What Are the Best Day Trips to Take From London?

Hey, fellow travelers, Mark here with Walter's World, and today we're here in London. But today, I'm thinking about going on a little adventure, a day trip adventure. And so what I'm going to give for you are basically my favorite day trips from London. And I've gone to all these places, so I do recommend them. And there's a lot of different stuff you can do when you come here. But I think it's silly for me to talk about day trips from London while I'm in London. So let's go on a day trip and start talking about them. All right, so we came here to Stratford-Upon-Avon, one of the day trips, it's going to be on this list. And I want to tell you, this list is not the end all be list of day trips from London, okay? So if there's a place you suggest, put it down in the comments below. Or before we get started, put where you would think to go down below and see if it comes up in the list. Because honestly, there's so many places you could go from London that this can't get everything. What I'm going to do is kind of give you some groupings that might make it easier for you to decide what we want to do. And I'm going to start off with this group. It's the College Town Trip, okay? And if you think about college towns, you know, there's two big college towns you want to see in England. And one is Cambridge, and the other one is Oxford. And they both will give you a great experience of seeing what it's like to be a student in England. However, they do have two very different vibes. So like Cambridge, I feel it's much more of a university town. Like you go there, you're like, oh, yeah, this is a college town. Like this is the young vibe, the kind of thing like the city is all about the university. Whereas when you go to Oxford, you definitely get much more of a, there's a university and a city together kind of vibe to it. So it's a different kind of feel to when you go there. And you'll notice that when you're there. But the thing is, they both have some stuff you can do like visiting the colleges when you're there. You want to do that no matter what. Because when you go and you see the buildings, the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, they're gorgeous. Like they're straight up gorgeous. You'll see the little courts in there inside to check it out. It's just, it's just beautiful to see. Now, if you're looking at going to Cambridge, I would say the two best colleges to see are King's College and Trinity College. Those ones are just, just gorgeous to do. Okay. Another thing you can do when you're there is just go punting. If you're not sure what punting is, you know, there's people on the river and you see them in the boat, and they're like, pushing themselves along. Yes, that's punting. Okay, so you can do that in Cambridge. Also, you can do the punting when you're in Oxford. And both places when you're going along the rivers, you're going punting along, it's great to see the college buildings when you're there. I just feel that Cambridge, that one, the punting along there, you see some of the more of the college, you get so much more of that college vibe that you're going to choose between the two. I would choose Cambridge over Oxford, but it's up to you. They both make great day trips. Okay, now my next day trips I want to tell you about are more the castle and palace vibe. Okay. Now there's a lot you can go to that are nearby. But I'm going to say probably the two most important ones. One is going to Windsor Castle. Okay, you've heard about it, Windsor Castle. Is that where the royals live? Yes. Yes, that's where the royals lived. Okay, so you can go there and you can see that and do a tour. And it is gorgeous. Like you see that you really feel the pomp and circumstance of the monarchy over the years, but it's a cool thing to do. Or you can go to Hampton Court. Hampton Court is where you can see where Henry VIII played tennis among other things when he was there. And I personally like Hampton Court better than Windsor because it's much more of a, an experience when you're there. And what's cool at Hampton Court is people are dressed up and they help explain all the different rooms. So it makes it a really nice experience when you're there. Now, if you're looking to see really truly village life, like, my gosh, this is postcard village England, then probably your best day trip to do and it'll be a full day trip is going to Cotswolds. And when you go to the Cotswolds, these are all those, you know, this the yellow limestone buildings and the thatched roof kind of things. I mean, it is just so gorgeous to go see. And you'll probably see a castle along the way too. But just seeing like the row of the houses and the cottages when you're there, you're like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. And the thing is, you can drive there, you can do a tour. I will say if you do do the drive in the Cotswolds, don't be surprised, you got to park a little bit out of the village and then walk your way in. Just because it's such a popular place, especially on the weekend and holidays, especially in the summertime, it's so gorgeous. But it is one of those things you can do. And if you do a tour, the tours will take you to like literally like they'll take you like 10 different places along the way. So you'll see a lot of the Cotswolds when you go there. So if you do kind of a day tour from London to see the Cotswolds, a lot of them will throw in a day trip to here in Stratford-Upon-Avon. And Stratford-Upon-Avon is famous because of Shakespeare, of course. And the thing is, when you come here, you can actually go to Shakespeare's birthplace. And what's cool is you go through and they have period pieces from that time, but you really see like where he would have lived. And they have a nice story that's there. What's cool, they have people that explain the rooms to you and they have videos that go along with it. Like you just have to have the QR code. So make sure you have data if you go there so you can, you know, watch those things. But it's really cool. And you go around, you can go to Anne Hathaway's Cottage right outside the city. You can come here, you can go to the Royal Shakespeare Company has the theater right behind me over here that you can go see a show. But you're going around, it's really kind of a pretty beautiful place. And, and keeping on with the boat theme on these day trips, here, you can take a boat ride along the Avon River. And the thing is, like, it's pretty nice. It'll go down and you go see Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare's buried, which is really a nice little town. Now I'll tell you though, this place gets packed because of the Shakespeare stuff. So you get tourists from all over the world to come here to get their pictures at Shakespeare stuff. So it can be a little bit busy, let's say, at least I would say a little bit busier than some of the other places when it comes to like tourist season than other times of the year. Except for maybe during the summer when you're going to think about our next day trip, and that's going down to Brighton. In Brighton, you go down there, you go to the pier and have a good time. But for me, what's great about going to Brighton is the Royal Pavilion. It is just an incredible architecture feat. It's so cool. The wrought iron inside that I mean, it's just you go there like my goodness, this is just fantastic. But also when you go to Brighton, you can go to the beach when you're there and it makes a nice like different away from the city day trip when you're there. Okay. So if you go more towards the east of England, another day trip you can look at is going to Canterbury, you know, Canterbury Tales. Yes, there's some, there's some silly things you could see along with that when you're there in animatronic form. But honestly, go to Canterbury, the cathedral that's there, St. Martin's Church, St. Augustine's Abbey and UNESCO World Heritage sites. They're in Canterbury. It is a really great day trip to go to and simple to do as well. Now my next day trip, is it really a city? It's a circle of stones. Yes, you can go to Stonehenge. It's not that far, you will see tons of tours that will put Stonehenge as a day trip or a half day trip, or they do Stonehenge and Bath together. And I'll talk about Bath in a sec. When you go to Stonehenge, I mean, they have a great visitor center. And what's nice is you kind of walk up and you see it kind of pop up over the hill. You're like, it's Stonehenge, you walk around it. No, you don't go to go inside of it. Now there's some things you can't, but when you do a normal tour, you can't do that. But it's really kind of cool to see how it was there and how they kind of have it set up and you learn about the history of it. It's really a wonderful thing to do. Though we'll say half day, few hours, it's all you need there. It's not a whole day kind of thing. And I think that's why a lot of the tour companies actually put it together with going to Bath, because that is my next destination for you, a day trip to Bath. I mean, honestly, of all these ones that are on here, the place that deserves the most time where you should probably spend the night or two or three or four is Bath, because Bath is gorgeous, because they'll talk about the Georgian architecture there. It's the Georgian gem, because you have this incredible architecture that's there, the Royal Crescent, when there's the park right in front of it, you just kind of like sit and just take it in, you're like, oh my god, that is so cool. Like that architecture, but not just there all throughout the city. The architecture is gorgeous when you're there. If you want to see historic things, the Roman baths that are there, yes, you can go and do a tour of the Roman baths. And if you want to take one of those thermal baths, there's some spas there that'll actually hook you up too. So you can do that. But also you want to go to the Bath Abbey when you're there, make sure you look outside, you'll notice that one little angel crawling down the ladder. That's bad guy. That's not a good angel. That's bad angel. But honestly, going to Bath, that's probably my favorite one to go to, and on my list of like, top place to go in England, Bath is always on my list. So that's another great day trip you can do. And if you want to be like really crazy, and you're like, hey, you know what, I just really want to see something different. I want to a different country when I'm there. You can actually go to Paris as a day trip from London. Yeah, if you take the Eurostar train, it's like two hours and 15 minutes. So think about just over two hours, you could be at Gare du Nord in Paris, and go see a few sites when you're there. Because if you take one of the morning trains, think about it, you take a morning train from London to get to Paris, you go there, you get in, you can go see a museum, go have lunch, go see a museum afterwards, go to the Eiffel Tower, then come back and take one of the evening trains back. Heck, who- who wouldn't want to do that? You can get the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, Eiffel Tower, and a croissant, and be back in time for the pub at night. I mean, you can't really beat that for a day trip. And the thing is, there's so many great day trips to go to from London that I can't really, like, fault anyone for saying, Mark, you missed this. Mark, what about going here? What about going here? Yes, because literally with the trains, you could go to York, it's only a couple hours away. You can go to Liverpool, which I love as well, like it's not that far away. Chester, you can go to all these different places from London, and it's not that bad. But I thought I'd give you the- this list, because these are kind of the traditional day trips that people go on. And these are all ones I've been on. So I just want to tell you, all of them are going to be good. You're going to enjoy all of them, at least I did. So I hope you will as well. So I hope this video gave you a few ideas and some of the great day trips you can do from here in London. Let us know which one you went on down in the comments below. And if there's other places you recommend people go for a day trip from here in London, please help out other travelers have more fun when they are here in London to go see some stuff outside of London. Anyway, I wish you all the best. I'll say bye from here in London. Oh, and if you do want to come to London, we have plenty of videos to help you out from the don'ts, the mistakes, what to eat, scams, tourist traps, all that fun stuff to help you out. And I'll say bye from here in London.