Information & FAQs

Gardens & attractions

Not only is Britain a gardening nation, but our gardeners are keen to welcome visitors too. Indeed, some 3,000–4,000 gardens will open their gates to the public annually. Some for charity, for just an afternoon, and some every day of the year, and we take you to a selection of the very best ones in each tour area.

Ordinarily, we don’t guide you around the gardens, although, at some, we do arrange for a private guided tour or an introductory talk – often by the owner or head gardener – and on some tours we visit gardens not generally open to the public.

Wherever we are, we will rarely be far from other attractions, especially our history and heritage, and we use these nearby attractions as a backdrop to our day-to-day itinerary, stopping as our pleasure takes us.

Your group

We limit group sizes to a maximum of twelve, although group sizes during COVID restrictions may be smaller than that, and encourage a multi-national mix of garden lovers.

A few customers are as young as their early-twenties and a few are in their late-eighties, but it’s likely that the mean age is mid-to-late-sixties.

To date, we have been joined by customers from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and most of the states of the United States of America.

English is spoken in a range of styles, and with great humour!

Suitability

All our tours involve getting into and out of the minibus and, for safety reasons alone, you must be able to do this independently.

On our garden tours, you can do as little or as much as you like, and at your pace – you can sit and read a book or walk every path throughout the garden.

On our other tours, and on our walking tours in particular, a suitable level of fitness is required, and this may vary from tour to tour. If you are concerned as to the suitability of a particular tour or whether, or not, your own fitness and mobility may impair either you or the group, please discuss this with us before you reserve your places.

There is no upper age limit to our tours, although there is a lower age limit of 16.

Single travellers

It shouldn’t need to be said, but we welcome single travellers, and want to assure single female travellers that women make up some 70-80% of our customers, and travel with us on their own or accompanied by their sister, their friends, their mother, their daughter, their colleagues and, on one occasion, we think, their Swiss lover!

The point we make, badly perhaps, is that whilst you are more than welcome to bring along your spouse, and some do, some quite successfully so, they are not obligatory!

Sleeping & eating

Your comfort, together with your safety, is our chief priority and we go to great lengths in choosing where to stay. The majority of our hotels are listed in the Good Hotel Guide and many of them are hotels to which we return, year-after-year, some for a dozen years or more. We seek out comfortable independent establishments with character, friendly service and a good kitchen. When considering a new hotel, we visit it first.

We enjoy good food too, and choose hotels with reputable kitchens. When we dine out, we do so at some of the very best local restaurants and pubs, often award-winning establishments, preparing locally-sourced fresh produce and cooking it superbly.

Meals

Dinner is usually taken à la carte, though occasionally in Britain and commonly in France dinner may be from a limited-choice menu.

Breakfast is a cooked 'full English or Scottish or Welsh' affair complemented by a lighter 'continental' breakfast, which varies from hotel-to-hotel.

Breakfasts in France are 'continental', as one would expect them to be.

Dietary requirements

We have, to date, successfully accommodated all our customers' dietary requirements – from vegan to gluten-free and much else besides – and we do not suppose requests will ever be a problem.

Accommodation

Bedrooms vary in size, sometimes considerably so – not only from establishment-to-establishment, but within the same establishment – and what may be considered 'large' in one place may be considered 'small' in another. It is all relative.

Double and twin rooms

In British English we say 'double-room' to mean one room with one bed for two people and 'twin-room' to mean one room with two single beds – please bear this in mind when booking!

Rooms, bathrooms & stairs

We confirm room reservations to our hoteliers, as bookings arrive, and they allocate rooms in the order in which they receive them, with the better rooms allocated first.

Your room will be en suite, typically a bathroom with a bath and a shower over it, though occasionally there may be just a shower or, exceptionally, just a bath.

We also ask to be accommodated on the ground or first floor, unless there is a decent working lift, but this is not always possible.

Let us know

If the nature of your room, your bathroom or the number of stairs to your room is material to your booking, then please let us know beforehand.

What to bring

We strongly recommend that you bring a good waterproof and windproof jacket and a pair of sturdy boots or shoes, remembering that, even at the height of a British summer, it can be wet and windy and, in any case, there will doubtless be gardens where it will be wet and uneven underfoot.

You may like to consider a hat, scarf and gloves, for tours in April, early May and September – and all tours in Scotland, whatever the month!

Otherwise comfortable clothes, layers that you can pull on and strip off, seem to work best for walking around the gardens, exploring villages and getting into and out of the minibus.

Dress at dinner

On those days when we dine-out, without first returning to our hotel, our casual day dress will be fine, though a spare pair of shoes (left in the bus for the day) won't go amiss.

When we dine-in, at our hotel, it is fair to say that you will feel comfortable dressed 'smart casual' to 'as smart as you like'!

Walking tours

There are specific requirements for walking tours, and these requirements will be set out in the tour itinerary.

Luggage allowance

Unless we say otherwise, we must ask that you restrict your luggage to one main suitcase and one smaller bag, a day pack or similar, per person, with no piece of luggage being taller than 80cm (32in) (including wheels and handles etc) or wider than 50cm (20in), and not exceeding a maximum weight of 23kg (50lb).

And please note that, whilst we will always ask that hotel staff assist you with your luggage, we cannot guarantee it, and you must be comfortable taking your luggage up one flight of stairs.

Prices

Two prices are shown. The first price is per person, sharing a twin or double room, and the second price is per person, single occupancy.

Prices are quoted in:

GBP – Pounds Sterling
USD – US Dollars

for anyone, anywhere, to purchase a tour.

Prices are also quoted in:

EUR – Euros
SEK – Swedish Kronor

for citizens of the EU or permanent residents of an EU member state.

Prices are listed on each tour page, and include the following:

• all your accommodation on the tour

• cooked 'full English or Scottish or Welsh' breakfast each morning in Britain

• dinner each evening

• entrance to all gardens or other attractions

• all transport within the tour

• our personal service throughout

There are also occasions where we may include refreshments or meals not ordinarily included in the price of the tour – such as morning coffee, a lunch or picnic lunch, or afternoon tea – but this will be clearly stated in the itinerary.

The price of the tour specifically excludes the following:

• dinner on the final day

• (alcoholic) drinks with your meals

• additional costs incurred by you at any of the gardens or other attractions

• personal costs incurred by you during any free day

• your personal insurance costs

• newspapers, telephone calls, laundry and other sundry items

• the costs of any additional administration

Introduction

For greater flexibility during and immediately after the COVID pandemic, we introduced vouchers – allowing customers to change plans without losing their deposit. It has worked well and we will retain them.

Vouchers replace deposits.

Vouchers

Vouchers are valid for five years from the month of issue and are transferrable, but not refundable.

The price of a double voucher (for two people) is:

• 1,000.00 GBP

• 1,400.00 USD

• 1,000.00 EUR

• 12.000,00 SEK

The price of a single voucher (for one person) is:

• 600.00 GBP

• 900.00 USD

• 600.00 EUR

• 7.000,00 SEK

Making a reservation

To make a reservation, simply click on the ‘Reserve My Places’ button on any of the tour pages, and complete the form.

We will acknowledge your reservation, and invoice you for a voucher in your chosen currency.

Once you have purchased your voucher, your place or places will be reserved on that tour.

If the tour cannot then proceed, or if you cannot join it, you will be free to join another tour, either in the same season or at any time within five years.

Paying-in-full

If you reserve your places within 56 days/8 weeks prior to the start of the tour, we will ask you to pay-in-full for the tour.

Pre-tour correspondence

Ordinarily we will email the whole group a couple of weeks before the tour, confirming precise meeting arrangements, giving any last minute instructions, and introducing you all to one another, but in light of the threat of COVID spoiling our plans, we will increase our pre-tour correspondence to ensure that we are all up to date with whatever the current COVID threat may be.

Payment

Our default payment method is by debit or credit card, online via Stripe, a safe and secure worldwide card payment processing company (details of which will be in your reservation acknowledgement).

If you are unable (or prefer not) to use Stripe online, you may pay by Bank Transfer, directly from your bank to our UK business current account (details of which will be in your booking acknowledgement).

Currencies

Finally, irrespective of how you choose to pay, we accept payment in four currencies:

GBP – Pounds Sterling
USD – US Dollars

for anyone, anywhere, to purchase a tour.

And:

EUR – Euros
SEK – Swedish Kronor

for citizens of the EU or permanent residents of an EU member state.

Moreover, should you wish to pay in yet another currency, please ask.

However, whichever currency you use, it must remain the same currency for both your voucher and the final tour payment.

Value for money

Our tours represent extremely good value for money.

We’re not cheap, and we don’t pretend to be, but when you consider everything that is included in your tour – pretty much everything except your lunch and drinks – we hope you agree that it is good value.

Consider, too, you will be just one of a maximum of 12!

Personal service

Please be assured, too, that our personal service starts from our first contact with you.

Our service and our meticulous attention to detail are our hallmarks – the pillars of our business and the reason why so many of our customers return to us every year – some customers year after year.

Britain

VisitBritain, our national tourism agency, has an excellent website with pages devoted to practical information and health and personal security.

Pounds & pounds

It may be as well to say that we use Pounds Sterling, and not Euros or Dollars, and that, whilst most of the places we visit do take credit cards and bank debit cards, we recommend that you have a little cash for those smaller places that do not take cards. There will be opportunities to get cash from ATMs or High Street banks during the tour.

And, although we may shop for kilos of cheese, metres of fabric and litres of fuel, we still drive in miles per hour and drink pints of beer – we remain a metrically challenged nation!

Weather

We recommend the BBC website for weather forecasts (click here and enter a place name in the Find a Forecast box).

In Britain, most of us talk about temperatures in degrees Centigrade, and not degrees Fahrenheit, but if you are a Fahrenheit person, then remember that 61°F is approximately 16°C (just transpose the numbers) and, likewise, 82°F is approximately 28°C and this is, broadly speaking, the range of British summer temperatures.

Communications

Please check that your mobile phone will work in the United Kingdom.

Travel

The joining instructions for each tour are outlined in the first day's itinerary, with any particular information in the ‘Additionally’ section towards the bottom of the tour page. The precise arrangements – the exact time – will be confirmed to you by email, a week or so before the tour.

Insurance

We require you to have adequate holiday/trip insurance, including, if necessary, Personal Liability Insurance, Medical Insurance, Repatriation Insurance and Holiday/Trip Cancellation Insurance (if you have to cancel at the last minute).

We do not insist on proof of your insurance, but we do presume that you will have it.

We do not sell insurance.

European Health Insurance Card (EHIC)

If you are eligible for an EHIC, then please ensure that you have one and that you bring it with you.

Travel assistance

If you require assistance with your arrangements in Britain – especially if you are arriving before the start of the tour or staying on in Britain after the tour – we will help you, where we can, with such arrangements, but please remember that we are not travel agents and we will make a reasonable charge for doing so.

Airports & meeting points

We do not collect customers from airport terminal forecourts, nor do we collect from anywhere within either Heathrow Airport or Gatwick Airport (save only when you are a group arriving together).

Our principal meeting points are:

• the Heathrow Sheraton Hotel, immediately north of Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport most tours in southern England

• Ashtree House Hotel, Paisley (some 10 minutes by taxi from Glasgow Airport), for tours starting from Glasgow

• the Hampton by Hilton Edinburgh Airport hotel, for tours starting in Edinburgh

• Manchester Airport, at a location yet to be decided

We may add additional meeting points during 2024.

Long-haul flights

If you are planning to join one of our tours – and you are flying a considerable distance to do so – then please check with us that the tour has space for you, before you book your flights, and check with us too, that your proposed flight arrival and departure times are compatible with the tour.

If you are flying long-haul, please also consider the considerable benefits of arriving at least the day before the tour starts, so that you are refreshed from your long flight, from the start.

Airline baggage allowances

Finally, if you are flying long-haul into Britain and then intend to fly elsewhere, short-haul, especially with one of the many low-fare airlines, please check your baggage allowance on all your flights.

Our minibus

The current minibus is a March 2016 registered red Ford Transit 'Trend' high-roof, 17-seat, long wheelbase minibus which, with a luggage rack replacing the rear row of four seats, gives us our maximum capacity of 12 passengers plus driver.

It is registered and licensed as a Public Service Vehicle, fitted with an electronic tachograph and subject to eight-weekly safety checks and an enhanced annual inspection. Willingly we comply fully with current Drivers' Hours Regulations, which govern the diving hours and rest hours of all drivers of Public Service Vehicles throughout the EU.

No driving days

Notwithstanding Britain’s departure from the EU, we are, until the law changes, still governed by EU Drivers' Hours Regulations and, amongst many other matters, the regulations prohibit drivers from driving for more than six consecutive days.

On tours lasting longer than six days, there will be a day on which we will may hire transport for the day, or it will be a free day like, for instance, the free day we have in Bath, on the Cornwall & Bath tour, or a day, like in the Lake District or in Argyll, where we leave roads behind us and take to the water.