OT: If I go to London....

There is a Tube station at the airport. It is about 30 minutes to central London, to the best of my memory. We bought a one week, six-zone pass at Heathrow and travelled all over London, even taking the train to Grenwich (sp?).

Train travel is very accessible and reasonably priced. If you want to go outside London, such as to Bath, you want a "cheap day return ticket." This is a train ticket purchased for use after the morning rush hour traffic. Best to ask the locals to explain it. I tried to purchase train tickets from London to Newcastle over the internet. The cheap day return ticket was about one-quarter the price.

England is great but expensive, especially London hotels. We stayed in a backpapers' special. We got up at 6:00 am and didn't fall into bed until midnight so we never noticed the lumps in the bed!

Hi,

Bath is about 100 miles from London, it takes about 1 1/2 hours on the train. Unfortunately it's an expensive route as a lot of people commute to London from this area and so the fares are high :-(

Let me know if you are visiting!

Megwen

Quite a few US flights come to Gatwick - it depends what airport in the US you would be leaving from, and what airline you would be using. (I travelled from Manchester, for example, when I went over in 2004). So, you need to check that out first. Gatwick is further out than Heathrow, but still no problem getting into the city. When you fly over London on the approach, you will see why the airports have to be so far out. Yes, transport is fine. Bath is, in our terms, a long way from London - over a hundred miles! - but the links are good, and Bath is a very beautiful place. If you plan to go there, try to read some books about it first, especially if your time is limited, so that you know exactly where you want to go, and what you want to see.

(Just a tiny note - not to be at all rude, but helpful - over here a subway is just an underground road crossing; the underground rail network is called the 'Underground' or 'Tube' - because of the shape of the tunnels!) I only say that in case you are asking directions).

I'm afraid I live across the other side of the country. . In message , Batik Freak writes

Hi there Megwen! Long time no talk. Still working hard at the uni? Doing some quilting? All's fine here. Finally getting back to some stitching myself after a summer hiatus. We are off on adventures again this week, this time to Madagascar. Lots of interesting fauna (leaping lemurs and such) and flora. Cheers Bronwyn

I'm here - in East London, but still, it is only 30 min to the centre. Lots to see and do, you can email me if you want to discuss more.

As others said, some airlines fly into Gatwick (US Airways and Delta as far as I remember), but really it doesn't matter. If you are not concerned about choice of airline (you might want to pick your favourite airline), then go by price and time, not which London airport you go into.

Having lived in the US, I don't think Bath is terribly far away - I took my Mum on a day trip to go to the American Museum there to see quilts :-)

Hanne in London

Bath is worth the cost of the train fare. It is a beautiful city with lots of history and lovely shops on the bridge (Pultney?). There were some fabric shops and some lovely yarn shops too. Linda in Tx

In case anyone now feels that we missed out on the roman baths, we had both spent time doing that during a visit in our pre-quilting time :-)

Hanne in London

Sadly there are less fabric shops and virtually no yarn shops left in Bath now :-( We do have a LQS but it's small, I spend a lot of my time drooling over the online shops!

I never made it to the fabric shops when I went there a couple of times with students, but I really agree about going there! It's a wonderful town. Just seeing the old Roman baths makes the trip worthwhile -- though we dubbed the place Shower instead of Bath because of the weather when we were there.

The Heathrow rail links take you straight to central London in about half an hour:

Bath to London is about an hour on a good day: people commute to work in London from Bath.

I'm not too far away! I live out on the Dover line, and can get into central London in an hour. I did that just the other week to meet with a newsgroup friend from the USA. We went to the V&A and gawped at costumes, had lunch, and went to Liberty's. :) We borrowed Big Sis, who lives and works in London, as a Native Guide.

..and I'm at the end of the Southend line from Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street, an hours train ride from central London...

... and certainly agree that Bath is a wonderful city to visit - beautiful architecture!

Suzie B

The bus is affordable but very, very slow and goes through probably the dullest urban landscape in Europe.

The underground is reasonably quick, and you don't have to look at London for all of the trip, but costs about double what a comparable journey would in a civilized city.

The Heathrow Express train is very quick but costs so much you might as well get a budget flight to...

yep, that would do. Bath, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Dublin - there is more to the British Isles than London (thank god).

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Jack,

I would Reaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllly like to go to Scotland and Ireland too. How long would it take to get to either of them from London? The Skeen castle is in Aberdeen.

L

O hot diggety. If I do get to go, I will post and we can arrange a meetup with all y'all near London or Bath. :)

L

Remember, although we look a little island on the map it takes a long time to go from A to B by road. We don't have a grid system like the US - our roads were planned before the days of wizzing about - if they were planned at all! There are motorways, but not the big 5 lane ones you have, and some, like the M25 are notorious gridlocks.

Most people I know fly to Ireland and to Scotland too, or train to Scotland. Have no idea of the prices.

Do plan to have some time out of London - it is just a big dusty city without quilt shops (though Liberty's is worth a visit). We avoid it like the plague! A couple of days there is enough. Outside London there are lots of beautiful and historic places, - get a glossy book out of the library, look at the pictures and go from there! We always find that reading up well beforehand pays off, and you find places you would otherwise have missed.

Another thought - there are organised coach (bus) tours over several days if you don't fancy doing the driving, I'm sure your local travel agent would have info on these. If you do 'Do it Yourself' out of London we always stay at Bed and Breakfast accommodation - much nicer and less expensive than Hotels. English Tourist Board have lists.

Also just looked at the British Tourism Authority site - they have details of special rail tickets which are only available to overseas visitors.

I googled British Tourist Board - lots of sites there.

Happy travelling!

-- Sally at the Seaside >Jack,

And just a small word of warning if you want to drive yourself: it is highly unlikely that you can get an automatic transmission in your hire car. I know, for some Americans this is no problem at all, but in all the time I have spent in checkin lines at the airport to go to the US, noone complained about driving on the left being difficult, but many did complain about the manual transmission.

But it is entirely possible to travel and see places outside of London by using public transport.

You can look online for travel companies for organised tours. For (longer distance) point-to-point coach travel, look up National Express, and for train travel look up national rail.

Hanne in London

Sally Sw> Remember, although we look a little island on the map it takes a long

The only issue(s) I had when I rented a car for the day in Scotland was:

1) Shifting gears with my left hand. The shifting pattern was the same as the US, just done with the left hand and 2) The roads further out into the country get very narrow. Despite the fact that the Fiat I was driving was similar in size to a clown car, I still was worried about passing oncoming traffic on the narrow roads and thought I had popped the bead on a tire coming around Loch Lomond. I hadn't, thankfully and we were able to wallow all around the gorgeous Highlands before heading back to Glasgow. I wanna go back!!!!!!!!! Debi

Not any more it isn't - they stopped making their own fabrics a few years ago, and I believe they now don't sell any fabric at all.

The Berwick Street tailoring area is still worth a visit, though.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Last time I bought fabric there was in April. Very pretty, a little thin, and a little expensive (even for the UK). They also have the biggest range of Kaffe Fassett fabric I have ever seen in a non-internet store.

Hanne in London