You may have picked up on this but my next trip to England is coming up pretty darn fast (though, not fast enough in my mind!) so I thought I’d share with you my previous road tripping adventures that I’ve had in England.

2010

The first time I went to England was November 2010 with my sister. We spent 10 days in London and then picked up a rental car and based ourselves just outside Exeter for about 8 days. During that time we took numerous road trips, got lost on lots of tiny country roads and met some really lovely people. We also spent a lot of time in graveyards!

On this trip we visited Oxford (needed more time), Stonehenge (pile of rocks in a field), Bath (where I fell in love with hoho buses & Georgian architecture), Lyme Regis (seaside town where Jane Austen use to holiday), Sherborne (gorgeous market town), Lydford Castle (dreary, scary old prison), Lulworth (LOVED this place! Words cannot express), Corfe Castle (my first proper ruin), Christchurch (the UK verison) and a couple of our family history hotspots – Clyst St George (lots of gravestones with my surname on them!) and Sidbury (saw the baptism font our ancestors possibly used).

2014

On this trip, I based myself in London for about two weeks and just did a couple of day trips. One was a small group tour to Canterbury (that cathedral! those cloisters!!), Dover (would love to explore the castle one day) & Leeds Castle (so pretty!!) and the other was a day out by train to Brighton (I actually got sunburnt!) with my niece & her now husband.

2015

On my 2015 mega trip, my travel companion and I drove from Edinburgh to London. Along the way we stopped in Blackpool (not what I expected but at the same time, completely what I expected), Chester (loved the cathedral), Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (really, really hard to get a photo with the full name!), Cardiff (didn’t love it, didn’t hate it), Bath (still gorgeous but still horrible to drive around), Castle Combe (fell in love!), Stonehege (still a pile of rocks in a field) and Southampton (no photos because it was raining and we didn’t go anywhere).

While I’ve driven in England before, this will be the first time I’ve done it solo. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it get a little lonely and you do start talking to yourself a lot more. But travelling alone also means that you can stop at random places along the way and take as much time as you need to explore the area.

The thing I love about England is that no matter how many times I go back, I find something new. On this trip, the only place that I have been before will be London – every other places will be a new discovery for me.

And for that, I can’t wait.