Fiona MacLeod’s Guide to Getting Out of the City Without Getting on a Plane: Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, and Canterbury All Have Direct Trains and Entirely Different Personalities
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
By Fiona MacLeod | The London Prat
London is the reason most visitors come to Britain, and London is also surrounded by destinations that make a day away from it an excellent complement to urban immersion. Britain’s railway network, despite its well-documented reliability challenges and its pricing structure that rewards advance booking with a ferocity that borders on the religious, connects London to several of England’s most rewarding cities in journey times that make the day trip genuinely feasible without early starts or rushed returns. What follows is my honest assessment of four destinations that I have recommended to visitors over several years, including the specific arguments for and against each and the practical information that turns the recommendation into a plan.
Bath: 75 Minutes from Paddington, Entirely Worth It
Bath is the destination I recommend most consistently to first-time Britain visitors, because it delivers on every dimension that makes British travel distinctive: Roman history (the Roman Baths, with their extraordinary preservation of a first-century bathing complex, are genuinely one of the great archaeological sites of northern Europe), Georgian architecture (the Royal Crescent, the Circus, and Pulteney Bridge constitute one of the most coherent examples of urban Georgian planning in the world), literary connection (Jane Austen lived here; the Jane Austen Centre is a pilgrimage site for those who care and a pleasant stop for those who don’t), and a food and independent shopping scene that punches above its city size significantly. The train from Paddington takes 75 minutes and runs frequently. Book in advance. The Roman Baths require timed entry booking. The Georgian architecture requires only a walk. Visit Bath has the comprehensive guide. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat’s UK travel coverage both cover Bath in detail.
Oxford: 55 Minutes from Paddington
Oxford’s university architecture — the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, the Covered Market, the colleges accessible by walking the city’s central core — is freely explorable in the sense that the streets and many of the college exteriors are public. College admission varies by season and college. The Ashmolean Museum, one of Britain’s great art and archaeology museums, is free. Christ Church, with its hall (which served as the visual inspiration for Hogwarts’ Great Hall) and its picture gallery, charges admission. The university atmosphere is real and present in term time and somewhat reduced in summer when the student population thins. Oxford is also home to one of Britain’s best independent bookshops and a density of pubs with historical claim that requires navigation skills to prioritise. Allow a full day. The 55-minute journey from Paddington makes it the most accessible of the four.
Cambridge and Canterbury: The Complementary Pair
Cambridge offers architecture comparable to Oxford with a slightly different character — the Backs, the stretch of riverbank behind the colleges where you can hire a punt, are Cambridge’s specific advantage over Oxford for summer visits — and a distance from London’s King’s Cross that is approximately 50 minutes by fast train. Canterbury, accessible from St Pancras in 55 minutes by high-speed rail, offers the medieval city centred on Canterbury Cathedral, which is among the great Gothic buildings of Europe and whose historical significance as the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the site of Thomas Becket’s murder makes it one of the most layered single attractions in Britain. The combination of Canterbury Cathedral, the Roman walls, and the medieval city centre makes Canterbury the best day trip for visitors whose primary interest is medieval history. The combination of Cambridge’s colleges, the punting, and the market town centre makes Cambridge the best for visitors whose primary interest is British university culture and the Backs in summer. Both are worth a full day. Neither requires a car. The trains are the right choice.
More London laughs: The Daily Mash | NewsThump.
Final Thoughts for the London Visitor
London rewards preparation and also rewards abandoning it. The city is large enough that planning a visit requires choices, and experienced enough at receiving visitors that the infrastructure for whatever choice you make is well-developed. Book the Tower of London in advance. Get the Oyster card before your first Tube journey. Go to Borough Market on Saturday morning. Walk across the Millennium Bridge at least once. And then leave enough unstructured time for the afternoon that does not go according to plan and produces the experience you talk about most when you get home. That afternoon will happen in London if you leave room for it. It always does. The city has been providing the unexpected afternoon to visitors for several centuries and has not yet run out of material. More London travel guidance at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat’s visitor resources, where Fiona MacLeod’s London coverage is updated regularly with current information, seasonal recommendations, and the honest opinions that tourist boards tend not to publish. London has been receiving visitors for two thousand years and has refined its hospitality infrastructure across that period to the point where the only remaining obstacle to an excellent visit is insufficient planning and insufficient spontaneity in equal measure. Plan enough to avoid the queues. Stay flexible enough to take the afternoon that presents itself. Eat the doughnut. Walk the bridge. Get the Oyster card.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/london-day-trips-train-guide-fiona-macleod/
