Originally Posted by
vxmike
I'm travelling to England/Scotland in October with a friend for about a week, and having never been to Europe before I'm struggling with the best options for local travel. Since my Dollars are not very good anymore, I'm finding everything to be quite expensive but unfortunately this is where we want to visit.
We'd find a car to be the best choice for convenience and to maximize our time actually doing/seeing things rather than messing around with trains/buses. Anyone know what an approximate cost would be to get a cheap rental car in London and drive around the island for 5-7 days?
And therein lies your challenge. While the UK looks pretty small in comparison to the US, it is - as noted above - very densely populated. Driving 200-300 miles (the sort of distance you can knock off in a morning in the US) is more like an expediation. Part of that is cultural, but part driven by the crowded roads that make driving a pain. Country roads are quieter, but slow.
You would be far better picking a region/area and tooling around there for a week. London is far superior to the rest of the country, so why look any further.
However, as
Swiss Tony says should you want to break away from
civilisation you'll need to give us some clues as to what you like to do.