Wiltshire Holidays and Escorted Coach Tours
Wiltshire is chalk country: wide skies over Salisbury Plain, white horses cut into the hillsides, and two of the greatest prehistoric monuments in Europe within half an hour of one another. It is also a county of modest manor houses and well-kept gardens, most of them small enough to see properly in a morning.
Our holidays here stay four nights in one hotel and travel by private coach with an experienced driver. Some tours concentrate on the ancient landscape, the Roman Baths and Longleat; others on gardens, including a guided visit to Highgrove just over the Gloucestershire border and lunch in the Orchard Room.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Wiltshire Tours
On the tours that feature it, the guided garden tour at Highgrove and the two-course lunch in the Orchard Room are both included in the holiday price. There is nothing for you to book separately. Highgrove asks for the names of all visitors well in advance and does not permit photography in the gardens, so we will confirm the arrangements with you before departure. Visiting times are set by the estate.
Our Wiltshire itineraries include entry to National Trust houses and gardens for members, so if you carry a valid card you simply show it on arrival. Non-members are usually asked to pay admission on the day at the property. Charges vary from one house to another and change from season to season, so please ask us when you enquire and we will tell you which properties are affected on that particular departure.
Yes, and a good number of our travellers do. Several Wiltshire departures set aside a small number of single rooms at no supplement, released on a first-come basis, with a supplement payable on any further singles beyond those. The figures differ from tour to tour, so it is worth asking us early if you would like one of the no-supplement rooms. You dine with the group each evening, which makes travelling alone straightforward.
Stonehenge, Avebury and Old Sarum
No English county has more prehistory standing above ground. Stonehenge was raised in stages from around 3000 BC, its great sarsens hauled from the Marlborough Downs and the smaller bluestones brought, somehow, from the Preseli Hills in west Wales. Twenty-odd miles north, Avebury is far larger and quite different in character: a village sits inside the circle, sheep graze between the stones, and you walk among them rather than around them. Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Long Barrow are within sight of the same road.
Old Sarum tells the later part of the story. An Iron Age hillfort became a Norman castle and cathedral, and when the clergy tired of the wind and the lack of water they moved down to the water meadows and began the cathedral we know as Salisbury. Its spire, at just over 400 feet, has been the tallest in Britain since 1561.
Manor houses, gardens and Highgrove
Wiltshire's houses tend towards the domestic rather than the palatial, which is part of their appeal. Great Chalfield Manor is a moated fifteenth-century house near Melksham; Westwood Manor is smaller still and shown room by room; The Courts Garden at Holt is a series of yew-hedged compartments behind a village wall. At Iford Manor, Harold Peto laid out an Italianate terrace of columns, cypresses and statuary from 1899 onwards. Avebury Manor's rooms were refurnished period by period for television and remain hands-on. Longleat combines an Elizabethan house, Capability Brown's parkland and the safari park that opened there in 1966.
Highgrove, the King's organic garden near Tetbury, appears on several of our tours in spring and again in autumn. The guided route takes in the Thyme Walk, the Stumpery and the wildflower meadow, followed by a two-course lunch in the Orchard Room.
