Tours in Review

England with Church House Tours

The host for our 10-day tour of England in May ’04 was Church House Tours (Shillingstone, Dorset, England DT11 0SL; phone the U.S. agent at 800/227-5550 or phone/fax 011 44 1258 860646, e-mail paul@ chtours.demon.co.uk or visit www. chtours.demon.co.uk).

Owners Paul and Susy Wilson met the four of us senior ladies at the door of the huge, thatch-roofed Church House in Shillingstone, in the south of England, and made sure we were comfortably settled in our rooms. The cottage is so quiet and sits amidst the most beautiful gardens. Their home was spotless, and the rooms were gorgeous and large, with private baths.

We had our choice daily of full- or half-day tours to dozens of places with a knowledgeable tour guide/driver. Among the places we visited were Stonehenge, Salisbury, Corfe Castle and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.

Tour rates started at $160 per person per day, which included breakfast and gourmet dinner in the lovely dining room. Lunches (we usually ate in pubs) and airport transfers were not included and were minimally priced.

We highly recommend Church House Tours for giving us one of the best trips the four of us have experienced. We usually do our own driving, but this was so much less stressful. It was so casual, too, with no packing and unpacking all the time. We enjoyed this trip so much.

— BEV HOLLAND, Denver, CO

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• Relaxing vacation with Discover England Tours — It was a lucky day for me when, perusing the small ads at the back of ITN, I came across the one for Church House Tours of Shillingstone, Dorset, UK. I immediately e-mailed Susy and Paul Wilson, the proprietors, and thus began a year of planning and e-mails going back and forth across the Atlantic.
• Village Vacations in England — My wife and I and our daughter and son-in-law spent a week in May ’02 in southwest England with David and Christine Hale, who have a B&B and a tour service called Village Vacations (Brookmead, Rimpton, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 8AQ England; phone/fax [UK] 011-44-1935-850241, e-mail villagevac@aol.com or visit www.villagevacations.co.uk). We are retired antique dealers who have
• England with HF Holidays — An excellent organization for anyone interested in walking in Britain is HF Holidays (Imperial House, The Hyde, Edgeware Road, London, NW9 5AL, U.K.; phone + 44 [0] 20 8905 9556 or e-mail info@hfholidays.co.uk. . . or book through Teachers’ Travel Service, Ltd., 21 St. Clair Ave. East, Ste. 1003, Toronto, Ont., M4T 1L9, Canada; phone

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