If you're planning to visit other parts of the UK when you come to London
Then you have a few options for how you can get around to those places by the way if you're looking for more tips about
London make sure you click that red subscribe button so you don't miss any of my weekly travel tips.
Okay, so first you can of course rent a car.
Now, I don't particularly recommend this for first-time visitors to the UK because there's a lot of things that you have to think about before you rent a car. First of all,
of course they drive on the left side of the road here
so that might be different from what you're used to. You also need to check if your
driver's license is valid to use here in the UK and
you also need to take into account that there's going to be a whole new set of rules and types of things to know when
you're driving to make sure that you're following the law. So it can be a lot to
take in just to be able to rent a car for a few days. Also consider that you need to factor
petrol costs and
Third-Party insurance into the price of renting your car.
That being said renting a car can be great because it gives you flexibility to go anywhere,
you can drive to places that you wouldn't be able to get to by train or coach and
it can just be fun to drive around the country and there's some beautiful scenery here.
So if you think you want to rent a car
I've included links to a couple of companies that helps you compare different rental companies and prices
I've included links to those sites down in the description box. The one thing
I will say is that I 100% do not recommend
anybody to rent a car or to drive while you're in London.
You can also get around the UK by bus or what they usually call coach here.
There are two companies here in the UK that run pretty decent services between
most of the major cities around the UK plus the airports, so I'll leave links to those companies down in the description box:
they're called National Express and
MegaBus. If you book your tickets ahead of time and travel at off-peak you can actually get some really good deals. Now, keep in mind
if you do choose to travel by coach you always have the possibility of getting stuck in traffic
and that can delay your trip, which is really important to keep in mind if you're trying to catch a flight.
However the pros of travelling by coach is that you get on the bus sit there and you kind of just get to
relax and watch the scenery, some of them have free Wi-Fi,
most of them also have toilets so it can be a fairly easy and enjoyable experience
for what the cost is. Out of all the transportation options I usually recommend to
travel by train. The reason is that you don't have to worry about traffic,
it's usually a much more comfortable experience to travel by train than it is to be cramped on an airplane,
and there's no having to arrive two hours to go through
security like when you fly. There are train stations all over London that can get you to most major cities and even lots of these
smaller towns in the surrounding areas of the UK. For places that are quite close to London generally speaking the tickets for those trains will not
really go up.
So you're actually totally fine to just rock up to the station
twenty minutes before the train, purchase your ticket from the ticket machine and then hop on a train.
However, if you're going a little bit further afield then the earlier that you booked your tickets,
then generally it's going to be a lot cheaper. To check prices, train times and to book tickets
I usually use the train line. I have included a link to that website down in the description of this video.
The downside of travelling by train in the UK is that of course they can run late and,
depending on where you're trying to go, you might have to change trains a couple of times and go kind of a weird route.
Finally there are some places in the UK that are far enough away from each other that it would warrant you to fly. However, before
you book a flight
you should always do your research to see if you can get there by train. For example a flight from London
Gatwick airport to Edinburgh is about an hour long and if you take the train it takes about four and a half hours, however you
do need to consider how long that it's going to take you to get to Gatwick airport, Gatwick's quite far outside of London,
so depending on where you're staying you might actually have to add another hour and a half on to your travel journey and
also
when you fly you need to take into account arriving two hours early to the airport to go through security and to check your bag.
When you travel by train you only need to give yourself about 30 to 45 minutes and
That bag that you have to check is most likely going to be free and you'll have to pay for it on the airline.
So you should always compare what it's going to be like to travel by train as opposed to flying because train might be easier and
maybe even cheaper as well. That being said, if flying definitely is going to work out better for you
then you use websites like Kayak
and skyscanner to be able to find the cheapest flights and see what the
travel schedules are. If you want to know more about how you can get really cheap flights watch my video on how to do that
by clicking the card popping up there. Okay, so now you know how to get around the UK.
So where are you going to go with all this information. Let me know down in the comments.
I want to hear what other parts of the UK you're going to explore and, if you're visiting London for the first time, don't forget
to Grab my free London 101 Guide which gives you information like how to get to the City centre from the airport, information
about how to get money and things like that,
anything you need to know
before you get to London. You can get that for free by clicking the card that's popping up here or the link down in the
Description box and I will see you in the next video.