Bath Travel Forum

my husband and i will be in london this august. we want to visit both bath and stonhenge on our own - not interested in being carted about with dozens of other folks, hurried from one site to another with a white-gloved individual shouting "we're walking, we're walking"... =)

can anyone advise how we can travel from london to bath to stonehenge back to london using public transportation in one day? (reverse order is fine too)

i have studied a few rail sites and see that we can take a train from london to bath and/or a train from london to salisbury, but i haven't seen any instructions for combining the two locations into one trip - except for a guided bus tour. i understand that a bus ride from salisbury to stonehenge will be in order.

thank you so much in advance for any advice/guidance!

You simply get the train to Salisbury, then bus to Stonehenge, then bus back to Salisbury and onward by train to Bath.

However. This will mean single tickets all the way on the train (London to Salisbury, Salisbury to Bath, Bath to London) so won't be particularly cheap. And you may find the timings awkward too, depending on what time you intend to set offf, how long you stay at the stones, how long you want to stay in Bath etc.

London to Salisbury takes around an hour and a half, cheapest single 25.50GBP. Salisbury to Bath (every hour or so) takes around a hour, single 18GBP, Bath to London about two hours, last train at 22:47, cheapest single 46GBP. These are walk-up fares; you might be able to get cheaper ones if you can book them in advance, but the latter process is apparently fraught with difficulty if you are trying to do so from abroad. www.nationalrail.co.uk for times and fares, or www.thetrainline.com.

Buses go from Salisbury railway station, roughly hourly, and take around half an hour. The first one leaves at 11:15. 5.25GBP return.

http://www.stonehenge.org.uk/trans/buses.shtml

You can probably see from this that it is feasible, but not particularly easy nor particularly cheap. You may well end up with little useful time in Bath (because shops/attractions etc tend to close around 5pm).

An alternative is to do Salisbury (beautiful cathedral etc) along with the stones on one day, and take another whole day to visit Bath (it warrants it, imo). Or to grit your teeth and take a tour.....preferably one which leaves you alone in Bath to do your own thing......if you have to do both in one day. Might be cheaper than the train/bus fares too.

fabulous information, leics - thank you so much!

money is always a consideration, but sometimes a few dollars (or pounds as the case may be) more is worth the freedom...

It has just occurred to me (and you will have to check times/routes, as the Bath/London train may not stop at Salisbury every time; it may even take an entirely different route) that you could get a return from London to Salisbury, and a return from Salisbury to Bath. This may or may not work out cheaper, but is probably worth investigating. Enjoy!

As J. points out, I would consider spending a day in Bath in any case. We did a day trip from London to Bath by car (1.5 hours each way?) and we did not have enough time to really see what we wanted to see. We spent a lot of time in the Roman Bath area (I like Romans), but my wife would have appreciated more time looking for the Jane Austen side of Bath - we missed one museum that we didn't even know was there.

In fact, you might consider (not knowing your arrangements in London) spending the night in Bath and hitting Salisbury on the way back the next day...well, there are times when we have rented an apartment by the week that we left it empty to spend the night elsewhere...easier than packing and unpacking constantly...

Bill

Sorry Leic - The bus info on the Stonehenge website is about 3 years out of date !

In August, the times of bus number 3 from Salisbury to Stonehenge will be as follows:

- Departing from outside Salisbury train station at: 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 & 1600.
- Returning from Stonehenge at: 1030, 1130, 1230, 1330, 1430, 1530, 1630 & 1730
The journey will be about 20 minutes and cost about £7 for a day return ticket.

However, I would agree that this is too much to try and do in one day as you would not reach Bath until about 1pm - giving you just 4 hours until everything starts to close up. Some people find Stonehenge to be a dissapointment, so you need to realy want to visit it to make this costly diversion worthwhile,

Thanks for the info.

I would suggest that you give Stonehenge a miss. I was there within the last two years and very disappointed and actually felt embarrassed for my country that we tout Stonehenge as a great tourist attraction and in my opinion rip-off and disappoint thousands of foreign visitors.

Even if you are not part of a tour, you will find it very hard to spend more than 20-30 minutes at the stones themselves and in August, you may well find that you have to queue for sometime to get in, subjecting yourselves to the very thing you are trying to avoid. Stonehenge is in a featureless area, on a windy hill, next to main roads and the inevitable huge car park.

If it is stones you want, try Avebury in Wiltshire. A huge stone circle (in fairness there is some evidence that some were re-sited)and a lovely village with old houses and a couple of tea rooms. In the distance one can see Silbury Hill, an ancient man-made mound that no one knows the true purpose of. The 'total' experience would far exceed that you would get at Stonehenge. However, as with other replies, I feel aiming to see two places (i.e. Bath and Avebury for example) in a day, is too much.

I too would recommend Bath for a visit as it is a very beautiful city. Why not give up two days and stay somewhere cheap in Bath and then visit somewhere on your second day, like Avebury too? Or even, travel twice, if money is not too much of an object. When you visit, you will then have time to sit and watch the world go by, which is the way to really feel part of somewhere.

On your second day (?!) you could go to Avebury but also what about the beautiful village of Castle Coombe or the lovely village of Lacock (where some of the 2nd Harry Potter was filmed. Castle Coombe just has a church to visit (one of the oldest clocks in England), two traditional pubs and a tea room and is more a place to relax rather than visit specific things (without refreshment 1.5 hours visit plus as long as you want to walk in fields or country lanes!!!). Lacock has more to see (The Red Lion pub does lovely food) and if you visit Lacock Abbey (Harry Potter and Fox Talbot - the father of photography), then you could spend 4-5 hours there.

If you love ancient things and it isn't important to you that people have heard of them, then there is a long-barrow outside of Bath (taxi ride) where there would be no tourists at all and you could sit with a picnic in the middle of a field by a stream and imagine the England of old...(ask me more if interested).

If you want to look up the places:
Avebury
Castle Coombe
Lacock

I would recommend www.wikipedia.org as a starting point.

Best wishes,
Martin