Travelling to Gloucestershire best route please

[CheddarsGorgeous]

There are two routes - any ideas which is best bearing in mind toilet stops.

Route 1 - South Mimms M25 to M40, A40 and on to Gloucester

Route 2 - South Mimms M25, M4, turn off to Swindon and onto an A road.

I'd probably choose route 2. It's further, but the A road from Swindon in a dual carriageway for most of the way, and quite quick moving , whereas the A40 is single carriageway for quite long stretches, and the chance of getting stuck behind a tractor or slow vehicle is quite high! Plus Oxford can be quite slow depending on the time of day.

Just try to avoid gettting to the top of the A417 at 5pm on a Friday. And also there are some scheduled road closures in the evening at the moment, so check those out if you are traveling in the next few days.

Having done both there really isn't much in it. To be honest I'd do whichever Google says has the better traffic on the day.

Thank you, that's good to know.
Re loo stops for someone- any ideas on the best? Services and garages?

Route 2 - the A40 across from the M40 is awful, wheras apart from the Air Balloon roundabout, the route across from Swindon is usually very good.
Stops - on the M4, Reading and Chievely services are OK, or if you can hang on, theres the Orbital shopping park at Swindon. Theres also a big Sainsburys just off one of the Reading junctions (the one you turn off for Pangbourne) which has a cafe.

If you have someone in the car who suffers from motion sickness the route 2 is better.

Re route 1: There is a service station on the m40 at oxford but you have to go past the turn off for the a40 which feels a bit counterintuitive. But from the service station you can get onto the a40.