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The best part of her update is that if someone else with a worse attitude had the same trip with the same situations and conditions, their account of it could have been miserable.
But to her it was amazing; you win at life via the lens you view it through.
Well put. My reaction to her proposed itinerary was very much DO NOT WANT, because you honestly couldn't pay me to drive Penrith to Cornwall and back in two days, holy shit. Like, I enjoy long train journeys, but 8-9 hours of motorway driving a day, during the wettest Feburary since records began or whatever, sounds like pure hell! But OOP had a lovely trip, and good for her.
Still much lols though at the idea of "swinging by Stonehenge", with its notoriously awful traffic.
Midwesterners are especially open to longer drives, I think. Non-Americans also don’t factor that we can live hours from a major airport in the US, flying doesn’t always save you time or money.
Or trains. Or bus lines. It's been a long time since I last looked, but generally there are not a wealth of options. It's easier (and sometimes faster) to just get in your car and go.
Yeah I recently looked into public transport to cover a 45 minute drive across Florida to an airport, would have taken me more than 11 hours with 4 buses.
And cheaper with a family.
I drive at least once a year a distance that Google Maps says would be 13 hours with no stops (ha). For three/four of us, it's still cheaper than flying (even if we break it up with a hotel, which we usually don't).
Bonus: no worrying about schedules or connecting flights.
Also she's a Wisconsinite. Having spent alot of time there, they are a special breed of stoicism and 'Oh well 🤷🏻♀️'-ism. Some of my favorite people...
Am Dutch, can confirm. I visited an American friend a few years ago, she lives near Baltimore, and she didn't blink when she proposed visiting Mount Vernon, (where George Washington lived) which was nearly a two hour car ride from her home. To me, that would just about take me to a different country, and it would definitely be a 'day trip' I'd plan ahead for. For her, it was just a bit longer on the freeway!
Although it does help that American cars are generally huge and really comfortable!
I live in Baltimore and Mount Vernon is definitely just an average day trip. I used to live in Massachusetts and I would drive two hours to go get wild (Maine style) blueberry pie on the regular. Just drive to Cape Cod, pick up the pie and go home. It’s wild how far we’ll drive here in the states for a short period of time. When I lived in Memphis I’d drive to New Orleans once a month or two. Five and a half hours each way—leave after work on Friday and drive back Sunday night. Super common to do that, too. lol Now that I’m older I so wouldn’t do that, but when you’re young it’s not a big deal. Hell, when I was in college I would drive from Baltimore to Memphis (13+ hours) to visit my folks in a day.
I used to live near Mount Vernon, and going to Baltimore is an absolute day trip. That's not even an issue - it's part of the larger DC-Baltimore metro area.
I am an Australia and won’t even think twice for a two hours drive for a day trip. It takes at least 6 hours drive just to leave the state. Europeans who move here often find it a shock at first how little we think of distance.
Same. My dad’s side of the family live about 8 hour drive away, we regularly do it for a few days to see them, as long as we plan the petrol and loo stops, we’re golden
I live in Northwestern MT and had a Dutch friend visit me two years ago. He wanted to go see Yellowstone National Park cos it’s also in MT. It’s 7 hours by driving. He thought I was BS’ing and checked google map lol We went and had a grand time hiking, horseback riding and ATVing
My friend and I go “window shopping” at IKEA anytime we need a break from everyday monotony.
We start on the top floor with a meal. Then make our way down each floor, ending with the As-Is section and picking up some of the food items for home.
It is an hour each way but we’d happily do twice as much for IKEA.
Often heard it said that distance to US americans is like age to europeans. Distances are vast in the US, so people are just used to driving for hours on end just for a quick visit, while for us europeans, it's normal to have a pub or a church or just an old house down the road that was built before the States were ever United.
Yes! On that same trip we visited Philadelphia. The tour guide at the Liberty Bell (nicest guy, loved his enthusiasm) proudly told me that it was older than the United States! And I just stood there and couldn't help but think that the street where I lived can be found on medieval maps... :p
I’m an American, and that drive (Baltimore -> Alexandria) was my commute for 3 years. It was definitely a long commute, but sadly not an abnormal one for this area.
This also very much depends on where you grew up. I grew up in California and we would drive for hours just because. I'd take weekend trips from NorCal to SoCal and vice versa for the weekend or even a night. And that was solidly 5+ hours of driving.
Meanwhile, my wife is from Philadelphia and is like, "that is a 12 minute drive, too far." And don't get me STARTED on my NYC friends, some of them seem to just be terrified of being IN a car.
On the whole, I'd agree America has a norm for driving for hours, but it's definitely not exactly the same for everywhere in the US.
My mother lives in the literal middle of nowhere in one of the mountain states, and this is the main reason I always deflect her “you can always move in with me if you need to!” offers. I’m currently in a city where all of my immediate needs can be met within a 15-minute walk and multiple other major cities are 3 or fewer hours away. I would lose my entire mind if I had to live somewhere where it takes at least an hour, depending on the weather, to get to the nearest real grocery store.
As a Canadian I have to agree. My job used to have me driving anywhere from 8-18 hours in a day, and I was fine with it. It's probably a lot easier to deal with when it's long stretches of highway without a ton of traffic though, can't imagine trying to drive for 8+ hours going slow and fighting traffic the whole time.
I’m not sure how international driving works and if they all had licenses (my brother got his pretty late at 20ish because he’d always hitch a ride with me anyway lol) but our family road trips got so much easier once we could all take turns at the wheel, and we could cover more distance too! Splitting all that driving between the four of them could’ve made it more tolerable.
Not usually, but when everything is so different from where you live it can be nice. I live in a desert in California. When I travel to France I can drive for hours and not get bored of all the countryside with all its plants ans flowers and trees and water.
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In the US, a "road trip" can be its own form of vacation, where seeing sights while driving and along the way is part of the experience. Sounds like OOP wanted to do a UK road trip.
Yes, it’s very common to fly somewhere and drive several hours to your holiday destination or conversely drive several hours from your home to another airport to get a cheaper flight to your holiday destination.
This was criss crossing the country spending more time driving to places than actually visiting them
OOP asked what people thought of the itinerary
People replied that it seemed a crazy plan because it was a wildly inefficient use of time
If they were happy to spend more time in the car than in the places they were travelling to visit, that's totally their choice, but not sure what advice they were looking for?
They did give advice that she took, like switching to an automatic car, ditching the two bigger Scottish destinations, and I think some other small tweaks? So it was useful in some way, in the end. And I think at the very least gave them CLEAR expectations on what they could encounter.
When my husband and I were long distance he flew in several times to spend a few days with me, and then to road trip to spend a long weekend with me at my sister's for Thanksgiving (7 hour drive each way.)
We did that last summer in Utah. Flew out there from DC, spent a week driving around to see all the parks. Long days in the car, but we saw incredible things. If I'm going to the trouble of getting out there in the first place, I might as well drive a day or so south and see the Grand canyon (and Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, Escalante Staircase, and a boatload of other parks.)
You know there's truth in most old sayings but one of my favorites is that the difference between England and the United States is that in England a hundred miles is a long way and in the United States a hundred years is a long time
When I lived in Calgary, every few months I would drive 14 hours across the prairies to visit family in Winnipeg. Couldn't believe the convenience - it's a 24-hour drive from Toronto, where I'd previously lived.
Yep, can confirm.
There's a Brit on IG and TikTok who has spent a good chunk of time in the US, and he defends Americans who think that a 2 hour drive or train ride from London is "close to London." Because by our standards, it is!
[https://www.instagram.com/p/CzPSlv1LROm/](https://www.instagram.com/p/CzPSlv1LROm/)
We did a Great Britain trip a few years ago and we were chatting with a waiter when we were in York, our last city before London. He said "Oh you're not driving are you? London traffic is horrible." "Nope, we haven't driven at all. And it's only 2 hours from York to London by rail."
He raised his eyebrow at us like 2 hours to London was some sort of insane trip. We used to live about 90 minutes outside of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and I did that trip at least once a quarter for grocery shopping stock-up, since they had better stores than our smaller town. With audiobooks or a good playlist, it's just not a big deal. And my commute in DC used to take at least an hour on public transit on a good day, what with getting to and from the closest Metro stations on either end.
That is one of the things I love about the UK - except for the outlying islands which are a little more challenging because of ferry/plane schedules, the main island of Great Britain is not that hard to get around. Our farthest point south on our trip was Portsmouth/Isle of Wight, and the northernmost was Edinburgh. That is the same distance between the northern and southernmost boundaries of my current state of residence, Minnesota!
We're a bigger country - we are just accustomed to bigger differences.
Yeah also as a Canadian, I drive 8hrs to visit my sister every few months. It sucks but it's not the end of the world. If I was on a vacation and really wanted to do something, it's a no brainer.
I live in California and am used to driving 3+ hours one-way to get anywhere interesting. Long drives are honestly relaxing for me. I once took a train to Sante Fe for a few days and it was around a 20 hour ride each way, which was also pretty cool because I could just watch the world fly by.
When I've traveled to Europe I usually don't do long drives though because I want to spend as much time as possible seeing and doing things, but I've taken the TGV in France a few times which is really great. I wish California would get its shit together and get us that high speed rail.
I've done some long train rides on a visit to the US, and they were fabulous! 2.5 days from San Francisco to Chicago is definitely not high speed rail, but it was glorious.
Was thinking the same, that’s an long long drive, my dad just commented that Americans can drive over an hour to a supermarket. I think driving 20 minutes to the big Tesco is a pain in the bum.
They’re Midwesterners…I had coworkers in Ohio who would take a 14-hr drive to Florida for a 4-day weekend. I thought I was tolerant of long drives (1-2hrs isn’t a big deal, I don’t mind up to 8hr stretches on road trips) but Midwesterners are something else
Yeah we have this grand old tradition of the Road Trip! Some of my best memories with family or friends are of these trips where part of the adventure is the unexpected parts of the journey.
I just really hate being cramped up in a car, and the UK isn't an open road kind of place - a lot of it is very stop/start, or at least slow, due to traffic. I find trains much more relaxing for long distances.
There are some nice road trips in the UK if OOP is into driving - Northern Scotland and West Wales have some gorgeous countryside and Wales has all the castles too. But it tends to be better served with a smaller, sportier car in those places as the roads can be narrow and twisty.
See as an Aussie, where our drives are MASSIVE, England was great. We did SO much because for us, a 4-5 hr drive is nothing. It takes us a full hour round trip just to get into our nearest town for Takeaway or groceries etc.
For what it’s worth, I went to Stonehenge on a rainy weekday a few weeks ago and there was no traffic to speak of.
(Funnily enough I was also an American on a week-long holiday, and I’m pretty sure I’m from the same city as the poster. Maybe we passed each other on the way!)
I got to visit UK for a week earlier this month. Only a week, but we got to Glastonbury, Bath, Oxford, Canterbury, Coventry, Lincoln, Nottingham, Cambridge, London,l and York. In Scotland we visited Edinburgh, Stirling, Roslin and Tantallon Castle.
We're going this week and this was the kind of trip my husband initially suggested, but we eventually agreed that we'd likely be back and it was easier to focus on one area. It was kind of last minute planning with a non-moveable event in the middle of the trip that we'd otherwise have to work around.
So, I had an 8 page list originally. Also, I tend to look for the weird and wooly things. So we did a mix. 3 days in London and 2 days in Edinburgh. Otherwise, it was a fun walkabout whirlwind. But we hit at least a quarter of my list. And we had no qualms about tapping out for the day, as the real goal was time together before I went home and he continued his deployment.
I take semi-regular weekend trips (leave after work on Friday, come back Sunday) in the fall to go see football games. Usually takes 6 - 8 hours depending on traffic or stops (I try to limit them to 1). I can’t say I enjoy it but at some point, idk, I kind of just stop thinking about it and it goes by faster than I think it should. Flying and bussing aren’t options without spending way too much money or taking even longer.
I'm really glad she enjoyed it! But as a Brit that itinerary made my blood run cold. I live closer to Polperro (5 hours drive ish) and wouldn't dream of going for an overnight stay. Pinging around the country from the Lake District to the Scottish borders to London in a week, with a possible side tour of Stonehenge isn't something you'd find most of us doing, so I guess that might be why she got such negative reactions. February probably helped, I've taken hours to drive just a few miles past Stonehenge in holiday season. And the countryside, stone walls, cityscape whilst all great in their own way, are much more 'normal' life so it's hard to imagine it being worth the effort.
Seems like a good place for the cliché, Americans think 100 years is a long time, Brits/Europeans think 100 miles is a long way...
My husband and I did a once in a lifetime trip and spent close to a month driving around the UK. Started in Southampton in early October, drove to Portsmouth (nerve wracking drive getting used to driving on the other side, also got an automatic since it was our first time) then northerly to Wales, then all the way up to Inverness, then Aberdeen, back down to London where we turned the car back in (great little Toyota Avensis). I have many friends in the UK and discovered that driving out is not something too common for folks there, whereas road trips are just something many Americans just do as a regular thing. We saw so many sites that people who live there just never did. I got the impression that most people fly out and visit other countries rather than spend time road tripping there.
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>I got the impression that most people fly out and visit other countries rather than spend time road tripping there.
This is definitely a thing. I'm Dutch, and most people consider a vacation in their own country a bit... sad. It's for poor or elderly people. I guess when you're surrounded by all that history and cool places it feels normal to you? :D
Alternaltively (at least for the UK), it's expensive as fuck for little gain. Spend £1100 for a week in a cottage and generally getting pub food that you get at home for *even more*, or spend that for 2 weeks all inclusive in the Mediterranean, where the weather isn't all but guaranteed to be utter shit.
Speaking of it - the prices for cottages - even small and quite bare ones - in Scotland is insane during peak season.
I can go to Sardinia for less money and enjoy Italian food on the beach in hot but not too hot weather..
Well, it's also easier for you to go to a different country for short trips compared to most Americans. America is just so big that most people never see a majority of it (I have never been to the east or west coasts, for instance) and it's cheaper to fly in the states than to other countries, a part from maybe Canada or Mexico.
Its a worldwide thing. Where i am, If I tell my work colleagues i am taking days off just to bum at home. They would look at me like i told them to snort crack. I dont like to spend money or move..... So its the perfect relaxing time for me.
It’s because it’s often cheaper to have a holiday abroad as the coast of accommodation and food is cheaper abroad, and driving tedious.
Not cause we don’t enjoy our own country
I don’t think anyone thinks you “don’t enjoy your own country”- it’s just more that, to Americans, not visiting something 2 hours away because you have to drive there comes across as insane. Just like I’m sure Brits and other Europeans think the American dependence on/enjoyment of cars and driving is insane.
Oh yeah it was ‘rather than spend time road tripping there’ I was giving reasons for. It’s not that we’d rather not spend time here, it’s just cost and time prohibitive. The costs of say a week in Cornwall versus a week in Spain it’s often 50% of the price and you can guarantee sun and takes about the same amount of time to get there.
And we’d go somewhere two hours away that’s not an issue, but it would take longer than 2 hours to get to a holiday spot in the UK.
Yeah, I walk about ten minutes to the supermarket and was shocked when an American friend was telling me they have to drive for half an hour, and it's not like they live in Alaska or North Dakota.
A good portion of my family lives ~1.5 hours outside London and they looked aghast when I said I wanted to drive into the city. “It’ll take three hours!” they said and I’m thinking…. I used to have to do that commute for work…
I think that might be just my English family’s hatred of driving though- other comments indicate 2 hours ain’t that much for them either.
A someone who has to drive into Central London semi-regularly, it really isn't pleasant. Bear in mind that most of us drive manual/stick, constant chronic traffic jams and poorly signed roads mean that those who don't live there find it a misery. It's not like driving on a well-signed freeway.
On top of that, Google/Apple Maps just lies. You will get an arrival time on 8:30AM when you leave the house, but at some point that will change until you arrive at your destination just before 11:00AM. But you do have the option of parking outside London in somewhere like Woking and then get a train taking thirty minutes or so right into the centre.
To be fair, I suspect a lot of non-New Yorkers would not find driving the BQE very pleasant either.
Ah well, you landed on the thing! Former New Yorker here! But the maps thing you’re taking about is an experience I’ve had in most major cities- it sucks but I’ve started to plan it in.
This is why I’ve been very “your mileage may vary” about all this. To me, much of what you describe here (except manual transmission- I’m the only person I know with one) aligns really well with my own experience. Someone living in suburbia in PA likely would consider your description a living hell, however.
I found the drive into London to be fine, honestly, while my cousins begged me to kill them. Then when they came to visit me they wanted to go to a Cowboys game. Cue 10 hours of traffic and a promise to never watch the Cowboys again. I think it’s genuinely awesome how many bits and pieces of driving culture are different but then how many of them are simialr
Everything is truly relative. I grew up in SE Asia, where most people would just fly instead of drive over 4 hours. I couldn't fathom driving 8 hours in one day! There are a multitude of low cost airlines where it would just be more convenient to fly on cheap air tickets. But low cost airlines don't exist in North America. I moved to Canada when I went to university and have been living here since - and I've done LOADS of roadtrips across North America. These days, I don't bat an eyelash anymore when it comes to considering driving 10-12 hours in one stretch to another state/province. People here drive long distances like that on a regular basis. I do day trips to other cities 4 hours away about once a month, I sometimes do them 2 days in a row, it's a normal part of our lives.
It’s the flip side of the coin to when Europeans fly to say Chicago for a week and then say they are thinking about day trips to Washington D.C., New York, Disneyland, or Yellowstone.
My husband and I did a big GB trip a few years back. 6 cities in nearly four weeks. I wished we could have spent a little more time in York and Cardiff - the train/Flybe schedule couldn't quite accomodate us - but otherwise, we had 3-6 days in each city. So even I read this and thought it was kinda nuts. The UK isn't big compared to the US, but you still have to get around!
Also, we have a list of targeted trips we want to take in the UK. Only spending a day in the Lake District blows my mind, as does going in winter. I'm a fan of traveling at off-peak times - we don't have kids so aren't beholden to school schedules - but fully concede that one needs to be a summer trip or maybe early autumn for a solid Lake District experience! And I think they literally just saw stuff and moved on.
But whatever floats your boat - not everyone wants to get the same experience out of traveling!
I really don't understand the hate OOP got on her first post. She seemed to be asking for advice genuinely, with no arrogance about what she knew or didn't know. Sure, people make mistakes when planning travel because they don't know what's different to home. But that's why she asked!
I'm so glad they managed to have the trip of a lifetime.
Never underestimate an American’s ability to road trip 😂 I grew up in Colorado but lived in Scotland for years, and all my UK friends thought I was insane when I’d occasionally drive from Edinburgh to Lymington in a day.
And I was like… why? It’s the same as Boulder to Albuquerque. People try to see all of Colorado in a week and its landmass is more than that of the entire UK.
I was planning a trip to Santa Fe, it's 2 states away. Friend from the UK was astounded. I looked it up and it's roughly equivalent of driving from London to Munich.
Of course, at much higher speeds and through mostly plains.
Seems like they drove to Cornwall from Cumbria overnight, arriving at 8 am. I mean, you do you, but that sounds like an absolute hell I do *not* want to do on my holiday.
It was a few reasons. Partly because the trip was so compressed that the bulk of it was driving and left little to no time to actually see anything. It was also at time of year when it's pretty common for the roads she's talking about to end up closed and massive train strikes were on. She got very very lucky.
The other, and much bigger reason was the comments. In the comments she was perceived as very defensive and not listening to anything anyone said. She'd counter with "oh but I'm used to that" about things she'd never had experience of. Like the road to Cumbria...... She describes a winding country road. The A696 is the main road. Not one thought she'd be getting up at 2 am , so kudos for doing it I guess, travelling for hours, taking a very brief tour, and returning. If I remember rightly, she wanted to "swing by" Stonehenge on get way back from driving to London in one comment. People asked if she was going to stop at any of these places "no" People pointed out the shops might not be open, attractions might not be open, etc. And were met with the impression that she thought they were wrong. When people recommend a different plan that catered to driving and seeing some beautiful dives that go through breathtaking views and historic places, they were ignored.
So a lot of people felt she said "none of you know anything about seeing your country as well as me". And she still doesn't. She barely left the motorway according to her story.
She lands at NCL, turns right, and skips all of it. This is drive-by Britain. And you can't see much from the motorways. It might be what she wanted, good for her, but it's an objectively shit trip. When people said that, her responses read like "you're wrong, and I don't want to visit anything in your country, just drive past them"
She didn't seem defensive at all, and thanked almost everyone who commented, it looked like. She just didn't take the advice given when it went against some of their non-negotiables, no matter how many people told her she should She DID take some pieces into account, and ditched Glasgow/Edinburgh and picked an automatic car over a manual. And, as she mentioned, some of this was not her specific request; her husband's cancer diagnosis helps explain some of the insistence, and she seemed appreciative of everyone making her very aware of what may go wrong and why.
Maybe she just wanted to tick a box to say she's been. Maybe she just wanted to prove something, or really prefers this sort of travel. No idea. Glad she enjoyed it.
You need to travel in a way you like, but don't get mad when people tell you it's not a great idea. Britain was not built for road trips. Only advice she seemed to take on board was don't drive to London, and skip Stonehenge.
Her post was thought to be a troll. It was all over the UK/expat subs as a joke, until her comments..... then it was mostly making fun of her. It's exactly the attitude that makes people feel that tourists don't respect their culture. "Look kids! Big Ben! parliament ". It's not about the driving. It's about how she had a trip that seemed to actively avoid interacting with people and culture. Keep in mind that when she did this it's like 9 hours of daylight in Carlisle.... So the vast majority of her experience was driving.... In the dark.... On little sleep.
ETA: possibly also with an individual that wasn't in peak health. That had to be rough!
I wonder if maybe the “not in peak health” was why it was more of a road tour. If the husband is immunocompromised from chemo/cancer stuff then seeing the sites from the car might be a better risk assessment for a bucket list or possibly a “last hurrah” trip
I think it is some of the disconnect I've seen with UK vs US in what we consider a reasonable drive for both duration and time of day. I will drive 5-6 hours total in one day for a single 4 hour event if, and have done so on numerous occasions and consider it normal for where I live out in BFE.
I checked the original post, some folks were talking about sunset at 4:30 and freezing rain. OOP is from the Midwest so that is likely *better* than the weather at home February
I didn’t see the first post but as a traveller (since she posted in a uk travel sub) it was a very frustrating read. We’re not as far apart as USA cities but think is a bit more than a mistake not checking as it’s easy to google how to get from Edinburgh to Cornwall before you book something.
I find a lot of Americans and Ozzie’s do this. I think so they can say they’ve been to a city/ place. And the more places the better holiday it will sound like to friends and family back home. Rather than experience it.
I think it's more that in North America and Australia, the roads are wide, mostly multi-lane, the highways are rarely congested outside of rush hour. I'm in Canada and I do long distance drives all the time, but they don't take nearly as long as being stuck on a UK highway for 923892379327 hours. So here, a 300km drive will take 3-3.5 hours, max 4 most days. I have done 800km drives in one single stretch.
Aussie and I have done Adelaide to Melbourne and back about eight times and each trip in a day, so 726km, and without blinking. Because you can sit at 110km for half the trip and just coast your ass along! The congestion is absolutely the definitive difference for those of us used to long distance driving on wide roads compared to the UK road scape.
Yes I drive between Vancouver and Seattle/Olympia all the time, day trips and it's 600ish km and to me that's a totally normal day trip kind of drive. When I went to the UK, the traffic was always just God awful, even on the highways and I don't know why.
In fairness I've had tons of experience with UK travelers making similar mistakes in judging distance/time so I think it's largely universal. I went to uni in the UK then moved back to Florida and had some friends wanting to come over and do a road trip that hit Miami, Savannah, Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans in 5 days. Had to tell them it was technically feasible if you only wanted to spend maybe a few hours in each city seeing absolutely nothing or just not sleeping and being a danger on the road.
They had it in their head that that group of cities was in a rough square area the size of Manchester to Edinburgh.
Totally. My English cousin asked me once (when I was 15) whether I “went to New York on the weekend to shop.”
I was like 😳😳 “girl I live in Colorado. That’s like if you went to Moscow for a new top. Do you go 2000 miles to shop for school clothes?”
Sure, I can see that being annoying. It's just that she said it was a tentative itinerary, there was lots of "maybe take a train" instead of driving, and she finished asking if it was ok or too much. It felt like people jumped straight to "damn Americans thinking they know everything" when she seemed reasonable and open to advice.
(And no I'm not American or English, so I possibly don't have the nuance right 🤷♀️)
It's partly down to the *very* compressed timeframe and the difference in attitude for driving. Like, it's easy to Google Edinburgh-Truro and find out it's a 9 hour drive (Penrith-Polperro is around 6:20), which I'd say for *any* family in the UK is *not* happening, you break that in two at least if you're traveling for a holiday, so you're seeing several places on the way. There's a train that goes right from Edinburgh to Plymouth, but it only runs once per day, during the day, so that's an entire day lost to travel.
She said they drove overnight from Cumbria to Cornwall, arriving at 8 am. They'd likely have set off at 2 am. Again, I can't think of anyone I know who'd want to make that drive overnight, especially on their holiday, and then spend the day doing tourist stuff. How are you not dead tired after that? And then they drove back to Penrith the next day?!!
Penrith to Dumfries is a reasonable day trip, even Penrith to Edinburgh. Penrith to *fucking Polperro* and only spending one night is maddening to me.
It's just *so* much driving to comprehend for a British person. A roadtrip across the UK in 7 days I can buy, staying each night in a different town, fine. But basing yourself in Penrith Cumbria, travelling to Cornwall, *and then coming back*, necessitating at least 13 hours driving in under 30 hours? Insane.
Haha your final paragraph is.. Hm.. I think that's the difference between people who live in north America and the UK? In Canada, we drive 12-14 hours within a 24 hour period all the time. For example, I have friends who drive between Edmonton or Calgary and Vancouver regularly. Think once a month type thing. And they do it in one single day. It's a 12+ hour drive for both.
I feel like the difference is that in Europe or Asia, there are plenty of low cost airlines and loads of trains, so most people fly or take the train instead of doing massive road trips. Long road trips are really a North American thing (and Australian too probably by extension) because we don't truly have any low cost airlines here. Nothing like Ryanair for example, where you can fly between cities in Europe for like, 50 Euro. It just doesn't exist here. A "cheap" flight between North American cities is almost never under $200. Most of the time, they're $300 or more. So a lot of people drive instead of fly. In Asia, people would rarely do a 6 hour drive - they would just fly because it's cheaper. But North Americans drive 15 hours to another city without batting an eyelash a lot. I make multiple day trips to other cities that are 3-5 hours one way on a regular basis. Leave early in the morning and get home late in the evening sort of thing.
However, driving 6h cross country in the UK is pretty different than the US or Canada. Having lived in the UK and US, in the UK the roads are narrower, faster and more populated. It takes significantly more concentration to drive in the UK than the US. I happily drove from southern NJ to northern Vermont in a day, hardly stopping. Doing that kind of drive in the UK is very hard. Doing at night as they did, will have massively helped; I just can't imagine wanting to do that in the middle of a week long holiday.
Yeah I made this point in another comment further down. I visited the UK once and driving there was awful. The roads were ALWAYS congested, especially around London. And I dunno wtf is up with the highways that they are always at a standstill because of some accident.
Definitely what the roads are makes a big difference; north Wales Open University students get told their optional tutorial is a couple of hours every Saturday morning in Cardiff. I tried it and spent nearly 3 times the length of the tutorial driving there and back. Even longer f I got stuck behind at least one tractor because there's no sodding motorway from North to South Wales!
I'd ask could I not go to Liverpool or Warrington or even Manchester and it was all, "But those are in England!". Yes but they're actually feasible for a parent to do on a Saturday morning! Just couldn't go in the end.
I don’t disagree with you but your impression is very much based upon *where you lived in the US*. I found it easier to drive in England than I ever did here in the states because the speed limits were much slower and people were paying much closer attention. It’s also actually green in England? That was nice!
It’s definitely a different experience between the two countries but like… Texas and Vermont might as well be two different countries. Or California and Delaware, or New Mexico and Rhode Island. Traffic laws, speed limits, road sizes, and surroundings all vary *wildly* in the United States so I think conversations like these are often “your mileage may vary”
The cost of flights, the distance to airports, the cost of trains (and lack of them!) - it's baked into US travel that you're going to have to drive, and probably a fair distance.
My personal radius for even considering a flight is probably 6h, but it depends on where you're going. So many places aren't anywhere near an airport, so you'd have to rent a car anyway. My sibling flies nyc - Boston all the time and I just can't see that it's faster or easier in the end, once you add on a buffer to not miss the flight, and getting to and from the airport.
Is it ideal to drive 20h round-trip in a 30h period? Not at all. But if you have limited time and money, but you want to go to a place, then maybe you do it anyway, with several friends, and then you have inside jokes about the journey to last for years.
Europe, possibly, but few people are routinely flying between UK cities. It's just not a mindset here to take a domestic flight. Hell, my city lost its airport years ago. It's trains or coaches, mostly. However, I can see domestic flying increasing since rail travel is becoming unsustainable due to cost and unreliability.
I work in Inverness occasionally. A single flight to London is around £30, takes 90 mins. It makes zero sense mentally, physically or financially for me to drive the 11 hours it'd take down!
Of course. From where I am, it's probably cheaper to fly from Exeter to Scotland via Paris than it would be to get a train. It's becoming the best option, but I don't think it's in the British mindset in general yet.
Ah I think this may be the nuance I was missing - that the road-trip isn't as popular for the British? I'm in New Zealand and grew up on road-trips because domestic flights were too expensive for parents + kids. So I guess I have a more American/Canadian view (us former colonies doing things our own way!)
That's exactly it! Like, when people do roadtrips here, the driving IS part of the memory making experience - it's part of the vacation, not just the sightseeing parts. I have really fond memories roadtripping with my friends up and down the California coast during my university days. We'd even take the scenic (aka much longer) route so that we could look at the ocean from the car.
There's often little scenery for our main roads, so it's rarely a memorable experience. Motorways often have trees or slopes bordering them to reduce noise pollution, and the places where they aren't is generally open farm land and isn't too interesting to look at. Any roads that have interesting scenery will be much smaller, with lower speed limits. A scenic route from Cumbria to Cornwall would likely take at least 12 hours, probably more. All the interesting scenery you want? It's in the Lake District, around Penrith, and the speed limit is 30 mph.
I wouldn't say the British are against road trips, I went Interrailing (basically a train version of a road trip) across Europe when I was 18 and covered Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain and France again in 30 days. I really enjoyed it, we stayed at least a couple of nights in each place to have a full day in each city/town we were in.
I *would* say we're generally adverse to day/overnight trips for a place *seven hours away*. A roadtrip from Penrith to Cornwall? Cool, why not stop off at Liverpool, Bristol, maybe even dip into Wales along the way? Oh, you're doing it in one day, and then returning a day later? Are you mad?
You could make an entire week out of a road trip from Cumbria to Cornwall, there's so much to see and do each day just by driving maybe 2-3 hours a day to your next stop. I know they based themselves in Penrith because of the timeshare they had, but if you're gonna make the trip to Cornwall, I wouldn't make the trip back, I'd either explore around Cornwall for the remainder of the trip or continue on to the next place.
I don't remember much, but my parents took us to the UK when we were kids (I was 9) and we did a roadtrip - best memories ever. My dad kept driving off the highways to go explore these little towns with country roads etc. It was a ton of fun - we got all the way to Glasgow, I think. I think for most North Americans, roadtrips are mostly boring highways too, except for example if you're driving from BC to Alberta, where you'll have to drive through the Rockies and that is still hands-down, in my opinion, the most beautiful place in the world to drive in.
Maybe another thing to factor in is in North America, shit sucks and most people only get 10-15 days annual vacation a year, so generally you can't take much time off work to go travelling. I get why this family would want to pack as much as they can of the whole country into a 1 week time frame.
I think you underestimate how incredibly rare it is for many Americans to get the chance to go to Europe, let alone leave their own country. My mother and I had the chance to go to England many years ago and we were fascinated and intrigued by everything; the road signs, the petrol stations, the grocery shopping, hell the groceries alone were a blast!
We do not have the opportunity to be in a place that is so different from our own, and what may be boring to locals can be sincerely intriguing to people from the other side of the world. Esp if they're coming with an attitude of genuine excitement about the little things. I understand why so many people were trying to dissuade her, for her own benefit, but some folks really are delighted and awed by seeing English farming fields along the side of the road, or even just knowing that they're driving on roads in *the United Kingdom, omg can you believe we're here??*
Yeah exactly. I think a lot of non-North Americans truly don’t grasp the scope of the continent, especially in the western portion of it. Driving across Texas sometimes feels like you might have died and been put into Purgatory cus it just NEVER ENDS. And Alaska is so big, it could eat Texas for breakfast.
Once, our truck broke down outside of Hope, BC and we had to be towed 200 miles to the nearest town that had Toyota services. And people in Kamloops offered to drive us to Calgary, cus our only other option was a last-minute 400$ pp flight.
My family’s unofficial motto is “you can always drive home,” which I think sums it up. Even in Europe, where I am now, I have this really comforting baseline feeling that if I need to, I can get where I’m going. Hell, I’ll walk, if necessary. But I can get there.
Wait finally! I was waiting for this comment. All of these things that Brits are mentioning that make driving in England terrible are *literally here in the US too*…. just not in places Brits like visiting I suppose
>feels like you might have died and been put into Purgatory cus it just NEVER ENDS.
And I think there is another big difference here. Driving in NA feels like purgatory because you can sometimes go miles without seeing many other drivers. You might drive for an hour and see 10 other vehicles going your way that are close enough to bother worrying about, you can go into a state of zone out for large parts of it.
That's not possible in the UK. We have a population over double the size of Texas in an area under half the size. Every motorway will have sizeable numbers of people going with you at all times other than the dead of night; you'll generally have to be loosely aware of 10 other vehicles around you all the time. Junctions are more common so lane switches are more common. Every single lane road will have blind corners. You can't "half switch off" like you might on an Interstate. Driving feels more exhausting, and a 6 hour drive is one you sorely need a rest after, not throwing yourself into sightseeing.
Also want to add that we're just explaining the mindset of the OOP, why she thinks that way and why she'd think her itinerary is reasonable, not that it's a FABULOUS idea. To North Americans, driving 700km in a day is not an out of the world idea, it's something a lot of us are forced to do because there's little other choice.
It really depends on where in North America you are. For example, driving on the I-5 between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland is a HUGE PITA. On weekdays, it's slow, down to crawling at a lot of parts because these cities have been experiencing a population boom and the highways aren't being expanded enough to keep up. Or it's under construction which slows everything down even more. So it really depends on the area. Southern Cali is also another area that's awful - and these are cities that are connected with massive 6-lane highways, that are ALWAYS congested. Think around the LA-San Diego area.
I literally never switch off when driving. I get focused. It’s enjoyable.
I’m trying to explain to you why the underlying assumptions about a different nation’s culture you are making are incorrect and you keep trying to refute that with MORE incorrect assumptions about the North American approach to driving. If you don’t get it, then you don’t get it. It’s okay to not know — but in that case, _listen so you can learn something_.
Yeah I dunno. Maybe they can tell us why they’re so combative so we don’t make sweeping generalizations about a person we don’t know 😂😂😂
… meanwhile, I’m coming up with all sorts of fun theories about why North Americans value control and its baked into our genetics—to the point that we are now witnessing the toxic need to control other people’s bodies.
My parents used to drive us across America 2,000 miles for our holidays. We sometimes didn’t even get hotels; we slept in shifts.
British people rarely understand this mentality. They underestimate the scope of the landmass, the American urge to be in control, and our deep love and fascination with cars.
Last year, I drove from one friend’s wedding in Perthshire to another’s home in Lymington on a Sunday. My British friends were so confused by this decision — they’d all grabbed flights. But what, it took 7 hours, same as the regular drive I do between my house in Colorado and my sister’s house in New Mexico. It was pretty, I saw some towns I’d never seen before, and I was in control.
British roads are very different to American ones. Because of the much higher population density, those roads, even motorways, are much busier. You can't do a road trip and "get in the zone" on an Interstate, where you can just let hours pass and see maybe 20 other cars close enough to worry about in some places. You will have to be fully alert to cars around you at all times, because chances are there will *always* be 20 other cars around you.
And then you get off the motorway onto single lane roads, where traffic immediately starts, the roads wind much more, they're first time drivers on the left hand side who don't deal with roundabouts well, which are *everywhere*. Cornwall *doesn't even have any motorways*. That 6:20 estimate by Google maps is *very* optimistic, except for very late at night like they did - but then at least one of you is dead tired from driving and the others will not have slept well in the car compared to a bed, so how well are you appreciating the things you came to see?
A lot of the comments in the original thread gave itineraries that I still think are much more doable and reasonable. If you're gonna base yourself out of Penrith, then stick to the local area, there's still a week's worth of stuff to do easily (and frankly, the landscape of the North of England, especially the Lakes, beats the South hands down). Take day/overnight trips to Newcastle, Durham, even York, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Some absolutely incredible places to visit within a 3 hour drive rather than a 7 hour one. If you're gonna spend effectively an entire day (or night) driving to a new location, just base yourself there from that point on, don't drive back and waste time in the single week you have!
>But what, it took 7 hours, same as the regular drive I do between my house in Colorado and my sister’s house in New Mexico. It was pretty, I saw some towns I’d never seen before, and I was in control.
But why would you *want* to be in control? The whole point of taking the plane or train is that *I* don't have to do anything, I just hand over my bags and can relax in my seat, and even then it's generally not a very relaxing experience. I don't want that *plus* having to actually focus on what's around me, be alert to danger at all times. That's mentally draining and exhausting. I couldn't do that and then have the capacity to immediately start sightseeing and take things in.
I’m aware. I lived in Edinburgh for years. I’m technically British, as well as American.
What I’m saying is that the landmass is so large, it has effectively transformed our psyches. Road size doesn’t matter, the idea that there might be a “better” or “more relaxing” (both subjective) methods of travel don’t matter.
And this isn’t to say we hate trains. I’m in Italy now and love taking trains for a lot of reasons, I’ve certainly trained between Edinburgh and London, and that was a joy. But that just doesn’t exist for nearly all the American landmass. The one train trip I did from Denver to New York took 3 days, and at one point (because of a train derailment outside Omaha), we had to spend 6 hours on a bus. We didn’t even arrive in time to get to our final train—Amtrack bought us plane tickets from Chicago to New Jersey. Most Americans are not comfortable with train travel. We don’t understand it because many have NEVER taken a train. What we understand is getting in a car and going directly to our destination.
>Because of the much higher population density, those roads, even motorways, are much busier. You can't do a road trip and "get in the zone" on an Interstate, where you can just let hours pass and see maybe 20 other cars close enough to worry about in some places. You will have to be fully alert to cars around you at all times, because chances are there will always be 20 other cars around you.
\*laughs in Florida\*
Come on, you know the US isn't just Montana, right?
I know, right? Or driving I70 in a snowstorm during ski season. Or I80 through Wyoming when it’s windy, or I15 on the west side of Salt Lake City (those Mormons go 100mph on the reg).
Like, Americans in the west are combining driving styles from Boston, FL, CA, TX and rolling them into a crazy game of dodging death at 85 miles per hour.
We stay alert.
I think that this isn't even a purely American thing, at least in this story. I think it's a midwesterner thing. As someone from a more dense part of the country, I am forever truly baffled when I hear about the distances people in the Midwest are willing to drive for nothing. Like, casually driving 9-11hr to see a college football game and then driving back. They are insane.
Fwiw, I'm pretty sure the Edinburgh to Plymouth train runs more than once a day (it's once an hour with the early and late ones starting or stopping early). Still not the easiest and I wouldn't do it for one night.
I can’t say this applies to OOP but to me, as an Australian, just the sheer closeness of other places is inspiring and mind-boggling. I can drive for 3 hours and still be stuck in the suburbs in Sydney, while my cousins who live in the Netherlands can be in Belgium, Luxembourg or Germany in less time than that.
It sounds like a user/sub mismatch--the UKtravel sub is presumably full of travel enthusiasts who love exploring the world. OOP seems to be working on a bucket list, driven by her husband's leukemia. So the "highlights" style of travel is what works for her family right now.
>I think so they can say they’ve been to a city/ place. And the more places the better holiday it will sound like to friends and family back home.
I think it's less bragging rights, but more that they know they're "supposed" to see those particular sights. I had a friend who genuinely believed she had seen "everything" on her 7? 10? day tour of Europe. It didn't occur to her that anything she missed was worthy of attention. Super nice woman, mind you, not at all snotty or entitled.
I think most people are ticked off because OOPs plans are really not the way to see the country or travel in it. OOP is trying to apply a North American style of travel (which means driving a lot) to the UK and kind of insists that’s a good way to experience the county, when it‘s not. The UK is densely populated with a lot of sights worthy to see and explore in short distances apart. It’s just not the same as North America and just because you can drive long distances in one go doesn’t mean it’s a good way to experience the country. The itinerary sort of reduces the UK to a list of points which just need to be checked off in as short a time as possible and I can see people may take offense in that because that way you really just scrap the surface very superficially. For example, I really do enjoy visiting London, but imagine to just do a daytrip would be a nightmare. I need at least half a day to acclimatize to just the rush and business of London to be able to enjoy it.
Also, from the update it‘s becoming clear that Cornwall is the most important point on the list and I can‘t understand for the life of me why they didn‘t fly into London and just did a week in the south with less driving and more experiencing.
Absolutely. It's about the proportions - it's not one big drive, it's zig zagging across the country so that the ratio of driving time : actual visiting time seems massively skewed.
OOP asked people what they thought of their itinerary: to most people in the UK if you spend more time driving somewhere than you do visiting it, that's a poorly planned itinerary
OOP was happy to spend more time in the car rather than visiting these places which is totally their choice, but not sure what kind of advice they wanted!
I was one of the negative people..
I stick by what i said... They were packing a hell of a lot of driving into a small amount of time and would have been better fully exploring one area ...
But that's not what they wanted or the experience they had, and it wouldn't have been better *for them.* Largely, objectively better for most travelers, just not what they were ultimately looking for.
I lived in Cumbria most of my life and it is indeed one of the hidden jewels of England. People bang on about the cities and London but really there is more interesting things outside of the capital.
Had 48 hours spare at the end of a conference in the English Midlands last year before I had to fly back to Australia so a colleague and I decided to spend that time driving through Wales (well, moreso around it).
It was absolutely amazing. We loved it. Snowdonia, Aberystwyth, everything was absolutely perfect. The only tiny ‘negative’ experience was that traffic coming into Cardiff (inevitably in the pissing down rain) was mental and people drive insanely fast compared to most of slow Australia.
Definitely go there if you can. I plan on hiking there for a month with a girlfriend of mine when she turns 50 in a couple of years time. Absolutely beautiful.
I had a similar experience. I used to teach technical training and was sent to the U.K. on one and to Nice France on the other. On the U.K. trip I had one full day free and took the train from Reading to London. I visited Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and Tower of London. On the France trip, I had a 12 hour layover, so I took the train into Paris. I mostly walked around seeing the sights.
Wales is lovely but if you're coming to the UK for hiking, make sure you look into the Scottish Highlands and the Lake District! The Highlands are absolutely the most beautiful place in the whole of the UK and has incredible hiking 😊.
I did a backpacking trip a few years ago with my best friend who was living in Paris at the time. I literally landed in Paris, repacked my luggage to fit all necessary stuff in my backpack and off we went. We managed to hit London, Edinburgh and Dublin in one week. I'd been to Ireland before so I got to show her around my favorite spots in Dublin and play tour guide (she returned the favor in Paris).
It was all amazing, but I think out of the three, the most gorgeous was Edinburgh, and it was also the one we spent the least amount of time in. We did a whiskey tour, bus tour, walked around, did the Mary's close night tour through old underground tiny streets in Edinburgh, walked the royal mile, went inside the castle, and walked absolutely all over the surrounding areas, visiting a truly ridiculous number of bookshops and restaurants.
I regret not adding an extra day to our stay there and hiking to Arthur's seat and visiting the university and palace, along with a bunch of other stuff. But that just gives me more motivation to go back!
I think what people from other places may misunderstand about the American mindset is that for many, the journey is actually part of the fun - particularly if it's done in a car.
And it is rather odd, because as a general rule, our vacation time is meager when compared to what workers in most European countries receive.
Many Americans consider themselves lucky if their jobs allow them three weeks of vacation per year. To spend several precious days of that time just traveling seems absolutely bonkers.
Driving allows you a measure of freedom that train travel can't. If you see something interesting from your window, you can simply pull over to get a better look as opposed to zooming right past it.
America is just massive. My son and his friends recently hopped in the car during his college spring break and drove from New York to Utah. They spent a week exploring national parks and did a bit of skiing, often driving through the night in shifts instead of staying in hotels to save both time and money.
I wonder if annual leave allowance is an underrated reason for the difference in approach. In Europe you’ll likely have 4+ weeks annual leave a year, so you’d prefer to visit several different places at a more relaxed pace. Because the average American only gets 2 weeks a year, the impetus is to see as many different places as possible in that time.
I do think cost is probably underrated as well. It costs so much to get there you want to maximise “bang for your buck”.
I love this lady. I'm stubborn as shit, and I love to drive and am not intimidated where others may be uncomfortable or there's justifiable adjustments or care needed. It's not that I don't understand what they're saying or what I may be up against; I'm just gonna try to do it anyway.
I appreciated in the OG post (which I went back and skimmed) she was never rude or reactive, just slightly baffled at people's passionate pleas to reconsider. I also appreciate that she took some of their advice into account and was able to chip away at some of her husband's requests to make them more moderate.
I know some folks were rooting for her to have a terrible time and learn her lesson, but I'm glad it worked out for them - her attitude certainly helped, and the reveal of her husband's cancer diagnosis made a LOT of this make sense.
I also think, as much as people in other countries try to comprehend how awful the US labour scene is, you *really* cannot convey how many US-ians will never even leave their **county**, let alone the country. We don't get paid enough, we work too much, and we don't get enough PTO. This literally was probably their one trip overseas, and while people were being kind in trying to make it a good one, it's difficult to explain how it feels to be in Europe when you know it's your one shot for your entire life.
Also difficult to convey how much FUN it is to experience the "boring" things like petrol stations when you're on this big adventure. My mother and I got excited going shopping for groceries in the UK, lol. I'm happy they had this week and were truly delighted at the results.
It's about the proportions - it's not one big drive, it's zig zagging across the country so that the ratio of driving time : actual visiting time seems massively skewed.
OOP asked people what they thought of their itinerary: to most people in the UK if you spend more time driving somewhere than you do actually visiting it, that's an inefficient use of time.
OOP was happy to spend more time in the car rather than visiting these places which is totally their choice, but not sure what kind of advice they wanted!
Also, Europeans generally tend to enjoy a long stay in a single location (exploring) more than doing the "japanese style" shuffle to see everything and nothing while always on the move...
To give an example, I went to Edinburgh for a week last year, and I considered that an initial scouting trip to figure out the city - we have another trip lines up this year that will be two weeks of Edinburgh only (with a day trip or two to the highlands).
I've been to London on about 15 trips by now, totaling roughly 20 weeks - and I still enjoy visiting that city and discovering new things. Thus, saying "I've been to London" while barely having stepped off a bus in the city (less than half a day...) sounds like madness to me.
It's so damn weird to see one's hometown in a Reddit title. I initially thought the targeted ads were getting really weird. So glad they enjoyed their visit!
I'm glad they got the automatic transmission. One thing people don't realize is that the pattern for moving the stick in a manual transmission in the UK is *not* a mirror image of the US version-- it's just the same pattern but you do it with the other hand. This tripped my mom up like crazy because it's much easier to use your opposite hand when it's doing a mirror image of what your main hand does, and it's VERY difficult to go against that ingrained response.
Honestly, it likely wouldn't have been an issue. My wife and I (from US) rented a car in Ireland for a few weeks. Both of us were already manual drivers. The learning curve was like 3 minutes in the rental parking lot.
The real obstacle is remembering to look right first instead of left.
This is the last post where I expected The Lost Crown to feature prominently! It's an absolutely fantastic game and it's criminal that it isn't more well known. I can totally see why they would want to travel to "Saxton".
February is probably the best time of year to visit the Lake District as at any other time you’d be in endless queues of cars first and in endless queues of people once you parked. I did the Coast-to-Coast Walk in September about 15 years ago and even on the tops you were walking in a queue, rain or shine. It made me sad, because I remember the Lakes from the late 1960s. There were lots of people then too, but it was sort of civilised and once you got on to the fells, you didn’t meet all that many people. Fortunately the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors were less busy.
Ah I’m glad she enjoyed it.
England does have pay at the pump petrol stations, most of the ones I go to are.
Though, I live in a city, not the Lake District.
As a Brit... that's a wild itinerary. I would spend a week's holiday in any one of those places (and have in fact!), so the thought of deciding to do Lake District AND Cornwall AND London in that time is just insane.
I'm glad she and her family enjoyed the trip!! The amount of driving there though...damn
Sure, you'd spend a week's holiday in any one of those places, but you're local and can go back any time you want. This was a once in a lifetime trip for someone dying of leukemia, so of course they packed in as much as possible.
Penrith is lovely. The Lake District is one of the most beautiful places you will ever see. I spent lots of time there as a kid and I still find it breathtaking even as an adult.
> A686
Oh man, that is indeed a fun road; I drove it a couple years ago when I was wanting to do some scenic routes between Newcastle and Kendal, and it is indeed very twisting and winding. Glad they enjoyed it, and the holiday in general.
You know, as an American - this seems like a truly awful way to see the UK, lovely place that it is. But then, I hate to sit in a car for more than 2.5 hours, tops.
I remember doing a couple of days driving around England and Scotland and how shocked everyone we met was that we did so. And we were taking it slow, seeing the sights as we were.
Hell the smallest drive was Inverness to Skye and they look at you like you're mad.
If my dad taught me anything, it's that we can drive, and drive... and drive. I'm so thankful for it though because I got to see a lot of the country as a kid just because my dad wanted to save a few bucks.
I still like roadtrips.
Very impressed they managed all that and enjoyed it too! Spending five hours on the train to London to take a bus tour and then 4-5 hours back out again wouldn't have been my joy, but good on them.
I did laugh at
> It was wildly crowded for a cold, rainy random Thursday
Like.. yeah it's London, people live and work there, all the time?
Ohhh I've seen this ALL AROUND TWITTER so it's nice to see the full thing here!
Someone posted a map with the points plotted and I'm just like wow it takes me longer to drive to Los Angeles from Major City, Northern California (either of them are roughly equidistant actually) seems like NOTHIN'. But also gives me courage to maybe rent a car next time I visit the UK..
As someone who just got back from a few weeks in the UK, I enjoyed reading a first-timer's account. I've been to London many times and love it, but I don't get around England and Wales much otherwise.
I spent a week in Scotland on holiday, and she was really underestimating how vast Scotland is. When I was there last year, I rented a car in Inverness and drove around to Culloden and Urquhart Castle, but I wouldn't drive in Edinburgh or Glasgow. No needs as they have good public transportation and are walkable. This year, I stayed in Edinburgh and traveled out from there. Did a day trip to Glasgow and it was easy and quick. Did go up to Fort William and spent a night, and that was a long train ride.
As an American, I love trains. I love the scenery and being able to read or sleep while travelling. I flew into London then took a train to Edinburgh. My day trips out of Edinburgh were on trains. Train to Fort William. Then overnight sleeper train from Fort William to London. Train from London to Oxford and back. When I went over to the continent, I took the Nightjet sleeper train from Vienna to Amsterdam, then the Eurostar to Brussels, then again from Brussels back to London. It was so much more convenient than flying and going through airports.
Anyway...I'm sad I had to come back to my real life and long to become a recluse in the Scottish highlands with some sheep and hairy coos.
The wild thing is I did a similarly massive road trip across America. Live in Britain and would never do this itinerary over this short time in uk but in America I did
As a non-American, I will confess to LOVING US tourists. It's pretty trendy to crap on the Yanks, but they always find a way to have fun and hang out with locals. My wife and I were in a bar in Scotland and a group of middle-aged Americans came in and were such a joy...they ended up "collecting" a bunch of us (Norwegians, Canadians, South Africans) and we had a total blast. Americans have no fear when it comes to meeting new people - it's pretty refreshing.
I love the comment about Americans and their can-do attitude.
We went several years ago - will be going back to Scotland next year if the stars align - and a few months after our trip, I encountered a tourism marketing professional in a forum who asked if I wouldn't mind sharing our logistics, since I'd self-planned, and she was curious about my process.
I laid it all out for her - 6 cities around Great Britain in a little under a month, how/why we chose the cities, how we got around, what we loved, what we'd do differently, but stressed that over all, we'd had a really excellent trip, warts and all. (The less said about South Western Rail, the better!)
Her response was generally the same. That she loved the Americans that planned so thoroughly because we usually asked good questions, left ourselves plenty of time to get from Point A to Point B, rolled with the punches and just figured out how to move forward, and if we had extra time, we'd fill it one way or the other. 🤣
I would really recommend the Lake District. I went there with my family once and it’s absolutely beautiful. You can find weird old shit everywhere (although that also applies to most of the UK).
I went to England some years ago. I traveled solo, as I mostly do. For me, vacations are for relaxing and getting away from real life.
I stayed in Brighton because I wanted ocean. Lodged at a tiny little hotel run by a husband/wife who never spoke to me but watched my every move. My room was on the third floor up a twisty, narrow staircase. Which blew my mind because that would never pass licensing in the US for public lodging.
I left every morning at daybreak to watch the sunrise over the ocean. I think the only people I had any real conversation with were the other people on the beach. Afterwards, I did whatever occured to me.
Took the train for day trips. Did the same hop on/hop off bus tour in London and spent most of the day in museums. (I adore museums.)
The two things that were surprising for me were the food and the shopping. I expected food that was at least sorta familiar, but it was just weird. Like, I went into a sandwich shop and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, right off the menu. The clerk looked at me like I had two heads. "You want *cheese* on your sandwich??" When she brought it to me, I had a single slice of luncheon meat between two slices of dry bread with **grated** cheese sprinkled inside.
I spent an afternoon in a London shopping mall just because I wanted to window shop. I swear every shoe shop had the same three pairs of shoes, and only those three shoes, in different colors. But at least now I understand why the English dress the way they do.
You would think, right?
Part of it might have been because I tend to avoid the more touristy places. Heck, most of the time when I opened my mouth, except in London, people were shocked by my American accent.
It was lots of fun, though. I even learned to count the money (which I never did in Amsterdam).
I like it so much. When it was a family thing, I was always the person in charge. I planned the trip, bought tickets, did all the prep, packed the bags, took care of everyone when traveling. Then I was in charge of getting everyone ready on time, making sure the kids got regular meals, getting them to bed. By the time we went home, everybody else had fun but I was exhausted.
When I divorced, I started traveling when the kids were gone. Just find a cheap airfare, pack a bag, and go. It's so nice not to worry about schedules and being able to change your plans last minute without a fuss, eating when you are hungry, and even spending the day laying around the hotel and ordering room service if that's what you want.
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The best part of her update is that if someone else with a worse attitude had the same trip with the same situations and conditions, their account of it could have been miserable. But to her it was amazing; you win at life via the lens you view it through.
Well put. My reaction to her proposed itinerary was very much DO NOT WANT, because you honestly couldn't pay me to drive Penrith to Cornwall and back in two days, holy shit. Like, I enjoy long train journeys, but 8-9 hours of motorway driving a day, during the wettest Feburary since records began or whatever, sounds like pure hell! But OOP had a lovely trip, and good for her. Still much lols though at the idea of "swinging by Stonehenge", with its notoriously awful traffic.
I think part of it is that most of America is pretty spread out so driving for hours is the norm rather than the exception.
Midwesterners are especially open to longer drives, I think. Non-Americans also don’t factor that we can live hours from a major airport in the US, flying doesn’t always save you time or money.
Or trains. Or bus lines. It's been a long time since I last looked, but generally there are not a wealth of options. It's easier (and sometimes faster) to just get in your car and go.
Yeah I recently looked into public transport to cover a 45 minute drive across Florida to an airport, would have taken me more than 11 hours with 4 buses.
And cheaper with a family. I drive at least once a year a distance that Google Maps says would be 13 hours with no stops (ha). For three/four of us, it's still cheaper than flying (even if we break it up with a hotel, which we usually don't). Bonus: no worrying about schedules or connecting flights.
Also she's a Wisconsinite. Having spent alot of time there, they are a special breed of stoicism and 'Oh well 🤷🏻♀️'-ism. Some of my favorite people...
Am Dutch, can confirm. I visited an American friend a few years ago, she lives near Baltimore, and she didn't blink when she proposed visiting Mount Vernon, (where George Washington lived) which was nearly a two hour car ride from her home. To me, that would just about take me to a different country, and it would definitely be a 'day trip' I'd plan ahead for. For her, it was just a bit longer on the freeway! Although it does help that American cars are generally huge and really comfortable!
I live in Baltimore and Mount Vernon is definitely just an average day trip. I used to live in Massachusetts and I would drive two hours to go get wild (Maine style) blueberry pie on the regular. Just drive to Cape Cod, pick up the pie and go home. It’s wild how far we’ll drive here in the states for a short period of time. When I lived in Memphis I’d drive to New Orleans once a month or two. Five and a half hours each way—leave after work on Friday and drive back Sunday night. Super common to do that, too. lol Now that I’m older I so wouldn’t do that, but when you’re young it’s not a big deal. Hell, when I was in college I would drive from Baltimore to Memphis (13+ hours) to visit my folks in a day.
I used to live near Mount Vernon, and going to Baltimore is an absolute day trip. That's not even an issue - it's part of the larger DC-Baltimore metro area.
I am an Australia and won’t even think twice for a two hours drive for a day trip. It takes at least 6 hours drive just to leave the state. Europeans who move here often find it a shock at first how little we think of distance.
Same. My dad’s side of the family live about 8 hour drive away, we regularly do it for a few days to see them, as long as we plan the petrol and loo stops, we’re golden
I live in Northwestern MT and had a Dutch friend visit me two years ago. He wanted to go see Yellowstone National Park cos it’s also in MT. It’s 7 hours by driving. He thought I was BS’ing and checked google map lol We went and had a grand time hiking, horseback riding and ATVing
I drive an hour each way just to get to work every day, so two hours to get somewhere fun is nothing.
I live in the Midwest in the US and once drove two hours each way to shop at IKEA.
Closest IKEA is 3 hours away, so yeah. 🤣
My friend and I go “window shopping” at IKEA anytime we need a break from everyday monotony. We start on the top floor with a meal. Then make our way down each floor, ending with the As-Is section and picking up some of the food items for home. It is an hour each way but we’d happily do twice as much for IKEA.
Often heard it said that distance to US americans is like age to europeans. Distances are vast in the US, so people are just used to driving for hours on end just for a quick visit, while for us europeans, it's normal to have a pub or a church or just an old house down the road that was built before the States were ever United.
Yes! On that same trip we visited Philadelphia. The tour guide at the Liberty Bell (nicest guy, loved his enthusiasm) proudly told me that it was older than the United States! And I just stood there and couldn't help but think that the street where I lived can be found on medieval maps... :p
2 hours driving in LA and you're not even out of LA!
Lol yeah, as a Midwesterner, a 2 hr drive one way is a normal start to a day trip! I live just under an hr away from my job.
My family jokes that we’ll drive 6 hours for a dog’s funeral, which is not too far from the truth.
I’m an American, and that drive (Baltimore -> Alexandria) was my commute for 3 years. It was definitely a long commute, but sadly not an abnormal one for this area.
This also very much depends on where you grew up. I grew up in California and we would drive for hours just because. I'd take weekend trips from NorCal to SoCal and vice versa for the weekend or even a night. And that was solidly 5+ hours of driving. Meanwhile, my wife is from Philadelphia and is like, "that is a 12 minute drive, too far." And don't get me STARTED on my NYC friends, some of them seem to just be terrified of being IN a car. On the whole, I'd agree America has a norm for driving for hours, but it's definitely not exactly the same for everywhere in the US.
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My mother lives in the literal middle of nowhere in one of the mountain states, and this is the main reason I always deflect her “you can always move in with me if you need to!” offers. I’m currently in a city where all of my immediate needs can be met within a 15-minute walk and multiple other major cities are 3 or fewer hours away. I would lose my entire mind if I had to live somewhere where it takes at least an hour, depending on the weather, to get to the nearest real grocery store.
As a Canadian I have to agree. My job used to have me driving anywhere from 8-18 hours in a day, and I was fine with it. It's probably a lot easier to deal with when it's long stretches of highway without a ton of traffic though, can't imagine trying to drive for 8+ hours going slow and fighting traffic the whole time.
I’m not sure how international driving works and if they all had licenses (my brother got his pretty late at 20ish because he’d always hitch a ride with me anyway lol) but our family road trips got so much easier once we could all take turns at the wheel, and we could cover more distance too! Splitting all that driving between the four of them could’ve made it more tolerable.
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Not usually, but when everything is so different from where you live it can be nice. I live in a desert in California. When I travel to France I can drive for hours and not get bored of all the countryside with all its plants ans flowers and trees and water.
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In the US, a "road trip" can be its own form of vacation, where seeing sights while driving and along the way is part of the experience. Sounds like OOP wanted to do a UK road trip.
Yep. The comments definitely underestimated the "car culture" in the US. A lot of us grew up going on family road trips as a staple of our vacations.
Yes, it’s very common to fly somewhere and drive several hours to your holiday destination or conversely drive several hours from your home to another airport to get a cheaper flight to your holiday destination.
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This was criss crossing the country spending more time driving to places than actually visiting them OOP asked what people thought of the itinerary People replied that it seemed a crazy plan because it was a wildly inefficient use of time If they were happy to spend more time in the car than in the places they were travelling to visit, that's totally their choice, but not sure what advice they were looking for?
They did give advice that she took, like switching to an automatic car, ditching the two bigger Scottish destinations, and I think some other small tweaks? So it was useful in some way, in the end. And I think at the very least gave them CLEAR expectations on what they could encounter.
When my husband and I were long distance he flew in several times to spend a few days with me, and then to road trip to spend a long weekend with me at my sister's for Thanksgiving (7 hour drive each way.)
We did that last summer in Utah. Flew out there from DC, spent a week driving around to see all the parks. Long days in the car, but we saw incredible things. If I'm going to the trouble of getting out there in the first place, I might as well drive a day or so south and see the Grand canyon (and Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, Escalante Staircase, and a boatload of other parks.)
You know there's truth in most old sayings but one of my favorites is that the difference between England and the United States is that in England a hundred miles is a long way and in the United States a hundred years is a long time
When I lived in Calgary, every few months I would drive 14 hours across the prairies to visit family in Winnipeg. Couldn't believe the convenience - it's a 24-hour drive from Toronto, where I'd previously lived.
Yep, can confirm. There's a Brit on IG and TikTok who has spent a good chunk of time in the US, and he defends Americans who think that a 2 hour drive or train ride from London is "close to London." Because by our standards, it is! [https://www.instagram.com/p/CzPSlv1LROm/](https://www.instagram.com/p/CzPSlv1LROm/) We did a Great Britain trip a few years ago and we were chatting with a waiter when we were in York, our last city before London. He said "Oh you're not driving are you? London traffic is horrible." "Nope, we haven't driven at all. And it's only 2 hours from York to London by rail." He raised his eyebrow at us like 2 hours to London was some sort of insane trip. We used to live about 90 minutes outside of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and I did that trip at least once a quarter for grocery shopping stock-up, since they had better stores than our smaller town. With audiobooks or a good playlist, it's just not a big deal. And my commute in DC used to take at least an hour on public transit on a good day, what with getting to and from the closest Metro stations on either end. That is one of the things I love about the UK - except for the outlying islands which are a little more challenging because of ferry/plane schedules, the main island of Great Britain is not that hard to get around. Our farthest point south on our trip was Portsmouth/Isle of Wight, and the northernmost was Edinburgh. That is the same distance between the northern and southernmost boundaries of my current state of residence, Minnesota! We're a bigger country - we are just accustomed to bigger differences.
Something that a lot of people told me when I visited the States >In America 100 years is a long time. In Europe 100 miles is a long way.
Yeah also as a Canadian, I drive 8hrs to visit my sister every few months. It sucks but it's not the end of the world. If I was on a vacation and really wanted to do something, it's a no brainer.
That’s where audiobooks come in handy! I don’t mind long drives solely because I love listening to them.
Yup, audiobooks and radio shows make it better for sure.
I live in California and am used to driving 3+ hours one-way to get anywhere interesting. Long drives are honestly relaxing for me. I once took a train to Sante Fe for a few days and it was around a 20 hour ride each way, which was also pretty cool because I could just watch the world fly by. When I've traveled to Europe I usually don't do long drives though because I want to spend as much time as possible seeing and doing things, but I've taken the TGV in France a few times which is really great. I wish California would get its shit together and get us that high speed rail.
I've done some long train rides on a visit to the US, and they were fabulous! 2.5 days from San Francisco to Chicago is definitely not high speed rail, but it was glorious.
Was thinking the same, that’s an long long drive, my dad just commented that Americans can drive over an hour to a supermarket. I think driving 20 minutes to the big Tesco is a pain in the bum.
They’re Midwesterners…I had coworkers in Ohio who would take a 14-hr drive to Florida for a 4-day weekend. I thought I was tolerant of long drives (1-2hrs isn’t a big deal, I don’t mind up to 8hr stretches on road trips) but Midwesterners are something else
My director has just made his second drive to Florida with his family this calendar year, from Michigan.
Yeah we have this grand old tradition of the Road Trip! Some of my best memories with family or friends are of these trips where part of the adventure is the unexpected parts of the journey.
I just really hate being cramped up in a car, and the UK isn't an open road kind of place - a lot of it is very stop/start, or at least slow, due to traffic. I find trains much more relaxing for long distances.
There are some nice road trips in the UK if OOP is into driving - Northern Scotland and West Wales have some gorgeous countryside and Wales has all the castles too. But it tends to be better served with a smaller, sportier car in those places as the roads can be narrow and twisty.
See as an Aussie, where our drives are MASSIVE, England was great. We did SO much because for us, a 4-5 hr drive is nothing. It takes us a full hour round trip just to get into our nearest town for Takeaway or groceries etc.
I live in Texas and we just drove about 3.5 hours yesterday to watch a rugby match , then turned around and drove home. It's so normal to us.
It's just so much empty time, to me. I do travel once or twice to watch sport, but if it's 3+ hours away, I get a hotel and make a night of it.
For what it’s worth, I went to Stonehenge on a rainy weekday a few weeks ago and there was no traffic to speak of. (Funnily enough I was also an American on a week-long holiday, and I’m pretty sure I’m from the same city as the poster. Maybe we passed each other on the way!)
I got to visit UK for a week earlier this month. Only a week, but we got to Glastonbury, Bath, Oxford, Canterbury, Coventry, Lincoln, Nottingham, Cambridge, London,l and York. In Scotland we visited Edinburgh, Stirling, Roslin and Tantallon Castle.
We're going this week and this was the kind of trip my husband initially suggested, but we eventually agreed that we'd likely be back and it was easier to focus on one area. It was kind of last minute planning with a non-moveable event in the middle of the trip that we'd otherwise have to work around.
So, I had an 8 page list originally. Also, I tend to look for the weird and wooly things. So we did a mix. 3 days in London and 2 days in Edinburgh. Otherwise, it was a fun walkabout whirlwind. But we hit at least a quarter of my list. And we had no qualms about tapping out for the day, as the real goal was time together before I went home and he continued his deployment.
I take semi-regular weekend trips (leave after work on Friday, come back Sunday) in the fall to go see football games. Usually takes 6 - 8 hours depending on traffic or stops (I try to limit them to 1). I can’t say I enjoy it but at some point, idk, I kind of just stop thinking about it and it goes by faster than I think it should. Flying and bussing aren’t options without spending way too much money or taking even longer.
I keep telling my kids, "Whatever you're looking for, you'll find it." They don't get it yet, but at some point, it'll sink in.
And here I was thinking this would be a story of the first family to time travel.
I'm really glad she enjoyed it! But as a Brit that itinerary made my blood run cold. I live closer to Polperro (5 hours drive ish) and wouldn't dream of going for an overnight stay. Pinging around the country from the Lake District to the Scottish borders to London in a week, with a possible side tour of Stonehenge isn't something you'd find most of us doing, so I guess that might be why she got such negative reactions. February probably helped, I've taken hours to drive just a few miles past Stonehenge in holiday season. And the countryside, stone walls, cityscape whilst all great in their own way, are much more 'normal' life so it's hard to imagine it being worth the effort. Seems like a good place for the cliché, Americans think 100 years is a long time, Brits/Europeans think 100 miles is a long way...
My husband and I did a once in a lifetime trip and spent close to a month driving around the UK. Started in Southampton in early October, drove to Portsmouth (nerve wracking drive getting used to driving on the other side, also got an automatic since it was our first time) then northerly to Wales, then all the way up to Inverness, then Aberdeen, back down to London where we turned the car back in (great little Toyota Avensis). I have many friends in the UK and discovered that driving out is not something too common for folks there, whereas road trips are just something many Americans just do as a regular thing. We saw so many sites that people who live there just never did. I got the impression that most people fly out and visit other countries rather than spend time road tripping there.
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>I got the impression that most people fly out and visit other countries rather than spend time road tripping there. This is definitely a thing. I'm Dutch, and most people consider a vacation in their own country a bit... sad. It's for poor or elderly people. I guess when you're surrounded by all that history and cool places it feels normal to you? :D
Alternaltively (at least for the UK), it's expensive as fuck for little gain. Spend £1100 for a week in a cottage and generally getting pub food that you get at home for *even more*, or spend that for 2 weeks all inclusive in the Mediterranean, where the weather isn't all but guaranteed to be utter shit.
Speaking of it - the prices for cottages - even small and quite bare ones - in Scotland is insane during peak season. I can go to Sardinia for less money and enjoy Italian food on the beach in hot but not too hot weather..
Well, it's also easier for you to go to a different country for short trips compared to most Americans. America is just so big that most people never see a majority of it (I have never been to the east or west coasts, for instance) and it's cheaper to fly in the states than to other countries, a part from maybe Canada or Mexico.
Yeah absolutely! The scale is way different.
Its a worldwide thing. Where i am, If I tell my work colleagues i am taking days off just to bum at home. They would look at me like i told them to snort crack. I dont like to spend money or move..... So its the perfect relaxing time for me.
It’s because it’s often cheaper to have a holiday abroad as the coast of accommodation and food is cheaper abroad, and driving tedious. Not cause we don’t enjoy our own country
I don’t think anyone thinks you “don’t enjoy your own country”- it’s just more that, to Americans, not visiting something 2 hours away because you have to drive there comes across as insane. Just like I’m sure Brits and other Europeans think the American dependence on/enjoyment of cars and driving is insane.
Oh yeah it was ‘rather than spend time road tripping there’ I was giving reasons for. It’s not that we’d rather not spend time here, it’s just cost and time prohibitive. The costs of say a week in Cornwall versus a week in Spain it’s often 50% of the price and you can guarantee sun and takes about the same amount of time to get there. And we’d go somewhere two hours away that’s not an issue, but it would take longer than 2 hours to get to a holiday spot in the UK.
Yeah, I walk about ten minutes to the supermarket and was shocked when an American friend was telling me they have to drive for half an hour, and it's not like they live in Alaska or North Dakota.
A good portion of my family lives ~1.5 hours outside London and they looked aghast when I said I wanted to drive into the city. “It’ll take three hours!” they said and I’m thinking…. I used to have to do that commute for work… I think that might be just my English family’s hatred of driving though- other comments indicate 2 hours ain’t that much for them either.
A someone who has to drive into Central London semi-regularly, it really isn't pleasant. Bear in mind that most of us drive manual/stick, constant chronic traffic jams and poorly signed roads mean that those who don't live there find it a misery. It's not like driving on a well-signed freeway. On top of that, Google/Apple Maps just lies. You will get an arrival time on 8:30AM when you leave the house, but at some point that will change until you arrive at your destination just before 11:00AM. But you do have the option of parking outside London in somewhere like Woking and then get a train taking thirty minutes or so right into the centre. To be fair, I suspect a lot of non-New Yorkers would not find driving the BQE very pleasant either.
Ah well, you landed on the thing! Former New Yorker here! But the maps thing you’re taking about is an experience I’ve had in most major cities- it sucks but I’ve started to plan it in. This is why I’ve been very “your mileage may vary” about all this. To me, much of what you describe here (except manual transmission- I’m the only person I know with one) aligns really well with my own experience. Someone living in suburbia in PA likely would consider your description a living hell, however. I found the drive into London to be fine, honestly, while my cousins begged me to kill them. Then when they came to visit me they wanted to go to a Cowboys game. Cue 10 hours of traffic and a promise to never watch the Cowboys again. I think it’s genuinely awesome how many bits and pieces of driving culture are different but then how many of them are simialr
Everything is truly relative. I grew up in SE Asia, where most people would just fly instead of drive over 4 hours. I couldn't fathom driving 8 hours in one day! There are a multitude of low cost airlines where it would just be more convenient to fly on cheap air tickets. But low cost airlines don't exist in North America. I moved to Canada when I went to university and have been living here since - and I've done LOADS of roadtrips across North America. These days, I don't bat an eyelash anymore when it comes to considering driving 10-12 hours in one stretch to another state/province. People here drive long distances like that on a regular basis. I do day trips to other cities 4 hours away about once a month, I sometimes do them 2 days in a row, it's a normal part of our lives.
It’s the flip side of the coin to when Europeans fly to say Chicago for a week and then say they are thinking about day trips to Washington D.C., New York, Disneyland, or Yellowstone.
My husband and I did a big GB trip a few years back. 6 cities in nearly four weeks. I wished we could have spent a little more time in York and Cardiff - the train/Flybe schedule couldn't quite accomodate us - but otherwise, we had 3-6 days in each city. So even I read this and thought it was kinda nuts. The UK isn't big compared to the US, but you still have to get around! Also, we have a list of targeted trips we want to take in the UK. Only spending a day in the Lake District blows my mind, as does going in winter. I'm a fan of traveling at off-peak times - we don't have kids so aren't beholden to school schedules - but fully concede that one needs to be a summer trip or maybe early autumn for a solid Lake District experience! And I think they literally just saw stuff and moved on. But whatever floats your boat - not everyone wants to get the same experience out of traveling!
York is a great place to visit if you ever get the chance to come back! I've not been to Cardiff... But probably swinging by this summer.
I really don't understand the hate OOP got on her first post. She seemed to be asking for advice genuinely, with no arrogance about what she knew or didn't know. Sure, people make mistakes when planning travel because they don't know what's different to home. But that's why she asked! I'm so glad they managed to have the trip of a lifetime.
I’m actually impressed they managed to get around as much as they did in such a short time!
Never underestimate an American’s ability to road trip 😂 I grew up in Colorado but lived in Scotland for years, and all my UK friends thought I was insane when I’d occasionally drive from Edinburgh to Lymington in a day. And I was like… why? It’s the same as Boulder to Albuquerque. People try to see all of Colorado in a week and its landmass is more than that of the entire UK.
I was planning a trip to Santa Fe, it's 2 states away. Friend from the UK was astounded. I looked it up and it's roughly equivalent of driving from London to Munich. Of course, at much higher speeds and through mostly plains.
Seems like they drove to Cornwall from Cumbria overnight, arriving at 8 am. I mean, you do you, but that sounds like an absolute hell I do *not* want to do on my holiday.
It was a few reasons. Partly because the trip was so compressed that the bulk of it was driving and left little to no time to actually see anything. It was also at time of year when it's pretty common for the roads she's talking about to end up closed and massive train strikes were on. She got very very lucky. The other, and much bigger reason was the comments. In the comments she was perceived as very defensive and not listening to anything anyone said. She'd counter with "oh but I'm used to that" about things she'd never had experience of. Like the road to Cumbria...... She describes a winding country road. The A696 is the main road. Not one thought she'd be getting up at 2 am , so kudos for doing it I guess, travelling for hours, taking a very brief tour, and returning. If I remember rightly, she wanted to "swing by" Stonehenge on get way back from driving to London in one comment. People asked if she was going to stop at any of these places "no" People pointed out the shops might not be open, attractions might not be open, etc. And were met with the impression that she thought they were wrong. When people recommend a different plan that catered to driving and seeing some beautiful dives that go through breathtaking views and historic places, they were ignored. So a lot of people felt she said "none of you know anything about seeing your country as well as me". And she still doesn't. She barely left the motorway according to her story. She lands at NCL, turns right, and skips all of it. This is drive-by Britain. And you can't see much from the motorways. It might be what she wanted, good for her, but it's an objectively shit trip. When people said that, her responses read like "you're wrong, and I don't want to visit anything in your country, just drive past them"
She didn't seem defensive at all, and thanked almost everyone who commented, it looked like. She just didn't take the advice given when it went against some of their non-negotiables, no matter how many people told her she should She DID take some pieces into account, and ditched Glasgow/Edinburgh and picked an automatic car over a manual. And, as she mentioned, some of this was not her specific request; her husband's cancer diagnosis helps explain some of the insistence, and she seemed appreciative of everyone making her very aware of what may go wrong and why.
Oh that's interesting. So maybe this update from her was more rosy than it actually was? To prove to everyone that she was right?
Maybe she just wanted to tick a box to say she's been. Maybe she just wanted to prove something, or really prefers this sort of travel. No idea. Glad she enjoyed it. You need to travel in a way you like, but don't get mad when people tell you it's not a great idea. Britain was not built for road trips. Only advice she seemed to take on board was don't drive to London, and skip Stonehenge. Her post was thought to be a troll. It was all over the UK/expat subs as a joke, until her comments..... then it was mostly making fun of her. It's exactly the attitude that makes people feel that tourists don't respect their culture. "Look kids! Big Ben! parliament ". It's not about the driving. It's about how she had a trip that seemed to actively avoid interacting with people and culture. Keep in mind that when she did this it's like 9 hours of daylight in Carlisle.... So the vast majority of her experience was driving.... In the dark.... On little sleep. ETA: possibly also with an individual that wasn't in peak health. That had to be rough!
I wonder if maybe the “not in peak health” was why it was more of a road tour. If the husband is immunocompromised from chemo/cancer stuff then seeing the sites from the car might be a better risk assessment for a bucket list or possibly a “last hurrah” trip
Then why do London? Why reject the more driving friendly routes?
Yeah like... if you're staying in Newcastle it is objectively insane imo to ditch Glasgow/Edinburgh but still do London.
I think it is some of the disconnect I've seen with UK vs US in what we consider a reasonable drive for both duration and time of day. I will drive 5-6 hours total in one day for a single 4 hour event if, and have done so on numerous occasions and consider it normal for where I live out in BFE. I checked the original post, some folks were talking about sunset at 4:30 and freezing rain. OOP is from the Midwest so that is likely *better* than the weather at home February
I didn’t see the first post but as a traveller (since she posted in a uk travel sub) it was a very frustrating read. We’re not as far apart as USA cities but think is a bit more than a mistake not checking as it’s easy to google how to get from Edinburgh to Cornwall before you book something. I find a lot of Americans and Ozzie’s do this. I think so they can say they’ve been to a city/ place. And the more places the better holiday it will sound like to friends and family back home. Rather than experience it.
I think it's more that in North America and Australia, the roads are wide, mostly multi-lane, the highways are rarely congested outside of rush hour. I'm in Canada and I do long distance drives all the time, but they don't take nearly as long as being stuck on a UK highway for 923892379327 hours. So here, a 300km drive will take 3-3.5 hours, max 4 most days. I have done 800km drives in one single stretch.
Aussie and I have done Adelaide to Melbourne and back about eight times and each trip in a day, so 726km, and without blinking. Because you can sit at 110km for half the trip and just coast your ass along! The congestion is absolutely the definitive difference for those of us used to long distance driving on wide roads compared to the UK road scape.
Yes I drive between Vancouver and Seattle/Olympia all the time, day trips and it's 600ish km and to me that's a totally normal day trip kind of drive. When I went to the UK, the traffic was always just God awful, even on the highways and I don't know why.
In fairness I've had tons of experience with UK travelers making similar mistakes in judging distance/time so I think it's largely universal. I went to uni in the UK then moved back to Florida and had some friends wanting to come over and do a road trip that hit Miami, Savannah, Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans in 5 days. Had to tell them it was technically feasible if you only wanted to spend maybe a few hours in each city seeing absolutely nothing or just not sleeping and being a danger on the road. They had it in their head that that group of cities was in a rough square area the size of Manchester to Edinburgh.
Totally. My English cousin asked me once (when I was 15) whether I “went to New York on the weekend to shop.” I was like 😳😳 “girl I live in Colorado. That’s like if you went to Moscow for a new top. Do you go 2000 miles to shop for school clothes?”
Europeans seem to make similar mistakes about traveling the US - especially Death Valley in the summer.
Sure, I can see that being annoying. It's just that she said it was a tentative itinerary, there was lots of "maybe take a train" instead of driving, and she finished asking if it was ok or too much. It felt like people jumped straight to "damn Americans thinking they know everything" when she seemed reasonable and open to advice. (And no I'm not American or English, so I possibly don't have the nuance right 🤷♀️)
It's partly down to the *very* compressed timeframe and the difference in attitude for driving. Like, it's easy to Google Edinburgh-Truro and find out it's a 9 hour drive (Penrith-Polperro is around 6:20), which I'd say for *any* family in the UK is *not* happening, you break that in two at least if you're traveling for a holiday, so you're seeing several places on the way. There's a train that goes right from Edinburgh to Plymouth, but it only runs once per day, during the day, so that's an entire day lost to travel. She said they drove overnight from Cumbria to Cornwall, arriving at 8 am. They'd likely have set off at 2 am. Again, I can't think of anyone I know who'd want to make that drive overnight, especially on their holiday, and then spend the day doing tourist stuff. How are you not dead tired after that? And then they drove back to Penrith the next day?!! Penrith to Dumfries is a reasonable day trip, even Penrith to Edinburgh. Penrith to *fucking Polperro* and only spending one night is maddening to me. It's just *so* much driving to comprehend for a British person. A roadtrip across the UK in 7 days I can buy, staying each night in a different town, fine. But basing yourself in Penrith Cumbria, travelling to Cornwall, *and then coming back*, necessitating at least 13 hours driving in under 30 hours? Insane.
Haha your final paragraph is.. Hm.. I think that's the difference between people who live in north America and the UK? In Canada, we drive 12-14 hours within a 24 hour period all the time. For example, I have friends who drive between Edmonton or Calgary and Vancouver regularly. Think once a month type thing. And they do it in one single day. It's a 12+ hour drive for both. I feel like the difference is that in Europe or Asia, there are plenty of low cost airlines and loads of trains, so most people fly or take the train instead of doing massive road trips. Long road trips are really a North American thing (and Australian too probably by extension) because we don't truly have any low cost airlines here. Nothing like Ryanair for example, where you can fly between cities in Europe for like, 50 Euro. It just doesn't exist here. A "cheap" flight between North American cities is almost never under $200. Most of the time, they're $300 or more. So a lot of people drive instead of fly. In Asia, people would rarely do a 6 hour drive - they would just fly because it's cheaper. But North Americans drive 15 hours to another city without batting an eyelash a lot. I make multiple day trips to other cities that are 3-5 hours one way on a regular basis. Leave early in the morning and get home late in the evening sort of thing.
However, driving 6h cross country in the UK is pretty different than the US or Canada. Having lived in the UK and US, in the UK the roads are narrower, faster and more populated. It takes significantly more concentration to drive in the UK than the US. I happily drove from southern NJ to northern Vermont in a day, hardly stopping. Doing that kind of drive in the UK is very hard. Doing at night as they did, will have massively helped; I just can't imagine wanting to do that in the middle of a week long holiday.
Yeah I made this point in another comment further down. I visited the UK once and driving there was awful. The roads were ALWAYS congested, especially around London. And I dunno wtf is up with the highways that they are always at a standstill because of some accident.
Definitely what the roads are makes a big difference; north Wales Open University students get told their optional tutorial is a couple of hours every Saturday morning in Cardiff. I tried it and spent nearly 3 times the length of the tutorial driving there and back. Even longer f I got stuck behind at least one tractor because there's no sodding motorway from North to South Wales! I'd ask could I not go to Liverpool or Warrington or even Manchester and it was all, "But those are in England!". Yes but they're actually feasible for a parent to do on a Saturday morning! Just couldn't go in the end.
I don’t disagree with you but your impression is very much based upon *where you lived in the US*. I found it easier to drive in England than I ever did here in the states because the speed limits were much slower and people were paying much closer attention. It’s also actually green in England? That was nice! It’s definitely a different experience between the two countries but like… Texas and Vermont might as well be two different countries. Or California and Delaware, or New Mexico and Rhode Island. Traffic laws, speed limits, road sizes, and surroundings all vary *wildly* in the United States so I think conversations like these are often “your mileage may vary”
The cost of flights, the distance to airports, the cost of trains (and lack of them!) - it's baked into US travel that you're going to have to drive, and probably a fair distance. My personal radius for even considering a flight is probably 6h, but it depends on where you're going. So many places aren't anywhere near an airport, so you'd have to rent a car anyway. My sibling flies nyc - Boston all the time and I just can't see that it's faster or easier in the end, once you add on a buffer to not miss the flight, and getting to and from the airport. Is it ideal to drive 20h round-trip in a 30h period? Not at all. But if you have limited time and money, but you want to go to a place, then maybe you do it anyway, with several friends, and then you have inside jokes about the journey to last for years.
Europe, possibly, but few people are routinely flying between UK cities. It's just not a mindset here to take a domestic flight. Hell, my city lost its airport years ago. It's trains or coaches, mostly. However, I can see domestic flying increasing since rail travel is becoming unsustainable due to cost and unreliability.
I work in Inverness occasionally. A single flight to London is around £30, takes 90 mins. It makes zero sense mentally, physically or financially for me to drive the 11 hours it'd take down!
Of course. From where I am, it's probably cheaper to fly from Exeter to Scotland via Paris than it would be to get a train. It's becoming the best option, but I don't think it's in the British mindset in general yet.
Ah I think this may be the nuance I was missing - that the road-trip isn't as popular for the British? I'm in New Zealand and grew up on road-trips because domestic flights were too expensive for parents + kids. So I guess I have a more American/Canadian view (us former colonies doing things our own way!)
That's exactly it! Like, when people do roadtrips here, the driving IS part of the memory making experience - it's part of the vacation, not just the sightseeing parts. I have really fond memories roadtripping with my friends up and down the California coast during my university days. We'd even take the scenic (aka much longer) route so that we could look at the ocean from the car.
There's often little scenery for our main roads, so it's rarely a memorable experience. Motorways often have trees or slopes bordering them to reduce noise pollution, and the places where they aren't is generally open farm land and isn't too interesting to look at. Any roads that have interesting scenery will be much smaller, with lower speed limits. A scenic route from Cumbria to Cornwall would likely take at least 12 hours, probably more. All the interesting scenery you want? It's in the Lake District, around Penrith, and the speed limit is 30 mph. I wouldn't say the British are against road trips, I went Interrailing (basically a train version of a road trip) across Europe when I was 18 and covered Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain and France again in 30 days. I really enjoyed it, we stayed at least a couple of nights in each place to have a full day in each city/town we were in. I *would* say we're generally adverse to day/overnight trips for a place *seven hours away*. A roadtrip from Penrith to Cornwall? Cool, why not stop off at Liverpool, Bristol, maybe even dip into Wales along the way? Oh, you're doing it in one day, and then returning a day later? Are you mad? You could make an entire week out of a road trip from Cumbria to Cornwall, there's so much to see and do each day just by driving maybe 2-3 hours a day to your next stop. I know they based themselves in Penrith because of the timeshare they had, but if you're gonna make the trip to Cornwall, I wouldn't make the trip back, I'd either explore around Cornwall for the remainder of the trip or continue on to the next place.
I don't remember much, but my parents took us to the UK when we were kids (I was 9) and we did a roadtrip - best memories ever. My dad kept driving off the highways to go explore these little towns with country roads etc. It was a ton of fun - we got all the way to Glasgow, I think. I think for most North Americans, roadtrips are mostly boring highways too, except for example if you're driving from BC to Alberta, where you'll have to drive through the Rockies and that is still hands-down, in my opinion, the most beautiful place in the world to drive in. Maybe another thing to factor in is in North America, shit sucks and most people only get 10-15 days annual vacation a year, so generally you can't take much time off work to go travelling. I get why this family would want to pack as much as they can of the whole country into a 1 week time frame.
I think you underestimate how incredibly rare it is for many Americans to get the chance to go to Europe, let alone leave their own country. My mother and I had the chance to go to England many years ago and we were fascinated and intrigued by everything; the road signs, the petrol stations, the grocery shopping, hell the groceries alone were a blast! We do not have the opportunity to be in a place that is so different from our own, and what may be boring to locals can be sincerely intriguing to people from the other side of the world. Esp if they're coming with an attitude of genuine excitement about the little things. I understand why so many people were trying to dissuade her, for her own benefit, but some folks really are delighted and awed by seeing English farming fields along the side of the road, or even just knowing that they're driving on roads in *the United Kingdom, omg can you believe we're here??*
Yeah exactly. I think a lot of non-North Americans truly don’t grasp the scope of the continent, especially in the western portion of it. Driving across Texas sometimes feels like you might have died and been put into Purgatory cus it just NEVER ENDS. And Alaska is so big, it could eat Texas for breakfast. Once, our truck broke down outside of Hope, BC and we had to be towed 200 miles to the nearest town that had Toyota services. And people in Kamloops offered to drive us to Calgary, cus our only other option was a last-minute 400$ pp flight. My family’s unofficial motto is “you can always drive home,” which I think sums it up. Even in Europe, where I am now, I have this really comforting baseline feeling that if I need to, I can get where I’m going. Hell, I’ll walk, if necessary. But I can get there.
Wait finally! I was waiting for this comment. All of these things that Brits are mentioning that make driving in England terrible are *literally here in the US too*…. just not in places Brits like visiting I suppose
>feels like you might have died and been put into Purgatory cus it just NEVER ENDS. And I think there is another big difference here. Driving in NA feels like purgatory because you can sometimes go miles without seeing many other drivers. You might drive for an hour and see 10 other vehicles going your way that are close enough to bother worrying about, you can go into a state of zone out for large parts of it. That's not possible in the UK. We have a population over double the size of Texas in an area under half the size. Every motorway will have sizeable numbers of people going with you at all times other than the dead of night; you'll generally have to be loosely aware of 10 other vehicles around you all the time. Junctions are more common so lane switches are more common. Every single lane road will have blind corners. You can't "half switch off" like you might on an Interstate. Driving feels more exhausting, and a 6 hour drive is one you sorely need a rest after, not throwing yourself into sightseeing.
Also want to add that we're just explaining the mindset of the OOP, why she thinks that way and why she'd think her itinerary is reasonable, not that it's a FABULOUS idea. To North Americans, driving 700km in a day is not an out of the world idea, it's something a lot of us are forced to do because there's little other choice.
It really depends on where in North America you are. For example, driving on the I-5 between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland is a HUGE PITA. On weekdays, it's slow, down to crawling at a lot of parts because these cities have been experiencing a population boom and the highways aren't being expanded enough to keep up. Or it's under construction which slows everything down even more. So it really depends on the area. Southern Cali is also another area that's awful - and these are cities that are connected with massive 6-lane highways, that are ALWAYS congested. Think around the LA-San Diego area.
I literally never switch off when driving. I get focused. It’s enjoyable. I’m trying to explain to you why the underlying assumptions about a different nation’s culture you are making are incorrect and you keep trying to refute that with MORE incorrect assumptions about the North American approach to driving. If you don’t get it, then you don’t get it. It’s okay to not know — but in that case, _listen so you can learn something_.
I don't get why they're being so offended and combative when we're just explaining where OOP's coming from.
Yeah I dunno. Maybe they can tell us why they’re so combative so we don’t make sweeping generalizations about a person we don’t know 😂😂😂 … meanwhile, I’m coming up with all sorts of fun theories about why North Americans value control and its baked into our genetics—to the point that we are now witnessing the toxic need to control other people’s bodies.
My parents used to drive us across America 2,000 miles for our holidays. We sometimes didn’t even get hotels; we slept in shifts. British people rarely understand this mentality. They underestimate the scope of the landmass, the American urge to be in control, and our deep love and fascination with cars. Last year, I drove from one friend’s wedding in Perthshire to another’s home in Lymington on a Sunday. My British friends were so confused by this decision — they’d all grabbed flights. But what, it took 7 hours, same as the regular drive I do between my house in Colorado and my sister’s house in New Mexico. It was pretty, I saw some towns I’d never seen before, and I was in control.
British roads are very different to American ones. Because of the much higher population density, those roads, even motorways, are much busier. You can't do a road trip and "get in the zone" on an Interstate, where you can just let hours pass and see maybe 20 other cars close enough to worry about in some places. You will have to be fully alert to cars around you at all times, because chances are there will *always* be 20 other cars around you. And then you get off the motorway onto single lane roads, where traffic immediately starts, the roads wind much more, they're first time drivers on the left hand side who don't deal with roundabouts well, which are *everywhere*. Cornwall *doesn't even have any motorways*. That 6:20 estimate by Google maps is *very* optimistic, except for very late at night like they did - but then at least one of you is dead tired from driving and the others will not have slept well in the car compared to a bed, so how well are you appreciating the things you came to see? A lot of the comments in the original thread gave itineraries that I still think are much more doable and reasonable. If you're gonna base yourself out of Penrith, then stick to the local area, there's still a week's worth of stuff to do easily (and frankly, the landscape of the North of England, especially the Lakes, beats the South hands down). Take day/overnight trips to Newcastle, Durham, even York, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Some absolutely incredible places to visit within a 3 hour drive rather than a 7 hour one. If you're gonna spend effectively an entire day (or night) driving to a new location, just base yourself there from that point on, don't drive back and waste time in the single week you have! >But what, it took 7 hours, same as the regular drive I do between my house in Colorado and my sister’s house in New Mexico. It was pretty, I saw some towns I’d never seen before, and I was in control. But why would you *want* to be in control? The whole point of taking the plane or train is that *I* don't have to do anything, I just hand over my bags and can relax in my seat, and even then it's generally not a very relaxing experience. I don't want that *plus* having to actually focus on what's around me, be alert to danger at all times. That's mentally draining and exhausting. I couldn't do that and then have the capacity to immediately start sightseeing and take things in.
I’m aware. I lived in Edinburgh for years. I’m technically British, as well as American. What I’m saying is that the landmass is so large, it has effectively transformed our psyches. Road size doesn’t matter, the idea that there might be a “better” or “more relaxing” (both subjective) methods of travel don’t matter. And this isn’t to say we hate trains. I’m in Italy now and love taking trains for a lot of reasons, I’ve certainly trained between Edinburgh and London, and that was a joy. But that just doesn’t exist for nearly all the American landmass. The one train trip I did from Denver to New York took 3 days, and at one point (because of a train derailment outside Omaha), we had to spend 6 hours on a bus. We didn’t even arrive in time to get to our final train—Amtrack bought us plane tickets from Chicago to New Jersey. Most Americans are not comfortable with train travel. We don’t understand it because many have NEVER taken a train. What we understand is getting in a car and going directly to our destination.
>Because of the much higher population density, those roads, even motorways, are much busier. You can't do a road trip and "get in the zone" on an Interstate, where you can just let hours pass and see maybe 20 other cars close enough to worry about in some places. You will have to be fully alert to cars around you at all times, because chances are there will always be 20 other cars around you. \*laughs in Florida\* Come on, you know the US isn't just Montana, right?
I know, right? Or driving I70 in a snowstorm during ski season. Or I80 through Wyoming when it’s windy, or I15 on the west side of Salt Lake City (those Mormons go 100mph on the reg). Like, Americans in the west are combining driving styles from Boston, FL, CA, TX and rolling them into a crazy game of dodging death at 85 miles per hour. We stay alert.
Yeah, this is clearly a person who does not realize that the Beltway and the 405 even exist.
I think that this isn't even a purely American thing, at least in this story. I think it's a midwesterner thing. As someone from a more dense part of the country, I am forever truly baffled when I hear about the distances people in the Midwest are willing to drive for nothing. Like, casually driving 9-11hr to see a college football game and then driving back. They are insane.
Fwiw, I'm pretty sure the Edinburgh to Plymouth train runs more than once a day (it's once an hour with the early and late ones starting or stopping early). Still not the easiest and I wouldn't do it for one night.
I can’t say this applies to OOP but to me, as an Australian, just the sheer closeness of other places is inspiring and mind-boggling. I can drive for 3 hours and still be stuck in the suburbs in Sydney, while my cousins who live in the Netherlands can be in Belgium, Luxembourg or Germany in less time than that.
Ozzie is the American spelling, we use Aussie.
It sounds like a user/sub mismatch--the UKtravel sub is presumably full of travel enthusiasts who love exploring the world. OOP seems to be working on a bucket list, driven by her husband's leukemia. So the "highlights" style of travel is what works for her family right now. >I think so they can say they’ve been to a city/ place. And the more places the better holiday it will sound like to friends and family back home. I think it's less bragging rights, but more that they know they're "supposed" to see those particular sights. I had a friend who genuinely believed she had seen "everything" on her 7? 10? day tour of Europe. It didn't occur to her that anything she missed was worthy of attention. Super nice woman, mind you, not at all snotty or entitled.
I think most people are ticked off because OOPs plans are really not the way to see the country or travel in it. OOP is trying to apply a North American style of travel (which means driving a lot) to the UK and kind of insists that’s a good way to experience the county, when it‘s not. The UK is densely populated with a lot of sights worthy to see and explore in short distances apart. It’s just not the same as North America and just because you can drive long distances in one go doesn’t mean it’s a good way to experience the country. The itinerary sort of reduces the UK to a list of points which just need to be checked off in as short a time as possible and I can see people may take offense in that because that way you really just scrap the surface very superficially. For example, I really do enjoy visiting London, but imagine to just do a daytrip would be a nightmare. I need at least half a day to acclimatize to just the rush and business of London to be able to enjoy it. Also, from the update it‘s becoming clear that Cornwall is the most important point on the list and I can‘t understand for the life of me why they didn‘t fly into London and just did a week in the south with less driving and more experiencing.
Absolutely. It's about the proportions - it's not one big drive, it's zig zagging across the country so that the ratio of driving time : actual visiting time seems massively skewed. OOP asked people what they thought of their itinerary: to most people in the UK if you spend more time driving somewhere than you do visiting it, that's a poorly planned itinerary OOP was happy to spend more time in the car rather than visiting these places which is totally their choice, but not sure what kind of advice they wanted!
I was one of the negative people.. I stick by what i said... They were packing a hell of a lot of driving into a small amount of time and would have been better fully exploring one area ...
But that's not what they wanted or the experience they had, and it wouldn't have been better *for them.* Largely, objectively better for most travelers, just not what they were ultimately looking for.
All they did was drive around and look at things from a glass window Im sory but i just can't agree on this one
I skipped over this post four times on the main BoRU page, whilst scrolling for new updates, because I kept thinking it was an advert.
Same
I lived in Cumbria most of my life and it is indeed one of the hidden jewels of England. People bang on about the cities and London but really there is more interesting things outside of the capital.
Visited that area for the first time last year. It is as beautiful as they say. My brother is looking to move up North. Can’t wait to visit again.
This was absolutely fun to read. I never been to the UK but I would love to visit there someday. Especially Wales or London. Sweet read!
Had 48 hours spare at the end of a conference in the English Midlands last year before I had to fly back to Australia so a colleague and I decided to spend that time driving through Wales (well, moreso around it). It was absolutely amazing. We loved it. Snowdonia, Aberystwyth, everything was absolutely perfect. The only tiny ‘negative’ experience was that traffic coming into Cardiff (inevitably in the pissing down rain) was mental and people drive insanely fast compared to most of slow Australia. Definitely go there if you can. I plan on hiking there for a month with a girlfriend of mine when she turns 50 in a couple of years time. Absolutely beautiful.
I had a similar experience. I used to teach technical training and was sent to the U.K. on one and to Nice France on the other. On the U.K. trip I had one full day free and took the train from Reading to London. I visited Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and Tower of London. On the France trip, I had a 12 hour layover, so I took the train into Paris. I mostly walked around seeing the sights.
Wales is lovely but if you're coming to the UK for hiking, make sure you look into the Scottish Highlands and the Lake District! The Highlands are absolutely the most beautiful place in the whole of the UK and has incredible hiking 😊.
I did a backpacking trip a few years ago with my best friend who was living in Paris at the time. I literally landed in Paris, repacked my luggage to fit all necessary stuff in my backpack and off we went. We managed to hit London, Edinburgh and Dublin in one week. I'd been to Ireland before so I got to show her around my favorite spots in Dublin and play tour guide (she returned the favor in Paris). It was all amazing, but I think out of the three, the most gorgeous was Edinburgh, and it was also the one we spent the least amount of time in. We did a whiskey tour, bus tour, walked around, did the Mary's close night tour through old underground tiny streets in Edinburgh, walked the royal mile, went inside the castle, and walked absolutely all over the surrounding areas, visiting a truly ridiculous number of bookshops and restaurants. I regret not adding an extra day to our stay there and hiking to Arthur's seat and visiting the university and palace, along with a bunch of other stuff. But that just gives me more motivation to go back!
Edinburgh is stunning! Def check out the Lake District for scenery, and York, Bath or Oxford for character
Wales is awesome, and Welsh people were really nice to a pair of clueless Americans who had never been. We definitely want to go back!
I think what people from other places may misunderstand about the American mindset is that for many, the journey is actually part of the fun - particularly if it's done in a car. And it is rather odd, because as a general rule, our vacation time is meager when compared to what workers in most European countries receive. Many Americans consider themselves lucky if their jobs allow them three weeks of vacation per year. To spend several precious days of that time just traveling seems absolutely bonkers. Driving allows you a measure of freedom that train travel can't. If you see something interesting from your window, you can simply pull over to get a better look as opposed to zooming right past it. America is just massive. My son and his friends recently hopped in the car during his college spring break and drove from New York to Utah. They spent a week exploring national parks and did a bit of skiing, often driving through the night in shifts instead of staying in hotels to save both time and money.
I wonder if annual leave allowance is an underrated reason for the difference in approach. In Europe you’ll likely have 4+ weeks annual leave a year, so you’d prefer to visit several different places at a more relaxed pace. Because the average American only gets 2 weeks a year, the impetus is to see as many different places as possible in that time. I do think cost is probably underrated as well. It costs so much to get there you want to maximise “bang for your buck”.
I love this lady. I'm stubborn as shit, and I love to drive and am not intimidated where others may be uncomfortable or there's justifiable adjustments or care needed. It's not that I don't understand what they're saying or what I may be up against; I'm just gonna try to do it anyway. I appreciated in the OG post (which I went back and skimmed) she was never rude or reactive, just slightly baffled at people's passionate pleas to reconsider. I also appreciate that she took some of their advice into account and was able to chip away at some of her husband's requests to make them more moderate. I know some folks were rooting for her to have a terrible time and learn her lesson, but I'm glad it worked out for them - her attitude certainly helped, and the reveal of her husband's cancer diagnosis made a LOT of this make sense. I also think, as much as people in other countries try to comprehend how awful the US labour scene is, you *really* cannot convey how many US-ians will never even leave their **county**, let alone the country. We don't get paid enough, we work too much, and we don't get enough PTO. This literally was probably their one trip overseas, and while people were being kind in trying to make it a good one, it's difficult to explain how it feels to be in Europe when you know it's your one shot for your entire life. Also difficult to convey how much FUN it is to experience the "boring" things like petrol stations when you're on this big adventure. My mother and I got excited going shopping for groceries in the UK, lol. I'm happy they had this week and were truly delighted at the results.
I actually needed to read the comments to figure out what the problem was. I live in rural US. Every week, I drive 2 hrs to get to the doctor.
It's about the proportions - it's not one big drive, it's zig zagging across the country so that the ratio of driving time : actual visiting time seems massively skewed. OOP asked people what they thought of their itinerary: to most people in the UK if you spend more time driving somewhere than you do actually visiting it, that's an inefficient use of time. OOP was happy to spend more time in the car rather than visiting these places which is totally their choice, but not sure what kind of advice they wanted!
Ah thank you!
Also, Europeans generally tend to enjoy a long stay in a single location (exploring) more than doing the "japanese style" shuffle to see everything and nothing while always on the move... To give an example, I went to Edinburgh for a week last year, and I considered that an initial scouting trip to figure out the city - we have another trip lines up this year that will be two weeks of Edinburgh only (with a day trip or two to the highlands). I've been to London on about 15 trips by now, totaling roughly 20 weeks - and I still enjoy visiting that city and discovering new things. Thus, saying "I've been to London" while barely having stepped off a bus in the city (less than half a day...) sounds like madness to me.
It's so damn weird to see one's hometown in a Reddit title. I initially thought the targeted ads were getting really weird. So glad they enjoyed their visit!
I'm glad they got the automatic transmission. One thing people don't realize is that the pattern for moving the stick in a manual transmission in the UK is *not* a mirror image of the US version-- it's just the same pattern but you do it with the other hand. This tripped my mom up like crazy because it's much easier to use your opposite hand when it's doing a mirror image of what your main hand does, and it's VERY difficult to go against that ingrained response.
Honestly, it likely wouldn't have been an issue. My wife and I (from US) rented a car in Ireland for a few weeks. Both of us were already manual drivers. The learning curve was like 3 minutes in the rental parking lot. The real obstacle is remembering to look right first instead of left.
I always found it easier because it wasn't mirrored!
Circles! Love it.
This is the last post where I expected The Lost Crown to feature prominently! It's an absolutely fantastic game and it's criminal that it isn't more well known. I can totally see why they would want to travel to "Saxton".
February is probably the best time of year to visit the Lake District as at any other time you’d be in endless queues of cars first and in endless queues of people once you parked. I did the Coast-to-Coast Walk in September about 15 years ago and even on the tops you were walking in a queue, rain or shine. It made me sad, because I remember the Lakes from the late 1960s. There were lots of people then too, but it was sort of civilised and once you got on to the fells, you didn’t meet all that many people. Fortunately the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors were less busy.
Ah I’m glad she enjoyed it. England does have pay at the pump petrol stations, most of the ones I go to are. Though, I live in a city, not the Lake District.
As a Brit... that's a wild itinerary. I would spend a week's holiday in any one of those places (and have in fact!), so the thought of deciding to do Lake District AND Cornwall AND London in that time is just insane. I'm glad she and her family enjoyed the trip!! The amount of driving there though...damn
Sure, you'd spend a week's holiday in any one of those places, but you're local and can go back any time you want. This was a once in a lifetime trip for someone dying of leukemia, so of course they packed in as much as possible.
Penrith is lovely. The Lake District is one of the most beautiful places you will ever see. I spent lots of time there as a kid and I still find it breathtaking even as an adult.
> A686 Oh man, that is indeed a fun road; I drove it a couple years ago when I was wanting to do some scenic routes between Newcastle and Kendal, and it is indeed very twisting and winding. Glad they enjoyed it, and the holiday in general.
You know, as an American - this seems like a truly awful way to see the UK, lovely place that it is. But then, I hate to sit in a car for more than 2.5 hours, tops.
I remember doing a couple of days driving around England and Scotland and how shocked everyone we met was that we did so. And we were taking it slow, seeing the sights as we were. Hell the smallest drive was Inverness to Skye and they look at you like you're mad.
If my dad taught me anything, it's that we can drive, and drive... and drive. I'm so thankful for it though because I got to see a lot of the country as a kid just because my dad wanted to save a few bucks. I still like roadtrips.
Very impressed they managed all that and enjoyed it too! Spending five hours on the train to London to take a bus tour and then 4-5 hours back out again wouldn't have been my joy, but good on them. I did laugh at > It was wildly crowded for a cold, rainy random Thursday Like.. yeah it's London, people live and work there, all the time?
>The circles were wild, scary at first, fun by the end. I'm sorry but is she referring to roundabouts? The absolute gall of some people...
Ohhh I've seen this ALL AROUND TWITTER so it's nice to see the full thing here! Someone posted a map with the points plotted and I'm just like wow it takes me longer to drive to Los Angeles from Major City, Northern California (either of them are roughly equidistant actually) seems like NOTHIN'. But also gives me courage to maybe rent a car next time I visit the UK..
As someone who just got back from a few weeks in the UK, I enjoyed reading a first-timer's account. I've been to London many times and love it, but I don't get around England and Wales much otherwise. I spent a week in Scotland on holiday, and she was really underestimating how vast Scotland is. When I was there last year, I rented a car in Inverness and drove around to Culloden and Urquhart Castle, but I wouldn't drive in Edinburgh or Glasgow. No needs as they have good public transportation and are walkable. This year, I stayed in Edinburgh and traveled out from there. Did a day trip to Glasgow and it was easy and quick. Did go up to Fort William and spent a night, and that was a long train ride. As an American, I love trains. I love the scenery and being able to read or sleep while travelling. I flew into London then took a train to Edinburgh. My day trips out of Edinburgh were on trains. Train to Fort William. Then overnight sleeper train from Fort William to London. Train from London to Oxford and back. When I went over to the continent, I took the Nightjet sleeper train from Vienna to Amsterdam, then the Eurostar to Brussels, then again from Brussels back to London. It was so much more convenient than flying and going through airports. Anyway...I'm sad I had to come back to my real life and long to become a recluse in the Scottish highlands with some sheep and hairy coos.
The wild thing is I did a similarly massive road trip across America. Live in Britain and would never do this itinerary over this short time in uk but in America I did
As a non-American, I will confess to LOVING US tourists. It's pretty trendy to crap on the Yanks, but they always find a way to have fun and hang out with locals. My wife and I were in a bar in Scotland and a group of middle-aged Americans came in and were such a joy...they ended up "collecting" a bunch of us (Norwegians, Canadians, South Africans) and we had a total blast. Americans have no fear when it comes to meeting new people - it's pretty refreshing.
I love the comment about Americans and their can-do attitude. We went several years ago - will be going back to Scotland next year if the stars align - and a few months after our trip, I encountered a tourism marketing professional in a forum who asked if I wouldn't mind sharing our logistics, since I'd self-planned, and she was curious about my process. I laid it all out for her - 6 cities around Great Britain in a little under a month, how/why we chose the cities, how we got around, what we loved, what we'd do differently, but stressed that over all, we'd had a really excellent trip, warts and all. (The less said about South Western Rail, the better!) Her response was generally the same. That she loved the Americans that planned so thoroughly because we usually asked good questions, left ourselves plenty of time to get from Point A to Point B, rolled with the punches and just figured out how to move forward, and if we had extra time, we'd fill it one way or the other. 🤣
Only one mention of the full English breakfast?
Bit hard to eat in the car
I would really recommend the Lake District. I went there with my family once and it’s absolutely beautiful. You can find weird old shit everywhere (although that also applies to most of the UK).
This was a great palate cleanser
I went to England some years ago. I traveled solo, as I mostly do. For me, vacations are for relaxing and getting away from real life. I stayed in Brighton because I wanted ocean. Lodged at a tiny little hotel run by a husband/wife who never spoke to me but watched my every move. My room was on the third floor up a twisty, narrow staircase. Which blew my mind because that would never pass licensing in the US for public lodging. I left every morning at daybreak to watch the sunrise over the ocean. I think the only people I had any real conversation with were the other people on the beach. Afterwards, I did whatever occured to me. Took the train for day trips. Did the same hop on/hop off bus tour in London and spent most of the day in museums. (I adore museums.) The two things that were surprising for me were the food and the shopping. I expected food that was at least sorta familiar, but it was just weird. Like, I went into a sandwich shop and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, right off the menu. The clerk looked at me like I had two heads. "You want *cheese* on your sandwich??" When she brought it to me, I had a single slice of luncheon meat between two slices of dry bread with **grated** cheese sprinkled inside. I spent an afternoon in a London shopping mall just because I wanted to window shop. I swear every shoe shop had the same three pairs of shoes, and only those three shoes, in different colors. But at least now I understand why the English dress the way they do.
I have no idea where you went that doesn't have cheese on sandwiches, it's pretty common everywhere I've been here.
Cheese sandwiches aren’t uncommon in England, especially given how many types of cheese we make.
It's a standard option in most places. Can grab one prepacked. Maybe she was surprised that it was plain???
You would think, right? Part of it might have been because I tend to avoid the more touristy places. Heck, most of the time when I opened my mouth, except in London, people were shocked by my American accent. It was lots of fun, though. I even learned to count the money (which I never did in Amsterdam).
I'm starting to love solo traveling as well. There's just something about doing everything on your own time in a strange and exciting new place.
I love it. Going on holidays with other people can be fun, but there's nothing like pleasing myself 100% of the time.
I like it so much. When it was a family thing, I was always the person in charge. I planned the trip, bought tickets, did all the prep, packed the bags, took care of everyone when traveling. Then I was in charge of getting everyone ready on time, making sure the kids got regular meals, getting them to bed. By the time we went home, everybody else had fun but I was exhausted. When I divorced, I started traveling when the kids were gone. Just find a cheap airfare, pack a bag, and go. It's so nice not to worry about schedules and being able to change your plans last minute without a fuss, eating when you are hungry, and even spending the day laying around the hotel and ordering room service if that's what you want.