OXFORD, SALISBURY, COTSWOLDS HOSTEL GUIDE

Several cities deserve a visit including:

• Oxford Colleges
• Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge
• WinchesterCathedral and history
• Southampton and Portsmouth Docks and naval connections

Several areas have easy but interesting walks with spacious views, deserving a night or weekend stay:

• The Berkshire Downs
• The New Forest
• The Isle of Wight

CENTRAL SOUTH ENGLAND

The area centred on Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire is a land of pleasant varied scenery with gently rolling hills and extensive woodlands. The modest hills offer spacious views over a restful countryside. Take a day trip from London to one of the highly interesting cities, spend a weekend doing some easy hiking, or just enjoy the scenery as you pass through. If you plan to settle in Britain for a while, this area would make a good choice as it is pleasant and relaxing yet has easy access to London and England's 'silicon valley' along the 'M4 corridor' that extends west from London.

Transport

There are frequent trains from London to all the cities in this region, and there are stations with access to the countryside, so you can visit most places comfortably in a day trip.

If this is your first or last region of visit, it is useful to know that there are regular buses from Heathrow Airport to Oxford. There are also frequent buses to Reading, Woking and Guildford, from which frequent trains run to all the cities of the region.

Within the region there are good bus services, including evenings, between most of the main towns and cities.

OXFORD

Oxford is a beautiful bustling city with many fine college buildings, mostly built of warm yellow Cotswold limestone. It has excellent bus and train services to London, Heathrow, Gatwick and some other places, and you don't need buses within the city. Traffic in Oxford is horrendous: DON'T THINK OF BRINGING A CAR HERE. If you have a car, park it at the Seacourt Park & Ride (nominal fee per 24 hrs) on the W outskirts and walk or bus in with your baggage. There are 3 hostels, all very close to the rail and bus stations and within walking distance of the city centre; you can barely stop a car at any of them, never mind parking. The whole of Oxford is crowded with pedestrians, cyclists, cars and buses. There are several places where you can get take-out food or moderate-price meals.

Hostels in Oxford

We recommend the Central Backpackers which is newly fitted, very clean and pleasant, with a bright kitchen and spacious dorms, and should be comfortable for most guests.The YHA hostel is very good with excellent facilities, and some nice common areas including a patio but people don't hang around much there. The kitchen is OK but could be better, and you eat in the large dining room which also serves good-value meals. The breakfast is good. The Oxford Backpackers has improved under new ownership (2005); its casual atmosphere with people lying around, and late-night partying, will appeal to some but not all. The lounge/dining room has TV as well as canned music, and the kitchen with no windows feels depressing.

We do not recommend NANFORD GUESTHOUSE, following a damning report we received about it.

SALISBURY and STONEHENGE

You may be able to get a tour to Stonehenge and back in a day from London or Bath. For more flexibility, stay in the area: there is only one convenient hostel, Salisbury YHA, close to the city centre. Tour buses leave the train station and bus station every half hour to visit Stonehenge and Old Sarum, and you can hop-off at each site for as long as you like. Cholderton YHA is deep in the country and only reachable by car, but if you have a car or are cycling it looks like an excellent quiet base.

Salisbury has been a major city for hundreds of years and oozes history from its varied fine buildings, chief of which is the cathedral with a beautiful tall spire and water meadows around.

Salisbury YHA, a fine building dating from 1830, in its own grounds and within walking distance of everything is a very pleasant place to stay. However, it may be closing at the end of 2012.

If you are travelling by car, Cholderton YHA looks a very interesting place to stay as a working Rare Breeds farm. This makes an excellent base from which you can visit Stonehenge and other ancient monuments, but without a car it's not at all easy to get to.

WINCHESTER

was a major city in Saxon times and has a fine cathedral. Winchester YHA has closed, and Winchester now has no hostel!"

SOUTHAMPTON and PORTSMOUTH

Southampton is a bustling modern city with historical interest, and Portsmouth has strong naval connections. Neither is especially scenic. We do not know of a hostel in Southampton. In Portsmouth you can stay at

Berkshire Downs

This is a range of chalk hills with The Ridgeway, a fine walk along the crest that takes 2-3 days. You can walk between the following hostels, or just stay in one and do some short walks.

There is a bunkhouse attached to a Pub at Clyffe Pypard, a small village 15 km from Swindon. Difficult to reach without a car:

This hostel also gives access to the Thames Valley and the Chilterns.

Thames Valley

The Thames runs through a stretch of delightful hill scenery between Oxford and Reading. You speed through this in 5 minutes on the train journey from London to Oxford or to Bath/Bristol. The best hostel base is at Streatley (see above).

New Forest

There is nothing new about this ancient forest, a favourite of English kings for the last millennium, and it remains a pleasant area of forest and heathland with a network of good walks. You will see ponies grazing. Although nearly flat, the slight hills are free of forest and offer tremendous panoramic views. If you want a break from London, come here for the day, there are frequent trains including evenings. Or stay at the hostel at Burley, for which trains direct from London stop within 5 miles, and there are 7 buses a day including evening from Bournemouth and Southampton:

Isle of Wight

This island has a variety of countryside and some coastal walks.

Transport

Ferries (boat or hovercraft) leave from Southampton, Portsmouth, Southsea and Lymington, each hourly or better. There is a good network of frequent buses throughout the island, and you can buy rover tickets on arrival on the island.

Totland Bay hostel at the west of the island is a good centre for walks:

The Cotswolds is an area of generally pleasant pastoral scenery with modest hills and valleys, most noted for its picturesque villages built of warm golden limestone and with streams running down the middle. These are classic English scenes and, since the Cotswolds is close enough to London for a day trip, tourists are there in their thousands. The attractions are good but rather scattered, so a rental car or tour bus is the best way to see the area. If you are travelling by car, take the route from Swindon northwestwards to Gloucester, and stop at the viewpoint at Birdlip where the land drops suddenly away and there is a view over what seems like half of England.

Transport

The train line from Oxford to Worcester (hourly, also evenings and Sundays) runs through the Cotswolds. Buses run frequently from Oxford to Woodstock, where there is the fine Blenheim Palace. Otherwise, all places can be reached by bus from either Cirencester, Gloucester, Evesham or Oxford, but buses are rather sparse with almost none on Sundays, so it is not easy to tour the area by public transport.

If you wish to stay for a night or two, the best place is:

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