Train travel is the way to go although it is more expensive than buses and can cost more than flying as well. Booking well in advance is the key to cheap rail travel. In parts of the country a rental car would come in handy because trains and buses don't always go very directly to where you want to go. If you were to follow my suggested route above, I would suggest taking trains as far as York, then renting a car there and driving through the countryside to the lake district and through the cotswolds, and then dropping it off in Bath, and catching a train to London from there. You definitely don't want a car in London, where it will be more of a liability than an asset, and public transportation is excellent.

I think he has age issues for car rentals.

is it not 18 above?

Archduke has some good suggestions. Thanks for pointing out the Lake District.

@archduke

how much do train tickets cost? where can i usually buy them? I did not realize i need to buy them ahead of time. i was planning on buying like days before i depart once i get there =/ i presume that is a terrible idea. are there different types of trains?

Depends on the rental car company. A person under 21 can't rent in California for instance and under 25 has a "young driver surcharge" most everywhere that makes it unfeasible financially.

exactly. but things like zipcar does rent for 18 above. i sort of googled around a bit. it seems though that above 18 is good enough

Ouch! 50 pounds a year just to be able to rent one? Then 33 pounds a day?

It's most definitely 18+ if not 25+ like it is in the states. When I started my travels with just under a month in the UK, I rented through my university and they didn't care about my age. I'd also look into flying into Dublin, it's usually the best rate and you're in that Ireland hub for a few days before taking a ferry into Wales and a train anywhere from there.

You're going to have a great time regardless of where you go, but the most important thing you can do is shove yourself nto as many opportunities to meet people as possible. Utilise hostels and local events. You want to walk away from your travels with stories and you'll have much better stories if you're with new people.

The other side to that is don't make their plan your plan. The last thing you want is to lose a day doing something you discover you didn't like just because you wanted to remain friends with someone you just met. Travelers understand this in each other and that's why they make such great road friends. Sometimes you spend a week together hiking through mountains, other times you spend an hour grabbing a pint in a place that looked neat before heading separate ways.

I spent a year and a half traveling the world and I enjoy remembering all the different people I met a hundred times more than the places I saw. The trip would not have been the same if I tried to guidebook my way through it alone.

I'd also limit the "quintessential" tours to the ones you in your heart-of-hearts absolutely must see. Don't be that typical tourist. You want to choose things that are easily exited without too much time or financial lost just in case they don't fit your fancy. And when you do find something you love, you'll be able to stay there all day.

I'm jealous and make sure to let us know how things go. Remember to keep your wallet in your front pocket and an open mind.

@Draugnar
There's nothing that beats traveling under a Canadian flag.

Obviously that Canadian flag (without a passport attached to it) only gets you so far. The US flag will get you the Caribbean (well, US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) along with Hawaii, Alaska, and the other 48 States including California (Hollywood!) and Florida (Key West is a must). So it's not a bad flag to travel under.

I meant with passport. Canadians are loved and practically world citizens.

yeah but canadian flag + hong kong passport is the best. canadian passport lets you travel to almost all western countries, and HK passport lets you travel anywhere in asia.

thanks a whole bunch geo! i think the most typical spots i would see are in london, like the bridge, the tower, the abby, etc. ill put up photos on flickr and put a link up when i come back.

thanks a lot to archduke! great suggestions.

currently, the tickets set for flying into edi. i cant fly into ireland because it's a separate country and i would need a visa for it. im starting in edi for sure. im still working out the details (as i try to finish up my final exams too). will post a preliminary plan sometime this week for you all to assess. ;-]

Gotcha. I thought you meant where all you could get to as part of the "extended" UK. I assume there is some open border stuff going on with Canada, Australia, the UK, and what not. But I could be wrong.

mostly, i want to make it spontaneous and not tied down to hotel reservations. but after hearing from archduke about the expensive train tickets and the possibility of not being able to find lodging (due to over reservation), i might need to book ahead of time. what are the opinions out there in this regard? i mean, like what geo said, if i want to stay in a place an extra day, i would like to do that.

by the way, based on your experience, how difficult is it to drive right the first time (after learning how to drive left)?

You can usually buy train tickets on the day you travel, but you end up paying 2-3 times as much. If you book a couple of weeks in advance you can usually get heavily discounted regular, student, or youth fares (exact discounts vary depending on which rail company you are traveling with - English railways are broken up into a whole bunch of regional companies, each with its own ticketing and pricing structure). These discounts are almost never available on the day of travel, and even as much as 10 days beforehand discounted fares often sell out. So it really pays to plan your rail trip well in advance.

Regarding lodging - good hostels like the ones I've recommended do tend to book out on weekends and throughout the summer, so again, it pays to plan ahead. You can always find a cheap hostel, but many of them are not very clean/pleasant, and not very centrally located. The best ones tend to fill up first.

Driving on the right side takes extra concentration and care for the first couple of days that you do it, then it just seems natural after that. (Beware when you get back to your home country though - after a week of driving on the right, you will also have a readjustment to driving on the left again.)

Regarding planning vs spontaneity in travel, you really just have to decide where your priorities are, and recognize that spontaneity has a price tag attached. I enjoy traveling spontaneously in other parts of the world, but tend not to do it so much in the UK because the cost of spontaneity there can be soooo high.

Just so you know my background - I'm an American who lived in London for a semester during college, and had a long distance girlfriend there for a while afterwards, providing the excuse for frequent visits/travel. My parents also lived there for a few years, providing a further excuse for more visits/travel. I've covered the country pretty thoroughly, always trying to see a few new places each time I go.

I'm confused... I thought the UK drove on the left side of the road.

@Dragunar
Yes, with the exception of those bastard Aussies, the Canadian passport is a UK passport and is treated as such by the EU and most everywhere else. You have to get visas before entering most of Africa and Asia, but besides these countries: Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, and Russia, where Canadians are granted visas at the border without need of application, there are very few other countries that don't just let Canadians walk right in for under 3 months. Even DPRK lets the red and white in with little hassle. There's no reason to ever show the american passport and plenty of reasons to keep it hidden.

@idealist
Hostels.

Yep. They drive on the left, pay $10 a gallon if not more, and charge double to rent from a service. (Stay away from London for a rental, get it from somewhere small and return it before you get to London.)

Make sure you can drive a stick shift, there's no "left-on-red," and expect to go slower because of all the damn roundabouts.

I think both idealist and I were thinking about the right side of the car rather than the road - sorry for the confusion. Yes, of course they drive on the left side of the road, and Geofram is absolutely right about the stick shift issue. Although there are increasing numbers of automatics on the road in the UK, it is still a tiny percentage of the total, and you can't count on a rental place having cars with automatic transmission.

@draug - what, no stuka in that list? ;)

If I am in the states one day I will go. But your big yankee are a bit overwhelming - more square footage than most small countries!

If you're ever in New Zealand, the 'Knights of the Sky' museum in blenheim is a must. It only has a handful of WW1 aircraft, but has these brilliant life-size dioramas made by the same crew that did 'Lord of the Rings'. Best bit is the hugely knowledgeable tour guides. I spent over an hour discussing the design of the fokker eindekker. Time flies when you're having nerdy fun ;D

As a halfbreed (Scottish - English) I'd definitely recommend the Scottish Highlands. There is a wonderful train route from Fort William to Mallaig - from where you can see (or take a boat) to the Isle of Skye. In the north you could stop off in Culloden or Glencoe or perhaps while in the south visit Bannockburn (where the English suffered a wonderful defeat :-))

Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities - comparatively small but with plenty of history to see.

''Train travel is the way to go although it is more expensive than buses and can cost more than flying as well.'' and
''how much do train tickets cost? where can i usually buy them? I did not realize i need to buy them ahead of time. i was planning on buying like days before i depart once i get there =/ i presume that is a terrible idea. are there different types of trains? ''

May I suggest this: http://www.thetrainline.com/buytickets/?

If you travel off peak and book up a month or two in advance it can save you buckets of cash. For example I just booked London-Aberystwyth for late June at £20 return.

Tips: don't try to do too much. My personal favourite museum which you might miss is the RAF museum in Hendon London: http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/

Outdoors the mountain areas, although not comparing to yours in scale, are ver beautiful: Snowdonia, the Highlands and don't forget the Lake District.

Off the wall tips: Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire: http://www.fountainsabbey.org.uk/
and walking across Hungerford bridge in London: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_Bridge_and_Golden_Jubilee_Bridges and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY.Although the latter selection is perhaps an acquired taste!

+1 to the Archduke for suggesting Durham. Durham is well worth a visit. Although I do live there, so I would say that.

For train tickets - http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/. Just work out where you've going to go and get them all to be bought to Edinburgh. So, when you arrive, you go up to the ticket collection machine and pick up your tickets for the trip.

Railway museum at York is quite cool if you pass through. Its connected to the station, and has some beautiful steam engines - and free entry!

I think the word free in relation to the railway museum should get a pair of inverted commas. The car park has a rather cheeky £10 minimal price, and they spare no expense in their efforts to get you to buy programs and donate. It does have a segway racetrack though, and the Hogwarts Express, so pretty damned cool it is!

The second best thing in York is the Minster (You have to go up the tower. The view from the top is totally ruined by some health and safety wire mesh, but the steps going up has a selection of international graffiti dating from the modern day back to the early 19th century. The older stuff tends to be by the windows).

The best thing in York are the pork pies that can be found in a butcher's shop in The Shambles. The way they should be!

@fiedler, New Zealand is on the list of places to see and now I have another reason to go their (besides my love of all things Tolkien). And the list came from the website. Go visit the site and you can spend days getting lost in the history behind each plane's development and role in the war and the stories unique to that individual plane, like Bockscar (http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=527) which dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki.