Trip Prep - Ladies Take London

I was at school when Ann texted to ask what I was doing at the end of May. My calendar was free, except for my current class which ran until mid-June, so I asked what she had in mind. She replied that she was planning a trip to celebrate the graduations - hers from grad school, Jerynn’s from college, and Dani’s from high school. We had talked ages ago about this trip, when it was still a pipe dream. So I responded, “I guess I’m going to England.”

Ann came up with a tentative list of locations she wanted to visit in England on this trip and Craig helped me come up with an itinerary that worked with the geography.  Because of the timing of the trip, I would be joining for the first part of the trip but leaving a few days before the others. I decided I most wanted to join the exploration of England outside of London, both because I’ve been to London several times and because I expect I will visit London again. I knew that searching for mom’s ancestors would require driving a car and I knew that I would not feel comfortable driving in London, so we decided we would take a train out to Salisbury and rent a car there to begin our adventures. We would drive to Stonehenge, Bath, various locations in Devon, and return the car in Taunton. From there, we would continue by train to York, Edinburgh, and return to London. We would take a short train trip up to Leavesdon, to visit the Harry Potter Studio Tour. And we would spend our remaining time (of which I had very little) in London.

The graphic I made for our shirts, which shows our planned itinerary.

We researched the price of train tickets and quickly learned that a BritRail pass was the only way to go. (This was verified later when we learned that the price of our first train trip from Taunton to York would have cost about 75% of the entire BritRail pass.) We settled on a four-day Brit Rail pass, anticipating that we would use it (1) London Heathrow Airport to Salisbury, (2) Taunton to York, (3) York to Edinburgh, (4) Edinburgh to London. I ordered the BritRail passes to be delivered to my house.

I created an online document that I could share with the others, indicating our travel plans each day (including mode of travel and length of time between each location), I listed various activities in each location (including opening and closing times, as well as admission prices), and I found a variety of accommodation options for each night.

As our trip quickly approached, I grew anxious about settling our accommodations for the trip. As I wasn’t the primary stakeholder, I didn’t feel comfortable unilatterally making decisions about where we would stay. We finally managed to set up a FaceTime call when Ann and the girls were at mom’s house, so we could hammer out some details. With several computers searching, we were able to make reservations for each night of our trip. When we had these details settled, I finalized our rental car reservation. Ann and I discussed various tours that we might prebook, but we ultimately only booked a tour called Eat, Walk, Edinburgh before we left.

I kept the online document updated throughout our planning. And I created a journal spread for my journal, including the weather predictions. I printed a condensed version of the online document for my journal. I also printed confirmations for the things I had booked and the research I had done for on mom’s ancestry.