It always seems that it takes more research prior to going on a genealogical foray to an ancestral place than it does when you have access to the places and archives while there. Even so, during the preparation you can forget some basics. Before I went to Northamptonshire, I checked out the places I would be staying, the places I needed to get to and public transportation in the area. What I didn't do was look at a map in conjunction with the bus schedules.
I had it in my head that when I left the city of Northampton where the conference had been, I would first get to Kettering and then to the villages of Little and Great Weldon. My plan was to stop in Kettering, check out the graveyard for my ancestor's gravestones and then find the street where my Strange family had lived and run their grocery shop, before moving on to the Weldon villages and my Chambers family. Only the bus schedules didn't allow for that to happen.
Checking maps of the area before my trip along with bus schedules would have shown me that I wouldn't be able to visit both Kettering and the Weldon villages in a day. Fortunately, one of my contacts, a distant cousin, was happy to drive me around to those ancestral places which were harder to get to relying on public transport. It helped that those were the family lines we shared in common.
Successful research on the ground requires changing plans when necessary and being open to new ways of accessing places and information. Another good thing to do is to have contacts in the area, preferably ones which you have been in touch with for a while to build up a relationship. At least that was one thing I had going for me on that trip.
Images:
By User: (WT-shared) Paul. at wts Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22746942
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