easy places to travel from london?

Forget Ireland. It's too far to do in a day unless you fly there, and then you'd get just a quick look at Dublin.

If you want to have a look at the famous university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, they are "do-able" by train in a day but think about making an early start. They certainly aren't as far away as Aaron suggests - for goodness' sake, it's twice as far to Birmingham as to Oxford and the train to Birmingham from London takes 2 hours. The railway station for Oxford is Paddington, and for Cambridge, Liverpool Street. In both cities, the university dominates the city and it consists of a number of colleges spread all over the city - so don't ask where the university is or they'll think you're nuts, because it's everywhere! Cambridge is smaller and so the colleges are even more obvious, especially King's College with its famous chapel, and many others in the centre that are hundreds of years old - it's a real trip back in time almost to what a medieval town must have been like.

Brighton could be interesting and there are regular non-stop trains from London Victoria that get there in 50 minutes. (House prices are quite high in Brighton because that makes it possible to live by the sea and still get to work in London every day.)

If you have royal interests, Windsor Castle is an easy one for a day out from London. It's just outside the Greater London boundary. Go to Paddington and get a day return ticket to Windsor & Eton Central. Take a local train to Slough. Go to platform 1 there and there's a little shuttle train that goes just from Slough to Windsor and back. Exit the station at Windsor and you can't possibly miss the castle unless you're blind! If you want to go there, it's worth checking nearer the date with http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/visit/windsorcas... as it is a working royal palace and the Queen might need at any time to use parts of it that are normally open. She lives there at weekends and it's very much the Royal Family's favourite home.

There was this place I visited called Tunbridge Wells. My friends who live there said the schools were exceptional. The father goes into London for work everyday. They seem to enjoy the place a lot. As for multicultural, they have a 'pub' that has a live band that plays all sorts of music. They also have a music venue. It is a very pretty and quiet place :)

To be honest most things are a good few hours away from London. You can get overground to places like Clacton, Southend-on-Sea (there's a small theme park), Frinton, Walton-on-the-Naise. Places like Oxford start getting between 3-5 hour train journeys etc. Ireland is a boat trip away