I haven't booked an international flight in more'n 35 years.

Three of us going to England early June '16 (Isle of Man TT). Gonna fly into London, take British Railways north.

The other two have a fixed return date.

I am shipping a bicycle separately and and plan to wander around the UK and Ireland for another seven or eight weeks after they leave (hopefully around 2,000 miles total, wherever that can take me). In a perfect world I get a flexible return date.

Hotels are not an issue as I have kin over there and we are going to camp.

Some questions....

1) Best/cheapest way to book flights?

Is one search website better than another?

Is it always cheaper to book early? (like this week)


2) Is there any way to book a flexible return date?

Thanks,

Birdwatcher

Glad you are doing those things while you can, Mike!

Huge undertaking that is an epic lifetime event that 95% of people never do.

Can't help with the info request, but wish you good health and weather as well as adventure on your journey.

Open ended tickets can get pretty pricey. Pick a REALISTIC return date and if you need to change it, then you can change it and you'll typically have to pay the difference. If you don't need to change, you're golden.

Don't book immediately but check the rates every day for a week or 2. Airlines often change their rates day to day and some days of the week are a little cheaper.
Considering the price of baggage these days, check out what it would cost to leave the bike home and buy a good used one there to use & resell before you return. You might find a good rental price, too.

"Next plane to London, leavin' on runway number 5 ..."

There's a window where it's usually cheaper, usually about 3-5 months out. Now is too early and the prices will actually be higher.

Book a round trip with the best guess return date then pay the change fee when you decide on your real date.

I typically use Kayak to get a broad look at what is available, this on Wednesday or Thursday only, then upon finding a flight of interest go directly to the airline website and arrange. If you need the tail end to float you will pay a bit more.

'Rumor' has it that the more you check, the more they 'know', you should clear cookies at a minimum. If 'they' see you checking flights to England 3 times a week 'they' figure 'Gee, he must REALLY want to go to England', so let us UP the prices.

Just a thunk.

this, i bought my round trip tickets to Boston this past thrus. i checked prices everyday for a week on thrus the price dropped from the average of about $650 to $374 which is what i paid. also sunday mondays and fridays are usually more expence to book on. my tickets would of been $898 if i booked on sunday and fri.

Two words of advice: Use a travel agent and after you book, sign up at yapta.com to monitor ticket prices and get a refund if prices go down.

Travel agents know more about the ins and outs of booking a complicated trip than anybody, and can suggest things you'd never think of.

yapta.com will give you a weekly update of current ticket prices, and if they drop below a certain percentage, will apply for a refund on your behalf. For example, for an upcoming trip of mine, I paid $620 for a ticket. Yapta tells me that a week after I bought, it would have been $850, and a week after that, it had fallen back to $650. It has never fallen below what I originally paid, so I now know that I got the best fare possible. It's a free service.

This^. Or simply decide which airline you want to fly & check the flights periodically & book directly through them.

You've got plenty of time & I would surely not book until a couple of months before departure or even later.

Also, unless you just really WANT to be in the total clusterphuck that is Heathrow, I'd advise you to fly into Gatwick or even another city like Manchester or maybe Glasgow, even Dublin.

MM

This.

I am indeed fortunate to work in a profession that gives me 2 1/2 months put together to do such things.

I will say the daily bicycling part is the easiest part, tho I'll admit riding 2,000 miles in a month sure SOUNDS impressive, as it did to me before I did it. In practice you just pedal along at your own pace is all, and if you are breathing hard you're doing it wrong.

If you can live out of a backpackers' tent and sleep on the ground you can bicycle tour pretty easy. Might be THE best way to see a place.

With respect to the UK, inherited biases have me favoring the Celtic parts. 2014 to New York I averaged 65 miles/day, target speed on this next one will be 50, maybe slower than that on account of history lays so much thicker on the ground over there.

The near-religious requirement that I make it back to Culloden up by Inverness (last seen 48 years ago) commits me to 800 miles of Scotland, which is a bit more of the trip than I'd otherwise commit (how many empty moors do I need to see after all?). Highland history comes across bewilderingly bloody, with endless feuds, spit-in-the-face hatreds, and endless toughness, raw courage and loyalty often sadly wasted.

But going up to Culloden also does allow for a meander across the Scottish Lowlands, the ancestral homelands of our own Scots-Irish from whom we derive so much of our American soul. Our cultural ancestors, at least of the parts we celebrate on these boards. Bannockburn, Falkirk and Stirling will all be high on my list

Another cool thing about Scotland is that it is encoded by law that travellers in many circumstances can camp along the wayside fer nuthin'. Hopefully I can pull this whole trip off averaging $50 a day. Plus they have a kazillion campgrounds over there.

In a perfect world I hop a ferry to Ireland in time for the Orange Order parades in Londonderry, that celebration of Scots-Irish Protestant identity and of 300 year old hatreds the like of which most folks here are scarcely aware.

After that I figure I could easily spend 500 miles in the Republic of Ireland, looking up the old ancestral O'Birdy parishes amongst other thing (seems like clan history was predictably chaotic and bloody there too).

Also in a perfect world I then hop a ferry to France for a 300 mile dash along the D-Day coast to Calaise before crossing back to the UK at Dover, seems pretty likely I'll get distracted by Scotland and/or Ireland long before then though.

Shipping across to Wales seems more likely, provided I make it that far, for some serious hill climbs on my way to an airport.

'Course, being a natural pessimist I'll point out I gotta get there first. At this point things are still moving in that direction tho

Birdwatcher

If you get by McLeod castle there in Scotland, snap a pic for me...

My roots come from there.

Have a look at flights to Birmingham airport as well. Plenty of flights but small enough to be easy in and out.

I'll respectfully disagree, but will qualify that my info dates from 2010. Things change...

Getting baggage in Heathrow is no biggie, and you just take the Express into Paddington Station in London. Then hop on the Circle line to King's Cross station, and from there you can get on the East Coast line to Edinburgh...

Now, leaving might be another matter... I've only flown in/out when I had frequent flier status, and that really greases the skids in busy airports.

Like others, I would suggest fly to New York then on to Dublin and take the ferry to IOM. Earlier this year we did the Heathrow > Liverpool > IOM route and returned through Dublin. Its a 20min flight from Dublin to IOM if you don't want to do the ferry.
Good timing on your part as John McGuiness should break a record in '16.

Personal charter.
That or take the RR.

Iceland Air has been offering unbeatable fares to the UK from several US airports.

Lufthansa.com