Road trip to Edinburgh

The three of us recently drove from London to Edinburgh for a long weekend trip.

I’m not going to lie, I did wonder how we would all cope stuck in a crossover-SUV for a 7.5 hour journey each way – and that’s before you factor in the toilet breaks.

The answer was surprisingly well but with a lot of planning which the other half kindly worked on in the weeks leading up.

The ultimate goal was to break the driving up into 2 hour chunks with a stop to enable our nearly 4-year old to let off steam. With longer drives in the evening when we knew she’d fall asleep.

The outbound route

Outbound the route took us to Birmingham, Cheshire, Cumbria and finally on to Edinburgh.

The homeward-bound route

The journey back was a bit more straight forward and took us via Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York and then home.

The itinerary

We had planned stops at each of the aforementioned locations.

Day 1

London to Birmingham

Birmingham took us about 2 and a half hours to get to. The other half had researched car parks in advance to save us looking for parking spaces. We spent the day in Birmingham visiting the Sea Life Centre, Lego Discovery Centre, Birmingham Museum and eating at Ed’s Diner.

The Sea Life Centre and Lego Discovery Centre are both on the Tesco Clubcard Boost which is what we used (it cost us £30 of Clubcard vouchers for entrance to both attractions for the 3 of us) and it saved us a fortune. We found it difficult to find out the price if we just paid on the gate rather than booking online in advance but I think it was in the region of about £20 per person for each attraction and even with an adult goes free voucher it still would have worked out expensive vs. the Clubcard Boost price.

We changed the little one into her pyjamas before we set off, anticipating her falling asleep on the next stage of the journey.

Birmingham to Cheshire

We arrived at our hotel (Runcorn Premier Inn) late, so it was straight to bed for everyone.

Day 2

Runcorn, Cheshire

Next morning we headed to The Bake House for a delicious, hearty breakfast. This was a lovely little eatery and although we only had breakfast there, the cakes looked amazing so wish I had got a slice to takeaway but maybe next time.

We had booked an early reservation for Inflata Nation, if you haven’t been read our blog post on our visit. It was great fun and the 4-year old absolutely loved it. It was probably her favourite thing about the whole trip.

We were absolutely shattered after an hour at Inflatanation – me and the other half definitely wouldn’t have coped for a 2 hour session. It was straight off to Windermere from here.

Cheshire to Windermere

We made a quick pit stop at the World of Beatrix Potter which was nice, we only had a strict time limit of one hour, so it was a bit of a rush but to be honest we didn’t really need much longer than that.

After we headed to Aira Force. We parked at the Aira Force car park and got the boat to Glenridding and then walked back, heading up to see the waterfall. It was a nice walk, ideally we’d have got there earlier in the day so we could have taken the walk at a more leisurely pace but we were up against the clock a bit to get there before sunset.

We had a dinner reservation at Woodstone Pizza in Penrith. It was fine but I wouldn’t rush back. After the dinner we were there in time to see the Penrith town Winter Droving celebrations. We hadn’t planned to stop but our little one saw the glistening lights of the funfair so we had to really.

As it was now past her bed time, we got her changed into her pyjamas and set off for the next leg.

Cumbria to Edinburgh

Again we arrived at our hotel late and all went straight to bed. All of the hotels were staying at on this journey are Premier Inns, this one looks the nicest from the outside but it wasn’t any different once you got inside.

Day 3

Edinburgh

Edinburgh was the journey destination as we had tickets for the CBeebies Christmas Panto.

We ate breakfast at the hotel, pretty standard fare and we all enjoyed it.

Breakfast finished, we packed up and headed to the city centre. We had a few hours before the show so we headed for the playground in Prince’s Street Gardens. The little one managed to burn off some steam before it was time to make our way to the theatre.

The Panto was based on Hansel and Gretel and contained the usual stars of CBeebies plus an extra special furry friend.

After the Panto we had a few hours before our dinner reservation so we visited Camera Obscura. We had fun but it was probably more suitable for older children/teenagers.

We ate dinner in the Salisbury Arms, again the food was fine, standard premium pub fare. After dinner, we changed our daughter into her pyjamas before we set off for our next Premier Inn in Newcastle.

Edinburgh to Newcastle

The drive to Newcastle was just over 2 and a half hours. As per the previous 2 nights, we were tired from driving and with it being a Premier Inn there’s no much else to do so we all went straight to bed.

Day 4

Newcastle

This was the day we were coming home. We were still 280 miles away from home and had planned to spend an hour or so at Beamish museum before driving to Leeds and spending a couple of hours at Tropical World and then driving to Peterborough and stopping at Big Sky soft play and then finally driving home. If you’ve no intention of doing at Beamish then I would say the other two stops would make for a perfectly reasonable itinerary for the way home.

We did stop at Beamish museum and ended up spending pretty much the whole day there (we left about 3). It wasn’t an amazing day out for us but it was certainly interesting and unlike no other museum that I’ve ever been to. If you haven’t been then I’d go for the experience. If you are into early 1900’s as a period then you’d definitely enjoy it, if you have school age children who are learning about coal mines and the 1900’s then they would get a lot out of it.

After leaving we decided to make one stop between Newcastle and home and set off.

Newcastle to York

The half way point took us to York and a soft play centre called XPlore in an entertainment centre called XScape. It turned out to be an excellent venue, the soft play was a nice size and clean and there were lots of different restaurants and an Outlet shopping centre, so you could spend several hours here if you wanted.

And that takes us to the end of our holiday. We changed our little girl into her pyjamas for the last leg of the journey

York to London

The final stretch of the journey took us 3 and a half hours and was the longest stretch of driving we did along the way. We did it at night so our daughter slept the entire journey and went straight to bed when we got home.