Get out of London or do daytrips?

" Where I am, we often do 7 hour drives to visit the borther in law, or 5 hours for Ikea, etc.. etc..."

But that's not on British roads!!!

When hiring a car, you have to return it to the place you got it from

This is not always the case ... we had a one-way rental recently (Newcastle > London, with Enterprise). What did surprise us was the UK-Irish view that automatic transmission is considered a luxury item, and one for which you will be charged almost double.

When hiring a car, you have to return it to the place you got it from

As pointed out by #11, that's really not true. I almost always do one way rentals in the UK. They charge a premium for it, but when your time is limited, it's still often the best option.

Brits definition of "a long time" is based on perspective of living in a small country so wouldn't worry. You will get accurate sense of timings of how long a journey will take from the AA Route Planner. Unless you're leaving London after 2pm on Friday I wouldn't worry particularly about delays - roads are fine.

Devon has lots of pretty places and is well worth a visit. You have to factor in routes, but the suggestion about Blenheim/Oxford is good - both worth visiting.

I rather look at the use of the "he who is tired of London is tired of living" quote, as similar to "you don't have to be mad to work here but it helps". It's a dreadful cliche and totally untrue. London is a great city but it isn't England, so getting outside and smelling fresh air, seeing rolling green countryside (without a tower block poking over the top of the trees of a London park)and visiting the many sights outside is well recommended.

and visiting the many sights outside is well recommended.

A lot of sights in the countryside close down after the end of October, or greatly reduce their opening hours to weekends only or the like. Clearly not the mega-sights like Stonehenge and Avebury, Blenheim, or sights in cities like cathedrals. But many more modest country houses, castles, gardens, etc. Leading attractions like Blenheim, Windsor Castle, are very expensive to get in, and have enough to fill a day. I wouldn't drag 8/10 year olds around Blenheim unless I knew they liked that sort of thing.

Seriously? Stonehenge does not 'suck'. Definitely worth a visit!

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