(Please note: this post is a serialized portion of a complete essay located here.)
For many Americans, London serves as the gateway to Europe. And what a perfect indoctrination London is for Yanks, with its language and cultural similarities and many, many familiar features. What is also great about London is that it offers a convenient link with so many other destinations via train travel, which allows travelers see the country in a way that air travel doesn't permit. The clean, efficient London Underground connects all of the major train stations (Like Paris, London has several main stations circled around the city instead of one central station - each satellite station is positioned to service a different region of the country). Famous, black London taxicabs will also transport you easily from a London hotel to most any train station. With this arrangement, visitors can glide easily in and out of London to points in England, Wales, Scotland and Continental Europe.
London, the capital of the industrial revolution, had the nation's rail network built around it. London is the travel hub for rail lines that spread into all parts of the United Kingdom, and now radiate through Europe via the tunnel under the English Channel. Many American travelers making their first jaunt to Europe find it sufficient to visit London. But consider - Paris is now less than three hours away via high-speed train (here is the Eurostar link). Even easier are prime British destinations like Bath (one and a half hours from London by train), York (two and a half hours direct from London on the train) Cardiff, Wales (two hours and ten minutes away), and Edinburgh, Scotland (four and a half hours by train, or accessible via overnight sleeper). Take a look at the hugely useful German National Rail site that will instantaneously give you connections, times and length of trip for train routes all over Europe.
Over the course of the next few posts I'll write up trip descriptions for several of these locations proximate to the London rail lines (Paris has its own page already, and the pivot trip from Paris to Normandy also has a page for you to reference). One additional destination that I considered including, but eventually left off the short list is the famous English Lake District.
The Lake District in the northwest of England is the land of waterfalls, mountains and calm woodland that havae charmed and inspired many, including the poets of the Romantic Age. It is located north of the industrial belt around Liverpool and Manchester. You can drive it in about 8 hours from London, but I would call that a pretty rigorous trip. You can also take a train from Euston Station, London, and after a change to the branch line in Oxenholme you will get to Windermere in the Lake District in about four and a half hours. From there you'll need a car to explore. I know there are car rental agencies in nearby Kendal (Avis is at Station Road in Kendal). But visiting the Lake District from London isn't a trip that falls into your lap the same way as the other choices I will explore. The Lake District train service isn't on the main London routes, you have special car rental headaches and your destination is screened from you by an unwelcoming belt of Lancashire industrial landscape. Once you get to the Lake District you need to be reasonably self sufficient (here is a site with a list of maps and books that are handy for Lake District trekkers). But for my focus in these posts the Lake District is too ambitious. My focus is on easy finds and easy access - trips that any reasonably energetic and well-oriented traveler can make, and thereafter expand upon into larger trips if ambition strikes.
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