England Scotland Wales A Travel Guide | Tours


	Memories to Treasure for a lifetime!


	Introduction - 2 Day Tour - 3 Day Tour - 9.Day.Tour - 20.Day.Tour - 25.Day.Tour - 29.Day.Tour - 31.Day.Tour - 34.Day.Tour

So many links, so little time!

Whether anticipating your first holiday in London, planning a return visit or just 'web surfing' Great Britain, we hope that you will find on our 'tour pages' plenty of ideas - and links! - for great places to visit... in person or just on the internet. Enjoy!

The Dark Ages

Our first trip to London was on our honeymoon. Back then (in the 'dark ages'), little tourist information was available. The British Tourist Authority happily changed all that... with a multitude of pamphlets, brochures and advice. Today, vacation planning has never been easier... the British travel industry has taken full advantage of the potential of the internet.

Not your brother-in-law's vacation slides or holiday snaps!

Building on that, our holiday itineraries (soon to be more tours) are presented as hyperlinks to the web sites of the various venues we have visited... a far more pleasant option than sitting through your brother-in-law's vacation slides!

Before and After the World Wide Web

We still get a lot of ideas for places to visit from our favourite magazines, In Britain, Realm (another link) and Country Life. We continue to refer to a copy of 'Historic Houses, Castles & Gardens' which lists over 1300 properties belonging to the National Trust, National Trust for Scotland, English Heritage in addition to those venues which are privately owned. Prior to the WWW, information on hotels and railway schedules came from invaluable reference books: AA's ['Automobile Association'] 'The Hotel Guide' (700+ pages) and the 'Great Britain Passenger Railway Timetable' (another link) (1600+ pages). The information contained in both is now available on the Internet. Information on sorting out the driving instructions may be found on our Driving in Britain page.

How to use the itineraries

With exceptions of the type noted below, these itineraries can be used to give you ideas for additional places to visit while on your vacation. Giving due consideration to each individual venue's current schedule of opening days and hours (...they do tend to change from time to time...), it may well be possible to duplicate even a 'long string' of these 'pre-planned' days. If you are not planning to self-drive on-the-left, you will want to look closely at those days where the blue 'car icon' is absent. If you will be hiring a car, all of Britain is yours (...figuratively speaking, that is.)

Can you step into the same river twice?

Realistically, it is not possible to duplicate these itineraries in their entirety.

They were each designed to fit a one off ['one time'] set of circumstances. For example, the precise dates of the Royal Horticultural Society Hampton Court Palace Flower Show and Edinburgh Military Tattoo change each year. Some venues, such as Tussauds' 'Royalty and Empire Exhibition in Windsor, have - unfortunately - closed permanently ...'The Royal Tournament' ended over a one hundred year history of performances in the summer of 1999.

Two Philosophies

Extended holidays ['vacations'] in Britain tend to fall into two categories.

The first is to thoroughly tour a specific, limited geographic area. For example, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset on one holiday... Kent, East Sussex and West Sussex on another trip. The advantages of this approach are reducing the driving time and cost of petrol ['gasoline']. Further, less time travelling translates into more time available for visiting your selected venues. This approach does tend to require a more than usual amount of research time to come up with your own 'must see' list. We have found that it can be disappointing to visit an area with carefully made plans only to find out about another place that we would have wanted to visit. Allowing one or two 'unplanned' days in a fortnight ['two week'] holiday has not seemed to work for us. It is either too much or too little free time. And, based on the total cost for each vacation day in Britain, it can also be a waste of money. Finally, inherent in this approach is the assumption that one will have the resources - time, money and good health - to make subsequent trips.

If the first approach is targeting on the bulls-eye, the second is a buck-shot approach. Touring a large geographic area can be less efficient and more costly - more time spent driving from place-to-place and many more gallons of petrol. It does, however, allow for changes in one's personal resources that might preclude a future visit... one will not likely be left with the feeling that more could have been seen when the chance was there. In general, less time is spent researching a given local. And, there is only a slight increase in the amount of time and thought needed to come up with a tour route and driving instructions. (See our page on Driving in Britain for our software recommendation.) On holiday, we make it a point to visit conveniently located tourist information centres and bring home pamphlets on local sights. We also take advantage of the well-stocked pamphlet racks found in most hotels and tourist venues. Based on the information that we gathered locally on a first visit to a region, we tend to return to that area on a subsequent trip to see additional sights as well as revisit those that we especially enjoyed.

Whether 'bulls-eye' or 'buck-shot', do whatever will work for you. 'You pays your money and takes your pick.' See our Advice pages for more planning suggestions.

As Time Goes By. . .

Over the years some of the venues we visited have since closed. When we are aware that a venue has indeed ceased trading it will be indicated in the itinerary. While our first thought was that listing closed venues would be unnecessary - upon reflection - we realized that others like ourselves would want to know that there is a reasonable chance of actually seeing a venue about which they have heard/read.

And now, on to the Tours

The following links are provided for those interested in viewing the tours in chronological rather than numerical order.

Featured Tour... 31 Days, 12 hotels, 21 train rides, 6 boat Trips and 2,653 miles of driving 'on the left' through England, Scotland and Wales (But not necessarily in that order.) to see...

...6 Great Houses, 18 Country Houses, 3 City Houses, 1 Royal Residence, 1 Royal Yacht, 8 Castles, 61 Gardens, 25 Country Parks, 9 Cathedrals, 3 Churches, 1 Medieval Walled City, 7 Museums, 5 Piers, 3 Secret Bunkers, 12 Railway Venues, 7 Miniature Railways, 22 Model Railways, 12 Miscellaneous Venues and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

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Last modified: Thursday, 27 October 2005.

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