England Coach Holidays with All the Driving Done
England rewards short journeys. An hour or so from a Somerset seafront puts you in Bath; a morning's drive from Harrogate reaches the Yorkshire moors and the houses that sit below them. That suits coach travel, where the driving belongs to somebody else and the view out of the window is part of the holiday.
These are escorted holidays of three to five days, based at one hotel, with private coach travel throughout, breakfast and evening meals, and the excursions listed in the itinerary. Some follow gardens, some follow castles and coastline, and a good number are built around Christmas.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Coach Holidays to England Tours
Private coach travel throughout, the services of the driver, your hotel for the stated number of nights, breakfast and evening meals, the excursions listed on the itinerary and Cancellation Protection. Several tours also include porterage, and the festive breaks generally include evening entertainment at the hotel. Lunches are not included unless the itinerary says so — the Highgrove tour, for instance, includes a two-course lunch in the Orchard Room.
No, but it affects the price on some tours. A number of English itineraries visit National Trust properties, and the quoted price is based on travellers holding current membership. If you are not a member, there may be an entrance charge to pay for those particular visits. Ask us before you book which properties on your chosen departure are affected and what the difference amounts to.
Not if you book one of the single rooms held at no supplement. Each England tour allocates a set number of these — six, nine or ten depending on the holiday — and they are released on a first-come basis. After that a supplement applies, and the amount differs from tour to tour. Ask us what is still available on the departure you are considering.
It varies a good deal by tour. Garden visits mean gravel paths, slopes and a fair bit of standing; Clovelly is a steep cobbled street with no cars on it; Cheddar Gorge and the Northumberland beaches involve uneven ground. City days such as York or Cambridge are mostly flat but cover distance on foot. Tell us about any mobility concerns and we will talk you through the specific days honestly before you commit.
Comfortable, well-established hotels within reach of the day's excursions, and normally just the one for the whole holiday. Recent English tours have been based at the Royal Grosvenor in Weston-super-Mare, Cedar Court in Harrogate, the Old Hall in Buxton, the Imperial in Blackpool and Durrant House in Bideford. Each tour page names its hotel, so you can look it up before booking.
Yes — that is what a Private Group booking is. Your group takes the coach and the itinerary can be adjusted to suit its interests, which is how most of our gardening and history groups travel. Pricing is worked out on the number of passengers travelling, so it changes with group size, and some tours carry a free place once a certain number of paying passengers is reached. Get in touch with approximate numbers and preferred dates.
Counties and coastlines we travel to
The programme moves around England rather than settling in one region. Northumberland means Bamburgh above the beach, the tidal causeway to Lindisfarne and a boat out to the Farne Islands, where the puffins are on the water and the cliffs from spring into midsummer. Yorkshire is York itself, with the Jorvik Viking Centre and the National Railway Museum, or Harrogate as a base for RHS Harlow Carr and the houses further north.
In the south west, tours run from Bideford for Clovelly and the North Devon cliffs, from Lostwithiel for the Cornish gardens, and from Bournemouth for the Jurassic Coast at Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door. Elsewhere there is Buxton for Chatsworth and Bakewell, Huntingdon for Cambridge, Norwich for the Norfolk estates, Chippenham for the Cotswolds edge, and Weston-super-Mare for Bath and Bristol.
How a day on tour usually works
Almost every England tour stays in one hotel for the whole holiday, so the case is unpacked once. Breakfast and the evening meal are included, and the coach leaves after breakfast for the day's visits, usually one main place with something smaller alongside it.
Because the distances are modest, the days are not long. On the Lake District tour, for example, Hill Top, Levens Hall and a cruise on Windermere all sit within easy reach of Kendal, which leaves time to look at the topiary at Levens properly rather than glancing at it on the way back to the coach.
The same driver stays with the group throughout. Where a visit has its own guide, as at Highgrove or on the Blackbeard to Banksy walk in Bristol, that is arranged and paid for as part of the tour.
Gardens, great houses and Christmas
Three themes run through the English tours, and the calendar decides which.
- Gardens. Cornwall's mild, wet winters bring magnolias and camellias out weeks before the rest of the country, which is why Heligan, Trebah and Trewidden reward an early visit. Later in the year, RHS Rosemoor, Marwood Hill, Harlow Carr and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden come into their own, and Highgrove is visited in autumn, when the guided tour is followed by lunch in the Orchard Room.
- Houses and estates. Chatsworth, Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace, Waddesdon Manor, Holkham Hall, Sudeley Castle and Warwick Castle all appear, several of them dressed for the season.
- The festive tours. Short breaks of three or four days built around the Chatsworth Christmas display, York's St Nicholas Fair, the Bristol markets and illuminated gardens after dark.
Travelling alone, or as a club
Single travellers are well served on these tours. Every English holiday here sets aside a number of single rooms with no supplement — on some it is six, on others nine or ten — and once those are taken a supplement applies. The figure varies by tour, so it is worth asking early if you want one.
An Open Group departure means joining others who have booked individually, which suits couples and solo travellers alike. A Private Group tour is the whole coach taken by one club, society, church or set of friends; gardening groups and U3A branches book these regularly. Prices for the private tours are quoted on a stated number of travelling passengers, so the per-person figure moves with the size of the group. Tell us roughly how many you expect and we will price it properly.
