How to Plan the Perfect Day Trip

*This is a collaborative post on how to plan the perfect day trip

Summer days are blissfully long and often bright, even in the UK where we are lucky enough to experience some ungodly amounts of summer rainfall each year. Glum days besides, the summer is a time ripe with potential – and the summer holidays the perfect receptacle for said potential.

Getting out of the house is a pre-requisite for enjoying the better days of summer in the UK, but doesn’t necessarily mean booking weeks-long domestic breaks in the process. Often, you can get far more enjoyment out of a simple day trip than you can a week-long break – even if just for the relatively simpler process of planning such a trip. This begs the question, though: what makes a perfect day trip? And how can you shape the ideal day trip for your own summer adventure?

Choosing a destination for your perfect day trip

A good day trip requires, of course, a good destination. The UK is a veritable playground for day-trip destinations, from thrilling urban centres to coastal bastions of quietude and far, far beyond. Choosing the right destination is difficult not just for choosing from a packed deck, but also for choosing somewhere practical.

For one, your chosen destination should be easy to get to. If you drive, or if you can insure a car for a day in order to drive, this is much easier to manage – and wholly down to comfort. Your main question should be: “how much of the day do I want to give to travel?” The same goes for public transport, though the interconnectivity of our rail networks makes getting to many places much less headache-y than otherwise. 

Creating an itinerary

Since time is a valuable commodity in your day trip, you’ll want to have a clear idea of timings and your ideal activities in order to make the most of the time you do have. This means drawing up as accurate an itinerary as you can, which plots out the timings for each part of your day – taking travel time and potential delays into consideration. Drawing up an itinerary doesn’t mean you don’t get to be spontaneous. It simply means you can rest easy knowing you’ve already done the hard work of planning your travel and tourism-spot visitation plans.

Packing and preparation for the perfect day trip

The last part of the day-trip planning process is packing. There isn’t much to pack, given you aren’t going anywhere for especially long – but the stuff you do pack is especially important. If you’re bringing your children, you’ll need more than enough water for everyone (and a few snacks up your sleeve to pre-empt tantrums). If you’re hoping to explore some public footpaths in the great outdoors, you’ll need shedloads of sunblock and the right outerwear to stave off the bugs!