I have friends originally from Edinburgh who currently live in Liverpool working in the States this summer. I shared with them my proposed itinerary – to which they told me that the trains in Britain are awful, get canceled half the time, late (by hours) the other half, etc. etc. They even told me to put aside an entire day to travel from England to Edinburgh! There’s no way I want to take a precious day out for traveling only…
I admit that I have a ton booked for my 2 week (17 Sept. – 3 Oct.) vacation. But I am such a planner, that I’ve already got every day planned out and even looked at possible trains to take from city to city. Generally, I had planned to take evening trains (after 6-7pm) to the next city. That way, I’d be up and out early the next morning ready to take in the next city. In most, I’m only planning to stay a day (except for London, and Edinburgh) – maybe I won’t be able to see everything, but I think I will be able to take in enough of any given city.
Here is my tentative itinerary:
London – 3.5 days (afternoon train to next city)
Salisbury (maybe Stonehenge?) – 1 day (night train to next city)
Bath – 1 day
Oxford – 1 day + next morning, train to Burford for quick stop, then train to next city, Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon – 1/2 of one day, 1/2 of following day, then afternoon train to Stockport
Stockport-evening + 1 day
Edinburgh – early morning train to Edinburgh – rest of that day + one more full day
(The rest of my trip will be touring around with friends in a car, so I’m not as concerned – but that is only for the last 3 days).
Am I really insane? :-) Are the trains that bad? This itinerary should be fine if the trains are running and aren’t running too late. Obviously, some lateness is fine, but something like 3 hours late would really mess me up.
I still have no idea if I’m going to Salisbury or Canterbury or somewhere else (looking at York now, but think that’ll take a long time to properly see) as per my last post, but I just thought I’d throw this out in the meantime.
I wish I could find online a good 2-week itinerary for England, Scotland and Wales, but I haven’t found anything yet…
Oh the reason I want to go to Stockport is because when I was very young I used to live there and I want to see it again -otherwise, I know, I’ve been told there’s no reason to go there…
Anyone sick of me yet? Sorry…at least it’s only 1 more month :)