Attend a lecture in computer science while travelling in the UK

Universities generally have Open Days for prospective students, where they can meet faculty member, attend sample lectures, learn about research activities going on in the department, talk to the current students. These activities may be limited across universities, as they might have different set of offerings and rules as part of these events.

You should check the University Department, which are closed to the place you will be staying at OR intend to travel.

For starters, this page will give you details about Open Days event at University of Oxford.

University of Dundee has its open days for Computing on 26th August and 28th September 2013, so you'll miss that.

University of London has its open days in September 2013.

City University of London will have its open days in June 2013.

University of Edinburgh will have its open days in June.

Some ideas:

1. MeetUp.com - here, you will, at least, find many events to register for attending, particularly in modern applications of Computer Science: various programming languages, concepts and hardware. Some hot topics you will find there are: Big Data, various web "camps" and coding sprints, hacker (the nice type - the ones that make things as in "I hacked this together") / hackerspace events. See also eventbrite. I can speak from personal experience that meetup.com is useful for computing related events though it also seems to be a place where general very broad and also niche interest place to find all kinds events (creative, languages, arts, outdoors etc. etc.) and the organisers - which, to my mind, is a very good thing indeed!

2. raspberrypi.org - this is a 25$ cheap kit computer that is taking the teaching of Computer Science to school kids by storm as well as a cult following among enthusiasts and hobbyists as in more serious experimental computing applications. The RaspberryPi is a British Designed and (largely) British assembled (in Wales) product. Look out for events on their blog.

3. Cafe-based talks/Cafe Scientific: Search for Cafe Scientifique or see http://www.cafescientifique.org/ - this is a worldwide movement that is just about self-explanatory - talks on Science in Cafes. The events are autonomously run, rather than under the umbrella of any organisation and some events have been held in UK - specific ones I can think of in the past include lectures on Brunel Bicentenary at Cafe Le Cafe Parisien in Portsmouth (don't work for them nor have a financial interest in them) and talks at The Art House Southampton thearthousesouthampton.co.uk (again no financial interest, they are a non-profit organisation)

4. Contact the British Computer Society - http://www.bcs.org/

5. Browse questions and profiles on StackExchange (hoster of this site) Computer Science Q&A https://cs.stackexchange.com/ for ideas

6. Twitter - again for ideas and to follow organisations for updates on events