Two-week UK itinerary from Australia: London and Dorset

This two-week trip to the UK included one week in London. The other week was on the English Southwest Coast. London is a massive city, and one could easily take two weeks or more exploring it.

Our goal here was to explore some of London, before driving down to the Southwest Coast of England for a more relaxed and scenic break,

Australia to London (7 days)

London is essentially served by three major airports. although you will read that there are six in some other London information pages.

The primary ones, in my humble opinion, are

• London Heathrow (15m west of central London),
• London Gatwick (28m south of central London) and
• London Stanstead (35m northeast on London).

There are three others, but these are mostly for holiday charter or European carriers.

• London Luton (35m north),
• London City and
• London Southend (40 miles east)

For most international travel from outside Europe, the two key airports are London Heathrow and London Gatwick. The advantage of London Heathrow is that it is directly on the underground railway network. Gatwick takes about half hour by train to London.

How we travelled from Australia to London

We flew with Singapore Airlines from Brisbane (BNE) to Singapore (SIN) to London (LHR), arriving late afternoon in London.

Whichever airport you arrive at, plan for an actual arrival in central London of up to two to three hours after you land. With that in mind try to plan in a flight that does not mean you are trying to check in to a hotel you cannot find easily in central London late evening.

London is an expensive city. The hotels, restaurants, transport and any tours are all pretty expensive. Of course, the exchange rate from Australian Dollars to British Pounds does not help.

Given we had two young children with us, that restricted us slightly on our selection of what to do and when. We had had to give late evenings by the Thames River and late nights shows a miss.

Without children, well worth planning at least one or two meals on The Thames River and a late-night show or two.

For more details on what we did in London, please jump into our London destination blog.

Dorset Coast (7 days)

It is best to use a rental car for the English southwest coast. The main train lines outside the major metropolitan areas are infrequent and slow. There are main train lines down to the south coast from London, which can be used. In the more regional areas of the southern counties, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, car rental is a far more efficient use of time for transport as all of the local public transport is both limited and slow.

At the time we rented a car, it cost no more renting from central London with a drop off at the airport, than trying to get a train down to the south coast and then trying to rent the car locally.

The drive from London to Dorset is around three hours on pretty good main roads, whereas a train to one of the few train stations in Dorset will take at least four and half to five hours.

The drive along the southwest coast of England is very scenic with gorgeous, sometime ancient, little villages. There are many scenic and historic places all along this coast, it really is a interesting place to visit. For details on places to visit and explore in the southern counties, please jump into the blog on Dorset, Southwest Coast, England

Returning to London Heathrow is relativity easy, returning the rental car to the car rental car parks, and then taking one of the free air buses to the correct terminal for our flight home. (Star Alliance airlines) including Singapore airlines flies from Terminal 2 – with the return flight being London (LHR) – Singapore (SIN) – Brisbane (BNE). Qantas and Virgin Atlantic fly from Terminal 3.

Best time to visit England

The warmest weather in the UK, is generally July and August. During this time, it is possible to get days with temperatures around 25 degrees, and occasionally even up to 30 degrees C. Even during the warmest weather on the southwest coast, the sea temperature is no more than 15,16 degrees C. During winter, it can drop to 5 degrees C.

Practical Tips before you book England

• Make sure you have data available on your phone or phones.  There is Wi-Fi everywhere. Please jump to our travel advice blogs if you need some information on how to get data in the UK.
• For local public transport in London, the Oyster card or your phone contactless card works well. If you are using an international card, then you might get charged extra for each transaction, which would add up. If so, paying the up front charge for the Oyster card may be worth it. You can get Oyster cards at Heathrow Underground Tube stations from machines or staff, or indeed any Underground station. You can also buy special visitor Oyster cards online ahead of your trip, which also have deals with various restaurants, shops, galleries and other venues. Using the Oyster card is cheaper than paying cash per trip as well.
• Keep cash aside for snacks and taxis.
• The London Tube Map is fantastic, download and print it out, or get one from your hotel. When you get lost, the London Underground Tube is usually your way back. However, worth noting, the tube map is not a real representation of the surface, but has been arranged to make the tube lines fairly clear. There are a couple of stations that appear to be miles apart on the tube map, but in reality there is only a hundred meters or so. So online maps are still important so that you can see when it makes more sense to walk where you can rather than going underground.
• Walking around London, especially the older areas around the Thames, the South Bank and the Queens Walk, the Royal Parks Walk, Little Venice to Camden, the Thames Path are all worth the time spent and are really enjoyable and interesting.
• If you can arrange to see a London show, do it. The shows in London and the lit up city streets are amazing to walk around in the evenings. London has a busy and exciting vibe pretty much all the time, but its at its best in the summer late light evenings.

Final verdict: Is England worth the distance

Yes!

It is unfortunately not a cheap place to go to. London is so large, so busy, impressive, and interesting, that it is hard not justify at least one visit. Outside of London is cheaper by comparison, but it is still expensive. This trip was split out into a week in London. and then a week down on the South Coast of England. Even with the added cost of a hire car during the second week, it was still cheaper than London.

The southwest coast of England is simply beautiful, the little villages on century old wharf and stone piers are are amazing. The old stone English pubs are really hard to beat anywhere in the world. The countryside, often with old ruined castles here and there, with miles and miles of ancient stone walls separating fields and farms has to be seen with your own eyes as photos don’t do these views justice.

FAQs about planning two weeks in England