About us
and our Anglo-Swedish family business
An Anglo-Swedish family business
Adderley Travel is an Anglo-Swedish family business founded in 1999.
We are Tim & Sofia Ray. We started this business shortly after Ryanair started its first low-fare services between London and Stockholm and these services – the first such flights between our two countries – allowed us access to a Swedish audience. After a few false starts Tim's father, a life-long keen gardener, suggested garden tours because he knew people visited Britain for our gardens. He was right – they do, and we quickly became the specialists we are today.
Initially, we concentrated our marketing in Sweden and its neighbouring Nordic nations, but the worldwide web is a wonderful thing and soon customers joined us from farther afield and, today, customers of almost thirty different nationalities enjoy our tours across Britain.
We love what we do, and we take great pride in doing it, and we know that our customers like what we do too – and we are especially proud that so many of you return to us, again and again.
The Ray family
Alice, Sofia, Edward, Charles, Tim & Lily at a family weekend March 2022
In the early 1990s Sofia was studying at Stockholm's Hotel & Restaurant college, whilst, across the North Sea, Tim was moving his business out of London to the tranquillity of the Norfolk countryside. We met in February 1993 on a pink minibus in Yogyakarta, on the Indonesian island of Java, travelling around the world in opposite directions!
After a lot of letters and telephone calls – no texts or emails in 1993 – and a brief expedition by Tim to Stockholm, to take Sofia out to dinner for her birthday, Sofia moved to Britain in early 1994. We set up home in Norfolk, married in April 1997 and raised four wonderful children.
In late 2021 Tim’s father, Eric, moved into a comfortable care home, in Wymondham, where he can better enjoy his late-90s and, in the summer of 2022, Eddie left home for Falmouth.
Faced with a large empty house, Tim & Sofia, together with their beloved Labradors, Buzz and Peggy, wasted no time escaping to Scotland and, after renting for six months on the Moray Firth, found their new home on the banks of the River Deveron, just west of Turriff.
Alice, our eldest child, studied Politics & International Relations at the University of Liverpool and is a serving officer in the Royal Navy. Her younger sister, Lily, graduated from Falmouth University in Film Making and subsequently gained a Master’s Degree in Film Theory at the University of Amsterdam. Their younger brother, Charles, is in his third year at the University of Aberdeen, studying Law, and Edward, our youngest, is at Falmouth University studying for a degree in Commercial Photography.
Adderley
Adderley is the maiden name of Tim's paternal great-grandmother. A large, and largely North Staffordshire, merchant family with many branches, all stemming from the village of Adderley in Shropshire. Our branch, which we trace to Rupert Adderley, b. 1510, has in it Tim's great-great-great uncle, William Alsager Adderley, who co-founded the Staffordshire bone china manufacturer, Adderley.
Title image: Adderley coffee cup and saucer in blue transfer pattern with hand-applied gold decoration from the turn of the last century
“I want to thank you for all magical garden tours you have taken me on. I have no words really.”
— Lena Forslund, Täby, 2 April 2020