Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British-themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, my post was about British author Graham Greene’s dark comedy, Our Man in Havana.
Sim continued her imaginary journey of walking the London Underground by locating the house where she was born, Call the Midwife style.
Becky shared three children’s book reviews about and by Beatrix Potter: Beatrix Potter and Her Paint Box, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. Becky also invited us to join her for a game of Edwardian Bingo.
Rick Steves recommends Bath as a place to recover from jet lag at the beginning of a trip to England. And, that’s exactly what we did in 2014. I second his recommendation, although if I were to do it again I wouldn’t bother with a car and driver on that first day (specifically, skipping the accident would be good).
It’s easy enough to take the express train from Heathrow to Paddington Station and then take a train from there to Bath. But, we were nervous about trains for our first trip, so the car and driver seemed like a good idea. Planning rail journeys in the UK is easy using the National Rail Enquiries site. We made good use of the BritRail pass that we bought through Rick Steves’ site after working our way through his detailed information about which pass to choose.
Bath was lovely and relaxing and fun.
- Orientation: Bath
- Roman Baths
- Tea in the Pump Room
- Bath Abbey
- Bath Abbey, Tower Tour
Plus, we had a great day trip from Bath to Bristol (Day trip to Bristol and Brunel’s SS Great Britain). If I go again, I want to follow in Heather’s footsteps and take a day trip to Cardiff (Day Trip to Cardiff, Cardiff Castle, and the Doctor Who Experience). Or, I might use Bath as an intermediary stop before spending several nights in Wales. The theme of our 2014 trip was the Industrial Revolution and I’m aware that by skipping Wales we missed some really informative sites. Also, castles.
I’m starting to plan our next trip to England and I’m taking a completely different strategy for the first few days. I may have been subliminally influenced by Sim’s walk of the London Underground that started at Heathrow and headed toward Richmond and Kew. Instead of a long travel day when we first arrive in London, I’m considering a short taxi ride to Kew. We can recover from jet lag in the outer suburbs of London while getting an in-depth look at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
This post is getting long, so I’ll write next week about my current fantasy of an itinerary for the first four days of our next trip to England.
