AtoZ UK Road Trip Challenge - The Perfect Itinerary

Last Updated on 19th August 2020

AD | This post about our AtoZ UK road trip is sponsored, all opinions my own, please see my disclaimer for more.

I’m so unbelievably excited to be sharing this post with you guys today as it’s something we’ve been working on for months now. Introducing our AtoZ UK road trip challenge; a huge road trip across the UK that will see us visiting a place beginning with every single letter of the alphabet!

It’s taken an awful lot of planning, scheming and preparing for this challenge but it’s something that I’m so excited about and I can’t wait to share the details with you guys and hopefully encourage you to get involved in some parts of the country, whether it’s in the beautiful countryside of the Lake District or along the beatific North Yorkshire Coast!

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have seen that we’ve already made a start on it and as of the 19th August 2020, we’ve already ticked off York, Scarborough, Ripon and Windermere!

There’ll inevitably be a tonne of comprehensive guides of each place we visit, but today I wanted to kick things off and talk about the challenge a bit more and hopefully inspire you guys to do something similar!

Obviously, the sub-headings below aren’t entirely accurate or very indicative of exactly where in the country we’ll be heading, but I thought it’d be easier than writing out every single county for every single place we’re visiting!

Our UK road trip will see us heading all over Scotland and England (and maybe Wales at some point too, but we might save that for an individual trip!). We’ll be embarking on plenty of day trips as some of the places are close to our homes when we’re based in both Penrith and York, but some of the places are much further afield so we’ll be doing longer weekend and possibly even week-long trips for those.

One of the main reasons why we’re choosing to do our huge UK road trip now is because travel is obviously incredibly sensitive right now. As much as I often wish we were gallivanting around some of the most exotic countries in the world again, I just don’t feel 100% comfortable doing so right now, so travelling the UK is the best option for us.

That being said, it’s still incredibly important to exercise caution when travelling in the UK and we’ll be taking as many safety precautions as we possibly can (wearing masks, social distancing, hand washing and the use of anti-bac etc).

Lake District

I’m incredibly lucky that my parents live in Penrith, Cumbria which is just 3 miles outside of the Lake District National Park. During lockdown, we spent the vast majority of our time there and once restrictions were eased slightly, we embarked on our first trip as part of our AtoZ UK travels.

We headed to Bowness-on-Windermere which is one of my favourite places in the Lakes, as well as in the whole of England as it holds so many special childhood memories for me.

There are tonnes of places to visit in the Lake District, but as part of our UK road trip, we’ve added Windermere (already ticked off), Keswick, Kendal and Ullswater.

Yorkshire – UK road trip

Yorkshire is where I’ve lived for the vast majority of my life. Between Doncaster in South Yorkshire and York in the North, I’ve pretty much always lived in “God’s Own Country” (apart from when we were travelling the world and upon our return back to the UK when we lived with my parents in the Lakes).

It’s a place that I’m proud to be from and it’s also a place that’s home to a plethora of awesome places to see and things to do.

Our UK trip will see us visiting numerous places in Yorkshire, including York (our hometown for many years now), Scarborough, Ripon, Filey, Whitby, Knaresborough, Harrogate, Leeds, Thirsk and more!

Despite living in Yorkshire for a very long time, there are still so many places I haven’t been to so I’m incredibly excited to pay them all a long-overdue visit!

“Up north”

I’ve dubbed this section “up north” and even though many southerners would even class Yorkshire as “up north”, to us, it basically means anything slightly above us in geographical terms.

Places like Durham, Newcastle, Jarrow and Alnwick are all part of our trip and fall under the “up north” branch. We’ve already had a fleeting visit to Newcastle and we’ve stayed just outside of Durham before, but I’m hoping on this trip we can enjoy at least full days in these places, if not longer.

“Down south”

Similarly to “up north” but sort of the opposite, the “down south” parts of our trip are basically anywhere below us on the map.

This includes places like Cambridge, Oxford, Plymouth, Bath, Brighton, St Albans and Reading. We do also have a few places in and around Cornwall which will definitely have to be a longer trip as opposed to a quick day out as they’re pretty far away from us.

Hopefully we can create a longer trip where we visit a lot of these places over the course of a week or so as it’s quite a decent trek down the country. However, after driving thousands of miles around New Zealand and Australia, a few hours down south in England is nothing!

Northwest

The Northwest of England is yet another place that I’ve spent very little time in. It seems crazy to me that I’ve travelled to some of the most remote corners of the earth, yet I’ve barely scratched the surface of my home country!

However, our trip should soon see to that and once we’ve been to places like Manchester, Liverpool and Chester, I’ll have added a fair few more cities to my “visited” list in the UK.

Midlands

I’ve spent very little time in the Midlands as well, but thanks to our UK road trip, we’ll be able to see quite a few places while we’re travelling around including Birmingham, Derby and Nottingham.

We’ll probably stop in some of these places as we travel down south and I’m excited to see more beautiful towns and cities in England!

Scotland – UK road trip

Scotland is a place that I’ve wanted to travel a lot more of for a while now as I’ve only really ever been to Edinburgh.

Of course, Scotland are handling the Covid pandemic in a slightly different way to England, so it’s imperative if you plan on travelling there over the next few months that you remain as vigilant as possible in order to keep yourself and everyone else as safe as possible.

The Scotland leg of our trip will see us visiting places like Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness. As I mentioned above, I’ve already been to Edinburgh a couple of times before but it’s actually one of my favourite places in the UK so I’m excited to spend more time there, and of course visit more places in Scotland as well.

And there you have it! A brief introduction to our UK road trip plans! I’m so excited for this challenge and adventure and having ticked a few places off that are closer to home already, I can’t wait to head further afield and explore much more of the UK.

If you want to join in with our AtoZ UK road trip challenge, make sure to use the hashtag #AtoZUKroadtrip on social media and follow me on Instagram for updates on our travels!

If you’ve got any guides or ideas on places in the UK that we plan on visiting as part of our AtoZ UK road trip, please let me know in the comments or on Instagram @imjustagirl_16.