3 Tips for planning a UK road trip

A more complex wandering where you travel an area, an expanse and enjoy your whims or schedule. The UK’s ability to cater to road trips of all varieties is often overlooked.

But before you hit the road, however, you should know a few things. Take a look at our guide to road tripping around the UK to know what you’re in for.

The United Kingdom is many things, but first and foremost it is a great place for a road trip. This is especially true the more north you go, where places to stop are more spread out. You might drive on a road for 20 minutes and not even come across another house.

And so naturally, road trip tours evolved. You can follow the tour in your own car, or you can always hire a motorhome in Scotland at ariescape.co.uk and venture round the North Coast 500, or through Wales travel the Ten Days: round Wales tour. There are lots of ideas, like island tours, tours showing off places that are the backdrop for TV shows like Game of Thrones and Outlander, food tours, and more. The North Coast 500, for example, is so popular that there are various branches within the tour that follows a theme, according to the website. So, you can follow the North Coast 500 for the sake of luxury spas, golf courses, cycle trails, whiskey heritage, camping trails and more.

You can fit a lot of scattered touristy scenes into an itinerary that you can take as quick or as slow as you feel like. And don’t forget, there is always the idea of making up your own. Maybe you’re a music buff? You’d have a great time visiting Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh and seeing a gig in the cities that created so many modern music acts.

While, on the road, you can stay wherever you wish, the ultimate experience to sleep within the confines of the vehicle itself. To maximise this, a motorhome is your best option.

Road tripping and sleeping in a motorhome allows you to do two key things: 1) the aforementioned commitment to being on the road, and sleeping in what takes you across the landscapes and the tarmac means you also make that vehicle a home; and 2) you can get as close as possible to many parts of nature. To expand on 2), houses and static caravans will be positioned among greenery, coasts, and hills, but, being in a motorhome, gives you the freedom of a campsite to view what you wish to view, be where you wish to be. It expands your freedom in these designated spaces. A motorhome is the best road trip accommodation.

Pack, or install, the satnav. We know you know where you’re going, but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup for when you can’t get the map straight in your head. The next person you come across might be another 10-mile drive away so it would be helpful to get directions wherever you are. Plus, the satnav can point out any nearby petrol stations, which could save you in a pinch. You might want to measure out in your phone satnav how far you’ll be driving to guestimate your fuel usage.

Budget for tolls, or otherwise plan for tolls. Some of them can be avoided with a scenic detour, but most of them are going over bridges that are probably necessary to your trip. And along the same lines, plan travel documents for anywhere that requires a ferry ride. So that’s Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, but not the Isle of Wight, which is part of England. There aren’t any borders between Scotland, England, and Wales, so you’ll be fine travelling between them without documents, but the UK’s history of what is and isn’t UK territory is overly complicated.

There are some essentials that you should keep on hand if you are going on a road trip, even if you’re stopping at hotels rather than camping. Keep a hold of a charger, cable and plug, since you don’t know when the next time you will see a USB port will be if you have an older car. Bottles of water, obviously. A pair of sunglasses for the driver since UK whether is predictably unpredictable. And an emergency road kit, including warning triangle, reflective jacket, tyre inflator, jack, spare tyre, etc.

To keep up with the top stories from Reader's Digest by subscribing to our weekly newsletter