Travel Less & Enjoy More
With Britain's Heritage Cities

By Paull Tickner

While cities like Oxford, Bath, Stratford upon Avon, Chester, Carlisle and York make excellent 1- or 2-night stopovers for the major tour operators, to resourceful travel agents, they also offer the chance for you to be far more creative with your U.K. travel plans.

Because I've spent over 30 years designing and operating imaginatively themed, customized tours, it comes naturally to me to look at destinations like these and ask:

How do they stack up for a garden tour for a rose or herb society, a group of Master Gardeners, the Friends of a Botanic Garden?;

What are their literary connections for a Jane Austen, Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter tour?;

What could they offer a Minister who's looking for a special cathedrals-based tour?;

Do they deliver for an art gallery or a theatre group looking for a value-added fund raiser?

Not surprisingly, when you take a closer look at Britain's Heritage Cities (www.heritagecities.com) the answer's a very big YES, especially when you cast the net a little wider and start looking at what lies on the doorstep of these historic places.

The 3 Heritage Cities form a (funny looking) triangle. If you locate Oxford, Stratford upon Avon and Bath on a map, you'll find another huge iconic destination for you to use in itinerary planning — namely the Cotswolds, which by the way is where I live! 

If you do the research (or ask me nicely to do it for you!), it will produce a selection of really eye-catching itineraries.

Take, for example, a garden tour, perhaps timed to coincide with the annual Chelsea Flower Show (May) or the Hampton Court Flower Show (early July). 

When it comes to your Theatre contacts, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't impress them with the stuff that can be arranged at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Shakespeare Houses in Stratford upon Avon.

Add to this an actor-led tour of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London, plus a backstage tour, dinner and a performance of Shakespeare under the stars at the Globe Theatre and you've begun to create a winning formula. 

Don't worry about packing your itinerary with too much theater (or of any given theme for that matter) – that will only appeal to your travel group's Pied Piper. The trick is to add other, sometimes seemingly irrelevant visits that, in their own way, enrich the mix.

Thus, you could add the city of Bath (with some non-theatre flourishes in the Cotswolds) and visits to their two Theatre Royals. The original Royal Theatre dates from the mid-18th century and is now a fascinating Masonic Museum, while the other one has been beautifully and lavishly restored.

Throw them in your itinerary "blender," along with a castle here, a garden or two there, a Jane Austen walking tour, a lesson in Dowsing within the ancient stone circle at Avebury, a pub lunch and an English Afternoon Tea. You then have an itinerary that will start a really interesting conversation with your theatre friends.

The northern trio of Chester, Carlisle and York needs to be studied equally closely, especially if you have access to the growing number of non-stop flights into the north of England gateway of Manchester.

This means YOU if you are in or close to Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, Newark and New York. If you live on the West Coast, to avoid the fun and games at Heathrow, fly to Las Vegas and take Virgin's non-stop to Manchester instead.

On the other side of Immigration and Customs, you're just 30 minutes from Chester, where visitors can take a fascinating look back to the time when the Romans inhabited the area.

Clients can also have a unique, sophisticated shopping experience in The Rows, a series of medieval galleried walkways that run the along the four main streets that then meet at the High Cross.

Chester also provides a very good base for trips into North Wales and the Beatles' hometown of Liverpool. Other nearby attractions include Wedgwood, Spode, Royal Doulton and Portmeirion in Britain's China Capital, Stoke on Trent.

Heading further north look out for Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter Rabbit as you head through the Lake District to Carlisle. Guests who stay here can discover some of the historic castles and outstanding gardens that are just across the border in Scotland.  The city also makes a very good base for a visit to Hadrian's Wall where guests can step back in time and see what life was like at the most northerly region of the Holy Roman Empire.

Finally, there's the city of York, which should be rebranded as Britain's Capital of Festivals. Among the themes are Vikings, Romans, Early Music, New Music, Food and Drink and Ghosts.

There are two new additions to the 2012 calendar — the chocolate festival in April and Railfest in June, which is a must for all steam preservation society fans.
You and your clients may have formed their love of Britain by seeing it through the eyes of a tour operator's set departure tour. 

If you take a few minutes to see what you missed, I think you'll find that Britain's Heritage Cities offer massive potential for some really saleable, travel less see more value added tours, especially for your anglophile clients.

Paull Tickner, creator of Special Interest Britain, is affiliated with the Greatdays Travel Group. For over 30 years, he has been developing and operating customized niche travel programs for the United Kingdom and Ireland. For more information, visit his Web site at www.greatdays.co.uk and E-mail him at pjtickner@yahoo.co.uk

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