Travel guide: United Kingdom 🇬🇧

🗓️ Best time to visit

The UK rains, no matter the season. The weather can be very unpredictable, but there are some seasonal differences.

• Spring brings longer days, wildflowers, and manageable crowds.
• Summer is the peak season, with sunnier days and bustling crowds, especially in the capital. It is also a great time for hiking. Please note, most homes in the UK don’t have air conditioning - this is not usually needed. However, due to climate change, heat waves are becoming more frequent, making indoor temperatures very uncomfortable during such events.
• Autumn can be cooler, but golden and red leaves are beautiful around its parks and the highlands.
• Winter is cold and the days are short, but it has its own appeal: Christmas markets, quieter museums, and a great place for seasonal shopping. The Christmas lights on Oxford Street and Regent Street are a highlight.

📍 Where to go

The United Kingdom is four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — each with its own character, geography, and, in Wales and parts of Scotland, its own language.

London, the capital, can take weeks to explore. The City of London — the original square-mile Roman settlement — sits inside a much larger metropolis of 33 boroughs. The major national museums (British Museum, V&A, Natural History Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern) are all free to enter (although this may change), excluding special exhibitions. It is also a garden city - you are never far away from green spaces.

Day trips from London: Oxford and Cambridge are both feasible in a day by train. Windsor is compact and walkable. Stonehenge is further, but can be done as a day tour through self-drive or via a guided Stonehenge day trip.

The Cotswolds are beautiful, particularly in late spring. It epitomises the sense of Englishness - the green and pleasant land of England. A common starting point for the Cotswolds is in Bath or Bristol.

Devon and Cornwall are best in summer when the seas are calmer. Cornwall's coastline — particularly the Lizard Peninsula and the stretch around St Ives — is striking. The UK now records regular sightings of bottlenose dolphins, minke whales, and basking sharks off the southwest coast between June and September.

The Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Taylor Swift's song, The Lake, was inspired by Windermere. The fells, tarns, and stone-walled valleys shaped some of English literature: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and later Beatrix Potter all worked here. If you want to learn more about the Lake Poets, why not join a guided Lakes tour from Windermere?

Scotland is the destination for anyone who wants scale. The Scottish Highlands are vast, sparsely populated, and wild in a way that surprises people who've only seen them in photos. Ben Nevis (1,345m) is the highest point in the British Isles. The North Coast 500 is an exceptional driving route — 500 miles of single-track roads, sea lochs, and near-total quiet — best done with time and a small car. Autumn is arguably the best season: golden bracken, rut season for red deer, and far fewer campervans.

Wales is consistently overlooked and shouldn't be. Snowdonia (Eryri in Welsh) contains some of the best ridge walking in Britain, including the Snowdon/Yr Wyddfa horseshoe. The Brecon Beacons and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path are both outstanding. Welsh is a living language — signage is bilingual throughout, and in parts of northwest Wales, it's the dominant language you'll hear.

Northern Ireland stands on its own. Belfast has had a revival and is worth several days. The Causeway Coast — Giant's Causeway, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, and the Antrim Glens — is spectacular and relatively compact. The Mourne Mountains in the south are quiet and beautiful.

A note on national parks: UK national parks are designated primarily for landscape rather than biodiversity, and most contain farms, villages, and roads. Don't expect the wilderness model of North American parks — but do expect some of the most distinctive countryside in Europe.

😎 Good to know

💂🏻 Cultural etiquette

Queuing is not a joke. There is always an order, even when it isn't marked. If uncertain, "Is this the back of the queue?" is the correct opener.

"You alright?" is a greeting, not a welfare check. The correct response is "Yeah, you?" and moving on.

On the London Underground: stand on the right, walk on the left on escalators. This is enforced socially and firmly. Londoners will not hesitate to push through if you stand on the wrong side.

British understatement is real. "Not bad" is high praise. "Interesting" is often not a compliment. "I might be wrong but..." frequently precedes someone being very confident they are right.

🍺 Food and drink

British food has a worse reputation than it deserves, partly because the worst version of it is very visible (motorway service stations, airport sandwiches). The best version — a Sunday roast in a country pub after a long walk, a properly made Cornish pasty, fish and chips eaten from paper on a harbour wall — is excellent.

For fish and chips, look for a chippy rather than a restaurant. Salt and vinegar are the correct accompaniments. Tartare sauce is optional. Eating them outside, ideally while a seagull tries to steal them, is the authentic experience.

UK tap water is safe and good. When offered still or sparkling in a restaurant, "tap is fine" is a perfectly acceptable answer and is free.

In traditional pubs, you order at the bar. Find your table, note the number if there is one, go to the bar, order food and drinks, and pay there.

Tipping is discretionary. A 12.5% service charge is commonly added to restaurant bills — check before adding more.

🚆 Getting around

Train travel in the UK is excellent in theory and unreliable in practice. Booking in advance via Trainline or the National Rail website can substantially reduce costs. On-the-day walk-up fares are expensive. Delays, cancellations and strikes are common - build a buffer into connections and purchase travel insurance is also advisable in case of cancellations.

The London Underground is the easiest way to navigate the city. Use an Oyster card or contactless payment. Use City Mapper rather than Google Maps to check tube routes, because Google Maps often doesn't reflect weekend closures. You can also download the TfL Tube app to get updates on closures and delays.

If renting a car to see the countryside, size matters: go small. Cotswold lanes are NARROW - they can only fit one car. A large SUV will be stressful to drive and nearly impossible to park in village car parks.

Driving is on the left. Roundabouts give way to traffic already on the roundabout. Speed cameras are everywhere and actively enforced.

Ready for a UK holiday? Check out Kodama Travel's UK Tours or contact us to plan your UK itinerary.