This one’s been a long time coming! 🙂
A bit of background…
When we first started travelling (many years before we even started blogging on here), travel for me was all about explore new destinations in different countries and as lovely as it was (and still is) to do so, one thing that can be said for travel is that it does make you appreciate things at home a lot more. Especially when you call somewhere as beautiful as the UK home.
Seeing the Cathedrals in France, the architecture in Italy and soaking up the history in Spain only serves to make you appreciate this even more when you’reback at home (the UK does have some pretty great sights!). You start to see St Paul’s in a different light (and pretty much every sight in London), the Royal Mile in Edinburgh isn’t just this place you walk past on your way home from work, Bristol starts to reveal itself as an artistic goldmine and you even find stunning islands right here at home that rival the Caribbean!
What is it then?
With this in mind, Lloyd and I planned to try as much as possible to just get a car and do a road trip across different parts of the UK and we’ve just not gotten round to doing this… until now!!! We’ve teamed up with IHG (Intercontinental Hotels Group – you know, the team behind the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn…etc) to fully experience their #WhyOverpay ethos (N.B.: I’ll give you the lowdown on this once we experience it fully as it promises to save you quite a bit of cash) and over the next few days, Lloyd and I are going to be going on our very first English road trip!
What’s the plan?
We’re going to be driving around Southern England with no real plans whatsoever. We’re gonna be making things up as we go along and our main aim is to try to see, explore and truly appreciate the English countryside.
So far, all we have sorted out are the stops we’re going to be making along the way (more on those below) and one day, we could be exploring Stonehenge or the stunning Cotswolds villages and the other day just getting holed up in a country pub doing nothing but sipping on tea and catching up on reading in front of the fireplace – that’s the beauty of this – the freedom that comes with having no plans and we’re sooooooooo looking forward to it!
What stops will we be making?
So far, we’ll be setting off from London and looking to stop over in Bath…
…carrying on via the Cotswolds
…to Oxford (and wider Oxfordshire)
…then onto Cambridge
…before finishing off in London!
Fancy coming along?
We’d love it if you could join in, even if that might just be online! 😉
We’ll be posting everything we get up to on Snapchat (@ HandLuggageOnly), with photos Instagram (@ HandLuggageOnly), nattering away on Twitter (@HLOBlog) and loooots of photos and videos on Facebook (also @ HandLuggageOnly)!
More importantly, if you have any recommendations on things not to miss out on, restaurants, bars or anything else you think we’d miss out on please do let us know! Your recommendations have come in pretty handy in the past so please do send them our way!
Equally, we’re gonna be scouting for the very best things to see, do and eat in this area so that we can return the favour in the future (…and yes, that may just be my excuse to ‘taste’ as much cake as I can over the next few days).
We’re so excited about this! Can’t wait to head on this road trip with you!
Check Out The Very Best Of Great Britain!
