to Edinburgh the countryside was so pretty and I find it relaxing.

Yes, one-ways internationally are generally very expensive. But you can book this as an "open jaw" flight, say IAD-LHR and EDI-IAD, and it will price the same as a roundtrip. Just select "multi-city flights" on the booking screen.

Oooh nice thanks for the tip!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fly into Paris. Stay 5 nights. Train to London. Stay 5 nights. Train to Edinburgh. Stay 4 nights. Then you’ll have to take the train back to London to fly back home.

There aren't nonstop flights from Scotland to here currently but there are plenty of one stop flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that probably would be better than getting back to London just for a flight (or you could put London at the end and try to get a cheap flight from Paris to Edinburgh).

United operate a direct flight from IAD to EDI in summer, or at least they did pre-COVID.

But if that does not work out a good alternate is to fly via Dublin, to avoid entering the UK at Heathrow, which can be a bit of a horror show.

Dublin isn't part of the UK. Did you mean the EU? And now...the UK isn't part of the EU.

If you fly from Dublin to London, you will not go through passport control/customs because the UK and Ireland are part of what's called the Common Travel Area. Flights for those routes are functionally the same as domestic flights.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area

PP was making the point that this type of routing will help you avoid the sometimes massive passport control lines at Heathrow right now, which you would have to go through if arriving from the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56209431

Ok so say: the passport control lines are better in Dublin vs Heathrow when coming from the US.

It just gets irritating on every UK travel thread for at least one person to not get the ROI/NI situation right. Esp since so many Americans claim to be "Irish."

PP here- I get it. Have family in Northern Ireland so understand it very well. Post-Brexit has been pretty bad. My personal hope is that they will have a referendum and NI will leave the UK and there will unification on the island of Ireland. The current setup is unsustainable with the UK out of the EU.

Yup hard agree. My family is in Co. Fermanagh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.frommers.com/destinations/england/suggested-itineraries/in-two-weeks

If we just stay in England for two weeks, this itinerary could work with modest tweaks. I have no desire to go to Stonehenge or Stratford upon Avon (btdt). I’d prefer to see more of the coast and Cotswolds aiming for off the beaten path. Thoughts?

This is insane. Who the hell drives to Cornwall for one day?

Out of that I would do maybe do London, Oxford (maybe), Bath, Cornwall, Cotswolds.

Other south of England options would be Brighton and the south coast or the Norfolk Broads. Another option might be to jump over into Wales to visit Cardiff and the Brecon Beacons.

That Frommer's itinerary really is insane. Blenheim Palace and Hampton Court in a single day would put me on complete palace/castle overload and you would not be able to either one justice, really. Certainly not with kids.

With two weeks, and wanting to not just be in two or three primary cities (London, Edinburgh, Paris), a couple of strategies come to mind, all roughly split two-thirds, one-third:

a) Fly into Edinburgh, spend a few days there, then rent a car and either explore Scotland, or visit some combination of Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, York. Return to Edinburgh, fly to Paris, and fly home from Paris. I would imagine splitting maybe 9 or 10 days UK/4 or 5 days Paris.
b) Fly into London, spend several days there, then rent a car and head to the southwest. Lots to choose from -- I love Dorset and Devon, and you could also go on to Cornwall. You could hike the Coast Path, eat lots of cream teas, hunt for fossils, go paddleboarding or surfing. On the way (or way back), you could visit some cathedral cities (Winchester, Salisbury), or do a bit of a detour up to Bath, Cotswolds and Oxford. And then the Chunnel to Paris.
c) Fly into Paris, spend time there and in the French countryside (I have only been to Provence, so can't provide many suggestions here), for a total of 10-ish days, then chunnel train or flight to UK for final four days of vacation in London.

Note, if you do rent a car and intend to go to the Lake District, rent the absolute smallest car you can. The roads are incredibly narrow.

Yes! I returned a rental car early after driving in the Lake District! My nerves were shot. Also get an automatic so you can focus on driving and not on gear shifting. But worth it in the end because you can’t get around that area without a car.

TBF this is true in many parts of Scotland as well-- probably the most stressful driving I've done. In rural areas the roads may have 1 1/2 lanes and if there is oncoming traffic you try to time it with a passing lane cutout (and some bridges or tunnels don't even pretend to have more than one lane).

[Anonymous]

In London, we purchased the hop on hop off bus tickets and they came with a "free" boat ride up the Thames to Greenwich. However, the tickets were only goo for 24 hours. So we activated the hop on hop off bus tickets after the first boat left the dock the next morning. So, we spent the day on the bus and then next morning we got on the boat and went to Greenwich. It is an easy tube ride back. We hiked up the hill to the Royal Observatory. The kids liked standing on two sides of the hemispheres. We had a pub lunch on the way back down the hill in the village and took the Tube home. Currently the boats are not going as far as Greenwich, but I believe they will be starting back up again for 2021 summer.

You can add other attractions to those tickets to use on other days- Like the London Eye.

British Museum was great and free. The kids did not like the Victoria and Albert Museum ( museumed out by that point- but it a free too), but across the street is the Children's museum and around the corner is the Natural History Museum- which they did like.

We also liked the London Walks walks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fly into Paris. Stay 5 nights. Train to London. Stay 5 nights. Train to Edinburgh. Stay 4 nights. Then you’ll have to take the train back to London to fly back home.

There aren't nonstop flights from Scotland to here currently but there are plenty of one stop flights from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that probably would be better than getting back to London just for a flight (or you could put London at the end and try to get a cheap flight from Paris to Edinburgh).

United operate a direct flight from IAD to EDI in summer, or at least they did pre-COVID.

But if that does not work out a good alternate is to fly via Dublin, to avoid entering the UK at Heathrow, which can be a bit of a horror show.

Dublin isn't part of the UK. Did you mean the EU? And now...the UK isn't part of the EU.

If you fly from Dublin to London, you will not go through passport control/customs because the UK and Ireland are part of what's called the Common Travel Area. Flights for those routes are functionally the same as domestic flights.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area

PP was making the point that this type of routing will help you avoid the sometimes massive passport control lines at Heathrow right now, which you would have to go through if arriving from the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56209431

Ok so say: the passport control lines are better in Dublin vs Heathrow when coming from the US.

It just gets irritating on every UK travel thread for at least one person to not get the ROI/NI situation right. Esp since so many Americans claim to be "Irish."

I actually meant to suggest flying IAD to EDI via DUB to avoid LHR altogether which I think is clear if you read my entire post.

But PP is correct about the Common Travel Area.

I am from Scotland, not the US, so I know the ROI/NI situation very well.

[Anonymous]

If you want, I could post our 6 day London itinerary with kids from our covid-cancelled trip.
Years ago, I did the London to Edinburgh stopping in York. York is great fun and if you take the high speed train during the day you can see a fair bit of countryside. We then did the overnight train returning Edinburgh to London. You could rent a car in Edinburgh and do driving from there and do the ritual thing. I think that would be a nice 2 weeks and I probably wouldn’t bother with Paris, but if your family are hard-core travelers and wouldn’t mind a fast paced trip you could probably take whatever method is fastest from Lon ton to Paris, spend 3 days there, then home. So something like:
London — 5 days including flight in and some jet lag
York — 2 days
Scotland—4 days driving around
Paris — 3 days

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did a trip like this a few years ago by flying into Edinburgh via that IAD-EDI flight, flying to Bordeaux, and flying from Bergerac to London before heading home.

I love flying into Edinburgh— it’s a small airport with a much nicer arrivals procedure than London or Paris.

This sounds perfect!

How long did you travel? Where did you stay?

It was a really great trip--I was just looking at the photos the other day!

Admittedly, we were away for a month, but we're a stay-in-a-cottage-and-take-daytrips sort of family, with early mornings and early nights. We arrived in Edinburgh and spent a couple of nights, then rented a car and drove to a cottage near Loch Lomond for a week. We drove back to Edinburgh, and flew to Bordeaux -- I think we had to change planes in London, but everything went smoothly. From the Bordeaux airport we drove to a gite in the Dordogne (which I must say is a perfect destination for families [or almost anyone, really]). We stayed for two whole weeks; family members flew in to join us for a multi-generational trip. After our two weeks was up, we drove to Bergerac (RIP, Flybe Airlines?) and flew to London for a few days before heading home.

You'll notice we didn't go to Paris on this trip.

All of this was made possible by being able to use open-jaw tickets to and from Europe, renting a car at one airport in France and dropping it off at another without any big drop-off fee, and making use of low cost carriers for the flights to and from France.

I hope we will be able to resume this kind of thing post-pandemic.