US tourists traveling in the UK

[ostlandr]

My family is planning to visit the UK either Summer of 2011 or for the 2012 Olympics.

Question: If we're staying in a London hotel convenient to a rail station, how far can we reasonably "day trip" from London? I presume as far as Edinburgh would require an overnight, and Dublin would be an all-day journey unless we fly.

[JamieLei]

Anywhere within the London commuter zone is a reasonable day trip. Which includes this area by-and-large: http://www.railcard.co.uk/

Up to an hour and a half sounds reasonable for a day trip. Anywhere more and you'd be looking at an overnight. Ireland is certainly an overnight, even with flying else it's not worth it (unless you're EXTspotter, in which case a gratuitous flight so somewhere and coming back instantly would be the more amazing than meeting orudge).

If you're based in London, I VERY highly recommend, if not demand that you visit one out of Oxford or Cambridge, the two university towns of England. If it makes any difference, JGR goes to Oxford while I goto Cambridge . They're both quintessentially British, the uni buildings are scattered throughout the city centre, and definitely a must see for anyone visiting Britain. Oxford is 60mins from London with 2 stops, Cambridge is 45mins non-stop, but they both cost about the same price to get to (although it then takes 15 mins to walk from Cambridge station to the city centre).

But yeah. You can't come to Britain for any substantial length of time without visiting either Oxford or Cambridge!

[Dave]

Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool. Surprisingly all the big cities are interesting places. Also the lakes but you can't do that in two hours.

[ostlandr]

Thanks. My Lady Wife (of Clan Scott) wants to visit Edinburgh and Ettrick Forest, and my daughter wants to visit all the locations where the current Doctor Who series was filmed (and especially the fictional location of Torchwood in Cardiff.) Since my TARDIS is still down for repairs, sounds like we'll be spending a lot of time on trains.

BTW, anybody know where I can get a primary dematerialization circuit buffer for a type 45 Mk. IV TARDIS? I couldn't find one on Ebay. Anything older than a Type 70 is hard to get parts for.

[ostlandr]

Actually, since my daughter wants to go to college in the UK (she's turning into a major Anglophile) we may indeed visit both Oxford and Cambridge!

Anywhere within the London commuter zone is a reasonable day trip. Which includes this area by-and-large: http://www.railcard.co.uk/

Up to an hour and a half sounds reasonable for a day trip. Anywhere more and you'd be looking at an overnight. Ireland is certainly an overnight, even with flying else it's not worth it (unless you're EXTspotter, in which case a gratuitous flight so somewhere and coming back instantly would be the more amazing than meeting orudge).

If you're based in London, I VERY highly recommend, if not demand that you visit one out of Oxford or Cambridge, the two university towns of England. If it makes any difference, JGR goes to Oxford while I goto Cambridge . They're both quintessentially British, the uni buildings are scattered throughout the city centre, and definitely a must see for anyone visiting Britain. Oxford is 60mins from London with 2 stops, Cambridge is 45mins non-stop, but they both cost about the same price to get to (although it then takes 15 mins to walk from Cambridge station to the city centre).

But yeah. You can't come to Britain for any substantial length of time without visiting either Oxford or Cambridge!

[XeryusTC]

If you are going to travel by train in the UK it is worth looking into getting a BritRail Pass. It will save you _A LOT_ of money on train tickets.

[JamieLei]

Actually, since my daughter wants to go to college in the UK (she's turning into a major Anglophile) we may indeed visit both Oxford and Cambridge!

They're both VERY difficult to get into to study, especially for international students! But some other really picturesque unis off the top of my head are University College London (UCL) (get off at Warren Street or Euston Square tube) and Birmingham Uni (it has its own train station, unsurprisingly called University), both of which have absolutely lovely campuses and take A LOT of internationals . London School of Economics (LSE) (Temple tube) is also known for taking huge numbers of internationals (60% quota'd last time I checked) - Kev00 could tell you more. And finally, St Andrews up near Edinburgh in Scotland is where orudge went, which is also amazingly picturesque and very Scottish.

My advice is to pick either Cambridge or Oxford, they're both rather similar, unless you love it so much you want to visit the other; they are the centres of quintessential Englishness after all! If it makes much difference, Oxford is 1hour equidistant from both London and Birmingham, whereas Cambridge is sortof on the way to Edinburgh [for UK people: although the East Coast's new timetable might not have Edinburgh trains stopping until York].

[orudge]

Anywhere within the London commuter zone is a reasonable day trip. Which includes this area by-and-large: http://www.railcard.co.uk/

I assumed you meant to link to http://www.railcard.co.uk/network instead, since Railcards do cover the whole country. Which also makes me think, why on earth is this London railcard called a "Network Railcard"? To me that implies the whole network, which last I checked is what a normal Railcard does. It should be called the "London Railcard" or the "South East of England Railcard".

Also, yes, St Andrews is very nice, and home to many international students. You should pay it a visit, ostlandr!

[Dave]

Actually, since my daughter wants to go to college in the UK (she's turning into a major Anglophile) we may indeed visit both Oxford and Cambridge!

They're both VERY difficult to get into to study, especially for international students! But some other really picturesque unis off the top of my head are University College London (UCL) (get off at Warren Street or Euston Square tube) and Birmingham Uni (it has its own train station, unsurprisingly called University), both of which have absolutely lovely campuses and take A LOT of internationals . London School of Economics (LSE) (Temple tube) is also known for taking huge numbers of internationals (60% quota'd last time I checked) - Kev00 could tell you more. And finally, St Andrews up near Edinburgh in Scotland is where orudge went, which is also amazingly picturesque and very Scottish.

My advice is to pick either Cambridge or Oxford, they're both rather similar, unless you love it so much you want to visit the other; they are the centres of quintessential Englishness after all! If it makes much difference, Oxford is 1hour equidistant from both London and Birmingham, whereas Cambridge is sortof on the way to Edinburgh [for UK people: although the East Coast's new timetable might not have Edinburgh trains stopping until York].

UCLan has an international student count of about 30%; mainly Chinese students studying business and engineering. Odd?

[welshdragon]

If you want to visit Dublin and fancy staying in the area of North Wales it's do-able in a day, there are plenty of ferries and you can see the major sights in Dublin within 14 hours, Flights to the airport are also decent, but travel to/from Dublin airport isn't - you are better catching the ferry.

Bangor has an international student count of 75%, Odd?

[EXTspotter]

Dublin airport is hardly difficult to get to, busses to the centre run every few minutes and only cost a few € and you can always get a taxi...
Compared to shmaltzing up to North Wales unless you specifically want to go that way or specifically go by ferry there is no reason to. It takes much longer and the cost difference is negligeable.

[Dave]

Bangor has an international student count of 75%, Odd?

Does this include the marauding English?

[JamieLei]

Personally I wouldn't like to faff around with ferries for day trips. What I would do alone, and what my family would do on a holiday are very different. Stay the night in Dublin for sure.

I assumed you meant to link to http://www.railcard.co.uk/network instead, since Railcards do cover the whole country. Which also makes me think, why on earth is this London railcard called a "Network Railcard"? To me that implies the whole network, which last I checked is what a normal Railcard does. It should be called the "London Railcard" or the "South East of England Railcard".

Oops yeah - Network Railcard! And I believe it's a hangover from Network SouthEast during sectorisation days, seeing as the Network Railcard covers exactly the same area as NSE did

[teccuk]

You NEED to go the Brighton on a day trip.

Other than that, i'd echo Cambridge or Oxford.

Windsor if you want to see where the Queen lives.

But not Bristol / Bath etc, too expensive and far. Ireland... wow. Maybe. Luton and Stanstead have flights about every 10 minutes and prices are silly cheap.

[EXTspotter]

Of the options available for getting to Dublin, you have to take into account the cost of getting to the airport. Ryanair at Stasted usually have very attractive fares but there are lots of fees involved too and the journey to stansted is further so the train journey is more expensive I think.
Other options include British Airways and Aer Lingus out of Heathrow, BA, Aer Lingus and Ryanair (less frequent) from Gatwick and BA and Cityjet from London City.

[welshdragon]

Bangor has an international student count of 75%, Odd?

Does this include the marauding English?

Why yes, Yes it does.

and Jamie: it's far easier to catch the early morning Dublin Swift (90 minute crossing) and then the 8pm Ulysses sailing (takes 3 hours, you can get some sleep on the ferry). I'm pretty certain there are connecting trains at that time of night from Holyhead too...

[orudge]

Personally I wouldn't like to faff around with ferries for day trips.

Tsk, I took many day trips into Kirkwall from Sanday on a ferry. And you could even do day trips from Inverness to Kirkwall via bus and ferry if you wanted!

Bangor has an international student count of 75%, Odd?

I'd be interested to know what the actual international student count is. Not found any figures on Google after a quick search, alas. I somehow don't imagine it would be especially high (and no, students from England, Scotland or Northern Ireland don't count as international ), but maybe I will be proved wrong.

Other options include British Airways and Aer Lingus out of Heathrow

bmi also fly from Heathrow (although not quite as frequently as they did even just a few months ago), and can have some pretty good rates if you're flexible.

[John]

My advice is to pick either Cambridge or Oxford, they're both rather similar, unless you love it so much you want to visit the other; they are the centres of quintessential Englishness after all! If it makes much difference, Oxford is 1hour equidistant from both London and Birmingham, whereas Cambridge is sortof on the way to Edinburgh [for UK people: although the East Coast's new timetable might not have Edinburgh trains stopping until York].

My advice would be Bath - Britain's only UNESCO world heritage city, and the true centre of quintessential Englishness (or at least 18th Century quintessential Englishness).

It is however just under 90min from London, but well worth a visit if you have time to visit the south west



[edit] It also has a well known American Museum, just incase you get homesick

[ostlandr]

Thanks again, gang! We'll check out St. Andrews University and University College of London.

Bath and York sound interesting. My interest in England tends more towards the 11th century than the 18th.

The original "Battle Plan" for the trip was to fly to London, get rail passes, and take off every day to see the country. New plan- fly to London, spend a couple of days, then on to Edinburgh and the Lowlands, then Wales, then across to Dublin and fly home from there. I know, I could spend a year in London and not soak up all the history. . .

[teccuk]

I know, I could spend a year in London and not soak up all the history. . .

Aye but you'll run out of money pretty quickly!

Shame you don't have longer.