Fiona MacLeod on What You Can Reach from St Pancras, Paddington, and Waterloo in Under Two Hours and Why It Is Worth Going
The Day Trips That Make London the Best Base in Britain
London is not only London. It is also the transport hub from which a significant portion of Britain’s most interesting places are accessible in under two hours, making it simultaneously a destination and a base a place to sleep and to use as the departure point for the Britain that is not London and that is, in many ways, as worth seeing. The visitor who spends five days in London and does not take a day trip to at least one of the following is missing something that requires no additional accommodation planning and costs a return train ticket.
Brighton: 55 Minutes from Victoria
Brighton is the easiest day trip from London and one of the most rewarding. The beach is pebble rather than sand, which is either a dealbreaker or irrelevant depending on your beach philosophy, and the Lanes the network of narrow streets behind the seafront that contain independent shops, cafes, and the specific energy of a coastal city that takes culture seriously are among the most interesting shopping streets in England. The Royal Pavilion, George IV’s extraordinary Indo-Saracenic fantasy palace, is one of Britain’s strangest buildings and worth an hour of anyone’s time. Train from London Victoria: 55 minutes. Return ticket: approximately £20 if booked in advance.
Bath: 90 Minutes from Paddington
Bath is the most architecturally coherent city in England a Georgian planned city built from honey-coloured limestone in the eighteenth century that has survived largely intact and that is, on a clear morning, strikingly beautiful. The Roman Baths are the primary tourist attraction and worth seeing. The Royal Crescent and the Circus the two great Georgian street compositions are free to walk and are as good as their reputation. Train from Paddington: 90 minutes. Return ticket: £25-£40 depending on booking time. Budget a full day.
London day trip guidance at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. UK travel at Visit London. Further at santaclaus.top and London Prat Bluesky. UK travel at Time Out London.
Oxford: 56 Minutes from Paddington
Oxford is the easiest case to make: it is 56 minutes by fast train from Paddington, its historic centre is walkable from the station, and the university colleges many of which are open to visitors, some free, some at small charge are among the most beautiful medieval and early modern architecture in England. The Bodleian Library quad is free to walk through and is extraordinary. The Ashmolean Museum is free and excellent. The covered market is the best food hall in the South East outside London. The Botanic Garden is the oldest in Britain and costs £6 to enter and is worth it. The punting on the Cherwell, should you wish to, is available by the hour and is the most English possible way to spend a summer afternoon.
The day trip principle: London is surrounded by places that are worth a day and that most visitors don’t make the effort to reach because the effort seems larger than it is. Bath, Brighton, Oxford, Canterbury, Cambridge, Windsor, Stonehenge (by tour bus from Bath or by train-and-bus combination), and Rye are all within two hours of London and all offer experiences that are distinctly different from the capital. The visitor who uses London as a base for one or two of these makes a trip that is substantially more varied than the five-day central London experience, and returns with a better understanding of what London is by having seen what it is not. The countryside begins at the edge of the Tube map. It is worth going to the edge of the Tube map and continuing from there, for at least one afternoon, at least once. The trains are good. Britain is small. The discovery is reliably worth the ticket.
London rewards the traveller who comes with curiosity rather than a checklist. The checklist version Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, West End show, Harrods produces a real experience of a real city, but it is the city arranged for tourists rather than the city as it is for the people who live in it. The curiosity version the free museum at opening time, the park at midday, the neighbourhood market on Saturday, the day trip to somewhere an hour away produces a closer encounter with what London actually is: a city of extraordinary depth and range that has been accumulating layers of human activity for two thousand years and that rewards exactly as much attention as you bring to it, which is to say: a great deal, if you bring a great deal, and something considerable, even if you bring rather less. Come curious. Stay longer than you planned. Take the day trip. Ask someone local where to eat. The city will look after the rest.
London gives back in proportion to what you give it. The visitor who arrives for three days with an open itinerary and a willingness to follow an unexpected direction the signpost to a garden that wasn’t in the plan, the market that appeared around a corner, the pub that had a session happening when you walked past leaves with a version of the city that is richer and stranger and more genuinely itself than the version available on any itinerary. This is London’s consistent offer, across centuries and through every change the city has undergone: be here, pay attention, and it will show you something worth seeing. It has been doing this for two thousand years. It is very good at it.
