About us
and our 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 launched its first low-fare services between London and Stockholm. These services – the first such flights between our two countries – provided us with ready 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 on marketing our tours in Sweden and its neighbouring Nordic nations, but the worldwide web is a wonderful thing, and soon customers joined us from farther afield. Today, customers of almost thirty different nationalities enjoy our tours.
We love what we do, and we take great pride in doing it. We know that our customers like what we do too – and we are especially proud that so many customers return to us, year after year.
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 2006, Tim’s late father, Eric, moved to Norfolk to join us, separately and independently, in a purpose-built ‘Grandpa Annexe’ under the same roof. The children, in age order, left home for university every two years, culminating in Eddie’s departure to Falmouth University in the summer of 2022. Likewise, Eric moved into a comfortable care home in Wymondham, where he was better able to enjoy his late 90s.
Faced with a large empty house, Tim & Sofia, together with their beloved Labradors, Buzz and Peggy, wasted no time escaping to Scotland. They rented a cottage for six months on the Moray Firth until they found their new home, Carnousie House, high above 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, gained a Master’s Degree in Film Theory at the University of Amsterdam and is now settled in Manchester. Their younger brothers, Charles and Edward, both graduated in the summer of 2025, Charles in Law from the University of Aberdeen and Eddie in Commercial Photography from Falmouth University. Charles is in Glasgow undertaking professional studies, and Eddie has followed Lily to Manchester and has landed a job with The Hut Group as an Assistant Photographer.
In March 2024, Peggy, our (then) three-year-old black Labrador bitch had a litter of nine gorgeous puppies, three black and six yellow, and we kept two yellow Labs, Maud and Henry.
Sadly, in early October 2024, shortly after his 13th birthday, we had to say goodbye to Buzz, our beloved companion for so many years. A month later, in November 2024, we celebrated Eric’s 100th birthday and two months later, in January 2025, Eric died peacefully. He died in his own bed, quietly, peacefully and with no medical intervention. A life well lived.
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