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Exploring the Cotswolds with Lisa Benjamin from GoCotswold Tours · UK Travel Planning

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Your host is the founder of the UK Travel Planning website, Tracey Collins.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: In this podcast, Tracey shares destination guides, travel tips and itinerary ideas, as well as interviews with a variety of guests who share their knowledge and experience of UK travel to help you plan your perfect UK vacation.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Join us as we explore the UK from cosmopolitan cities to quaint villages, from historic castles to beautiful islands, and from the picturesque countryside to seaside towns.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to episode 107 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: In this episode I chat with Lisa Benjamin of GoCotswolds, an award-winning company offering fun, friendly small group tours of the Cotswolds.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: We are thrilled to announce GoCotswolds as one of our most recent partners.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: We only work with and recommend the best, and after reading so many fabulous reviews of their tours by members of our private UK and London travel planning Facebook group, we knew they were the perfect fit for us.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Prepare to be inspired and I know after this episode you'll be adding a tour with Go Cotswolds to your itinerary.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned until the end for an exclusive discount code from Lisa, especially for our UK travel planning community.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So without further ado, let's hear from Lisa.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm Lisa Benjamin.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: I'm one half of the husband and wife team that runs Go Cotswolds.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: We are a family-run, small guided tour company.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: We're based just outside of the Cotswolds in Stratford-on-Avon, which in itself, is a well-known destination for being the birthplace and burial place of William Shakespeare, so lots of visitors come to our town and we set up Go Cotswolds back in 2014.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: It's our 10th anniversary this year.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: The original idea with Go Cotswolds was to make use of all these visitors coming to Stratford-upon-Avon and show them the Cotswolds as well, which is actually very, very close, close by, and not many people seem to realise that the Cotswolds is basically right next door to Stratford-upon-Avon, so, um.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: So we thought we would give people a reason to stay longer in Stratford and take them out on day trips into the Cotswolds as well, and it seems to have worked, because we're still here after 10 years and after uh, after everything that the the pandemic threw at us as well, and we're actually thriving, dare I say, at the moment.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, it seems to have worked.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Go Contours was started by my husband, Tom, back in 2014,.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: As I said, we met traveling.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: We are both very keen travelers and Tom and I met each other in a backpackers hostel in Buenos Aires, in Argentina.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: As you do, I love that story.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: It's a better story than we met in the pub, um.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, so we met each other.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Um, we've actually only crossed paths for about four or five days, but we got on like a house on fire, kept in touch while we both traveled at our separate directions.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Um, and then, yeah, it just so happened when, uh, I came home about nine months after meeting Tom.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Uh, tom was working in Kent, which is where I'm from originally, and so we met up and the rest, as they say, is history.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: So, so that's how we met and got together.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Um, go Cotswolds was started a few years after that.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Basically, tom had a job that he hated.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I think this happens to quite a lot of people.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: You get into a sort of um, you get stuck in a rut and you kind of don't like what you're doing but can't really see any way out.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Um, and then I was also in a very similar position.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I was working for someone that was horrible, let's put it nicely.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Um, so we thought, wow, you know, when in doubt, let's go traveling.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: So, um, so we both quit our jobs and we traveled around southern africa for a few months, um, trying to find ourselves in inverted commas or trying to, you know, just have a bit of a break and think about what it is we really wanted to do.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: And so when we came back from that trip, uh tom basically started go cotswolds.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: Um, I took a separate career path for a little while, but eventually all paths lead but led back to the Cotswolds and now we're both working on the business.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: And it's a small family run business which is, again, I love partnering with small and supporting you guys, because I know obviously with the pandemic it was a few difficult years.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: So, kind of luckily, tourism is booming again and we're back on track and we've got lots of visitors coming to the UK and wanting to explore the Cotswolds, which is fantastic.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: So I personally I love the Cotswolds.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: My parents don't live very far away from Stratford-upon-Avon.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so what is it about the Cotswolds?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Because I mean, you know, we kind of talk about quintessential England, that's how.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: I would describe it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: That's a bit cliche, I guess.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: But what is it about the Cotswolds?
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: You think that just makes it so special.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: The Cotswolds is just absolutely beautiful and it's the England that I, jones, and the holiday and those kind of very cute quaint to use in Americanism, uh, quaint villages that just look like you know pictures on chocolate boxes.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Um, it's the England.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: I think that lots of international visitors think we all live this way in these beautiful little fat cottages and lovely cotswold stone cottages.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: We don't, but this particular area I can afford to do that.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Lisa, exactly that.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you need very deep pockets to live in the Cotswolds.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's just gorgeous.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: It's an area of outstanding natural beauty, is an official designation, so it's kind of one level down from a national park and that means that the area is protected in terms of development and building building works.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: You can't build anything new unless it's built in cotton stone, so everything looks very uniform and very connected.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Um, it's just lovely.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: It's very, very rural area as well and I think part of its appeal is that it's also fairly close to lond.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: It's very accessible as a day trip from London or as a short break from London.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: There are other countryside areas the Lake District, peak District, far north of Scotland and things like that but the Cotswolds is very, very accessible, so I think that's also part of its appeal.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: It's also quite a large area, because that's something that when I talk about the Cotswolds with people, I think that often it's kind of this kind of vision of I'm going to the Cotswolds as in it's one little town or one couple of little towns and villages and that's it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: But it's not, is it?
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: It's a huge area.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it covers 800 square miles.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: It's a big area.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: In fact I mentioned it's one level down from a national park.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Of all the areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, the Cotswolds is the second largest, so it covers a massive area and I think a lot of people don't realize that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: We quite often get inquiries from our potential guests saying you know, we want to go to Cotswold, thinking that it is one village, that it's this photograph that they've seen in a guidebook or a magazine or something or an Instagram, and they want to go there.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: I was like well, cotswolds is huge.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: You could travel.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: You could travel around for days and days and days and still not see everything.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: But the one thing that is uniform is that all the places in the Cotswolds are absolutely beautiful, so it doesn't matter where you go, it's going to be lovely totally, totally it is.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Uh, we try to stay there every time.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Even though her parents are in Stratford, I still go and try and find somewhere to go and stay and have a few days and explore with the car and just go.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I have to say I tend to always go to the same places.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: I need to go more to the southern parts of the Cotswolds, but I kind of love Stowe and Bybury and that kind of area, broadway I'm a total english garden lover, so kiftsgate and hitler, I could honestly spend days in there in the summer, just because when I have actually I've spent all days there before, just yeah.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: So should we talk about the different tours that you guys offer?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: um, because I think that's that's listeners will be kind of going oh right, okay, I want, I want a book, I want to go on a go Cotswolds tour.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: So let's tell everybody what sort of tours there are.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: I know you've got kind of four that I'd like to cover, but I know that you've got your two really most popular ones and um and and uh, I love the fact that you call it Cotswolds in a day.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I was was going to say you call it Cotswolds in a day.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: But let's start with that one, lisa.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we have a tour called Cotswolds in a day, which is slightly tongue in cheek.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: As I just mentioned, the Cotswolds is over 800 square miles, so you can't see all of the Cotswolds in a day.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: But the aim with this tour this is our kind of original tour.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: This is the tour we've run since 2014.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: So it's our most popular, almost by virtue of the fact that it's the longest running tour.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: But the aim of this tour was to give our visitors an overview of the Cotswolds, so by the end of the tour, you'll have a really great idea of what the Cotswolds is all about.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: We will show you on this tour some of the most popular spots.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: We will show you on this tour some of the most popular spots.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: So I would include Bybury and Borton-on-the-Water in those popular hot spots.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: But we'll also take you to some other, slightly less well-known destinations which we think are absolutely beautiful, and they are, and often the places that people have never heard of turn out to be our guests favourites.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: To be honest, borton-on-the-water, water and library is they're a bit like Marmite.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: They are, no doubt about it, absolutely beautiful.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: But because they say beautiful, they also get completely overwhelmed with tourists and there's a lot of issues going on, particularly important on the water.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: At the moment, they're trying to ban coaches from entering the village.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, lots of, lots of uh controversy with between tourism and the locals.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: So, although brought on, the water is no doubt absolutely stunning and I love it.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: I think it is a really great place, especially if you've got kids.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: There's lots of family-friendly activities you can do there.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Um, it does get very, very busy in the summer.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Um, in the winter it is.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I have to.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I have to like totally agree with you there because we've stayed.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: We tend to just stay there in the winter.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I mean it's still busy, even in January it's still busy.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: But we stayed there, I think June last year, and we found, especially during the day, it was crazy.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So we would go out during the day and then come back later on sort of five or six-ish, when a lot of people had left.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: I mean it was still busy.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I would say it was still so busy.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And Byberry, I love Byberry.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: There's just something about Arlington Road that just I absolutely adore it.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: But I totally understand.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And actually it was the end of January I went to stay in Burford with one of my closest friends.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: We couldn't get parked in Byberry in January.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: So I hate to think.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I know last year we managed.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: We went about seven o'clock at night and managed to get parked.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So I know that that's been a huge issue and there's been a lot in the media about the issues about too many tourists visit the cars too many, I don't know.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: So it's a difficult one, isn't it, to to manage that yeah, because on the one hand, we would actually rather not go to Borton-on-the-Water because it's so busy, but on the other hand, we wouldn't make any money, we wouldn't sell any tours if we weren't offering the places that people have heard of and they want to go to.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: So it's.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: We often say, like on our tours that going to the Cotswolds and not going to Borton-on-the-Water is like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Um, but that's not to say that you could have a wonderful holiday in Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower, but that's not going to sell tickets on a tour, you know.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: So it's a really difficult issue.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: We include Broughton-on-the-Water on our Cotswolds in a Day tour almost to show like we include Broughton-on-the-Water on our Cotswolds in a Day tour because we want people to see what it's like and compare that with some of the other more beautiful, we think, more beautiful and quieter places that we love and we think are more genuinely Cotswolds as well.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's, it's a really difficult one, but I don't want to dissuade people from coming to the Cotswolds.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that certain places do get very busy.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: I would say that certain places do get very busy in the summer.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: At other times of the year they can be absolutely dead and um, and that makes for excellent photographs with no people in them.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: But yeah, at other times of the year they can be absolutely dead and um, and that makes for excellent photographs with no people in them.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: But yeah, at certain times of the year, particularly sunny holiday weekends, brought on, the water is busy.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: But as well as that, on our pots and a day tour, we'll take you to um stone the world, which is a lovely little market town who's got a really historic and very famous church door that some of our guests may have seen on instagram.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: It's a very instagrammable door.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Uh, rumored to be the inspiration for jlr tolkien's um the doors of durin in the lord of the rings trilogy um I think there may be a number of photos of me standing at that.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: You know, every every time I go toowe I have a photo at that door.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: It has to be, done.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: It has to be done.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: And where else do we go on that tour?
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: We also take you to Chipping Camden.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Now, chipping Camden is my hands down favourite place in the Cotswolds.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: I make no mistake about it.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful town, not a village, it's a town and it's a town, um, and it's gorgeous.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: It's absolutely full of history.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: It's got um ancient buildings.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Everywhere you look it's got some such cottages that are to die for, um, and it's lovely.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: But what I like most about Tiffin Camden is it's a very authentic Cotswolds town.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: People live there, people work there, people do their shopping there.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: It's not a touristy town, so I absolutely love that.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: We also go to another little village called Snow's Hill, which is glorious.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: It's only very tiny.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: You can walk around it in about five, 10 minutes, but it is beautiful.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: So our Cotswolds in a Day tour will show you a mixture of the good and the bad and the ugly, really, the beautiful little villages that no one's ever heard of, the authentic cotswolds towns that are great for shopping and just being a part of everyday life, and we'll show you the popular places as well, because I think you have to have that balance yeah, no, absolutely agree.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And then you can combine that, so you could do that on your first day and then you can combine this with the second that you offer, um that we want to talk about, which is your um secret Cotswolds.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Absolutely yes.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: So secret Cotswolds We've been really pleased how well this has gone down so far.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: We actually only launched this tour back in March this year because we felt that we needed another tour that complements this Cotswolds in a Day tour and the secret Cotswolds tour.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: It's our guides absolutely love it.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: It's their favourite tour to do because it gets you off the beaten track, does take you to some a couple of popular villages because again we still need to sell tickets.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: So we'll take you to broadway and to burford, which are more popular, um, and also good places to get lunch as well.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Um, but the the focus of this tour is on the secret not really secret, obviously, but you know the, the lesser known locations in the Cotswolds.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: So we visit an ancient stone circle.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: It's by no means nothing like Stonehenge, but it's actually older than Stonehenge, which is kind of cool.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: And we also go to a place called Stanton, which is just glorious.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: There's, again, fabulous thatch cottages there and there's a riding school really close by.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Thatch cottages there and there's a riding school really close by.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: So the looks on our guests faces, people from other countries that come to Stanton.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: They're like they've fallen into a dream of England.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: It's like the beautiful cottages, and then you've got these horses riding through the village and then you've got people hiking through the village as well, because it's on the Cotswolds way.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: It's just like a little snapshot of what everyone dreams of England being like.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: It's absolutely stunning, um.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: And then we also go to another little village called Guiting Power, which I'm almost reluctant to talk about because it's so lovely.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: I don't want everyone to flood there and it for it to become the next port on the water, but it's, it's absolutely wonderful.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Um, I can't even.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: It's just got so much history.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: It goes back to, like saxon times.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: There's a saxon burial chamber just plonked in a field.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: It's so, um, you wouldn't imagine it to be there.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Um, there's a really great community there.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: You actually have to have a connection to guiding power to live in guiding power, so it's very much a village for local people.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: It's not full of airbnbs like many of the other cuts off villages.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: It is an actual lived in village.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: It's only about 300 people that live there, but it's so genuine and so authentic.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: There's a fabulous coffee shop.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: There's a a little delicatessen where, um, they sell reportedly david beckham's favorite sausage rolls.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: So that's always a winner with our tour guests and it's just wonderful.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I absolutely love it.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I can't talk enough about it, but no one's ever heard of Guiting Power, so no one's going to book a tour.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: If that was the only place we went to, if we only went to places that no one's ever heard of, then no one would book it, sadly.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: But I think people need to take a risk and get out of those.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Uh, hot spots.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great combination though, having the two so you could.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: You got your cut walls in a day, so you do some again, some of the most popular places and some of the kind of lesser known but equally beautiful places, and then the secret cut swords to build on that the next day.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So that's great.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: So you know, I think that's the way to go.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: If you're staying in the cut walls, definitely, you know, consider taking both of them.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: That sounds brilliant for me.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Now I know also because we often have um people contact us who are considering doing the Cotswold way and doing the doing that walk, um, and I know that you offer a Cotswold walks and villages tour, so, and that's only part of the year that you do that one, I think- yeah.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: So, um, the walks and villages tour kind of came out of lockdown.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Actually, we wanted to do a tour that was a bit more outside based.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Um, not that you're stuck on a minibus all day on our tours at all, that's not the case but we wanted a kind of a more active outdoor tour that would get people outside so people weren't kind of confined in the minibus, um, and breathing covid all over each other.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: So we started this tour and we ran it from May to September, when, in theory, the weather is better and the paths are less muddy, and the idea of this one was to get people out of the minibus and onto the footpath.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: My husband and I we're very active people, we love walking and running and we wanted to do a tour that reflected us as well.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: But also we know that with our tours because they're small groups, they're not private tours the small group aspect is great for people that are perhaps less confident with going out for a walk, people that maybe have never walked on public footpaths before, because public footpaths are quite an anathema.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Is that the right word?
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: They don't exist in other countries.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: We we're so fortunate in this country to have these rights of way and public access, and if you're not used to that, it can be quite daunting to get the ordinance survey map out and plot your route and it's it can be quite, um quite difficult.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: So we kind of came up with this tour, which is not the hardcore hiking tour you don't need any walking poles or specialist equipment or anything but it just gives an experience of what it's like to to be in the English countryside, um, with the comfort and knowledge of an expert guide to lead you through the, the glorious countryside, so you don't get lost, which is nice.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: And there are plenty of other companies out there that do specialist walking tours, um, that concentrate on the Cotswold Way and other things like that, so we didn't want to tread on their toes.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: But this is kind of an entry level walking tour, if you like.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: So you don't need to be super fit, you don't need to be super experienced or have all the gear.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: You just need to have a bit of a moderate level of fitness, be able to walk about a mile or two.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: And yeah, it's a brilliant tour.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: I love the way, I love the fact that you can visit different villages on this tour, but you're approaching it in a completely different way because you're approaching it from across the fields and you're going over the styles and over the dry stone walls and stuff.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: You're not coming at it from the road, which gives you a really nice different perspective.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that sounds really good.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: I have to say I like the sound of doing that because that's not something.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not a great walker anywhere, I have to say, but that appeals to me because, again, I'm not.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Even though I'm British I haven't done a lot of walking, a lot of hiking, so I'd be, I would get lost, I would definitely get lost.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: So following somebody would work really well for me and also get it's just a getting that different perspective of kind of walking through the fields in the English countryside you know, I just that sounds like a lot of fun to me as well and in the beautiful Cotswold.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: So what more could you want?
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Really, that's brilliant, and I know.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So the fourth tour I'm going to cover I think this is a new one that you've introduced Is it this year?
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Bath and Stonehenge tour.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: It's kind of an experiment at the moment.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: We get lots and lots of requests from our people that visit our website and send us emails, um, for tours of bath or to bath, and for a long time we didn't even consider it.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Bath is about two hours away from where we're based, um, and there are companies in bath that do tours of the cotswolds.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: But we just got so many inquiries please, can we go to Bath, can you do a tour to Bath?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: but we thought, okay, we're going to do a tour to Bath um, I think because you guys are based in the north part of the Cotswolds.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: So if you're staying up where you guys are, it kind of makes sense that you can jump on a tour with you, go and see Bath and Stonehenge and then go back up to Morton or Stowe or Stratford, so you're back up in the North Cotswolds rather than have to try and find your way down there yourself.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: So it's an easy way to add on.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and that was part of the reason we launched this tour, as well as another reason to stay longer.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: In our part of the world, in Stratford-upon-Avon and the Cotswolds, lots of people do day tours to Bath and Stonehenge from London, from Stratford-upon-Avon or Morton and Marsh, where we do our tours, and you get to travel through the Cotswolds on the way.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: You're not traveling along busy motorways and getting stuck in London traffic.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: The A303 down to Stonehenge is like notoriously awful for traffic.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: It's basically a single carriageway and a number of people that get stuck in that traffic and it really slows down when you go past Stonehenge because everyone's gawping at Stonehenge.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: But we approach it from a completely different way.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: You're traveling through the Cotswolds, from the North Cotswolds all the way through to the Southern Cotswolds to Bath and Stonehenge, so you're coming at it again from a different perspective and yeah and it's another reason for people to stay longer in the Cotswolds.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Rather than having to do all these massive day trips from London or hopping about the country doing different trips to different places, you can stay in one place and do several trips, and it doesn't have to be London.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So why not base yourself in the Cotswolds?
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So let's talk logistics, lisa, then.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: So if you're going to book, so departure points, I think that that's important so that people know where to stay or where they need to get to to pick up a tour.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about, like, how many people do you have on a tour I know it's a small group tour, so that's great and a little bit about tour guide.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: So a little bit kind of the logistics and a little bit about kind of who goes out with your own show would be really good sure, um.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: So, as I said, we're based in stratford-on-avon, um, just slightly to the north of the cotswolds, so we have a pickup point there in the middle of stratford.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: There's a coach terminal that we pick up from, and then, once we've picked passengers up from there, we drive to Morton and Marsh train station, which is just inside the Cotswolds, and we pick up people from there as well.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: So the two pickup points are chosen that way the Stratford pickup because we live there so it's very easy for us to pick up people.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: People are staying in Stratford-upon-Avon for the Shakespeare and all the Tudor history of Stratford, so we have people to collect there then.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Um, we didn't used to do this originally, but after a couple of years we added the Morton and Marsh pickup point on, because Morton and Marsh is one of the very few Cotswold towns with a train station and, even better than that, it has a train line that goes direct from London and Oxford to Mortton and Marsh.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: So lots of our customers, lots of our tour guests, will take the train from London or from Oxford for a day trip.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: So that makes it really really accessible.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Moreton and Marsh is also a really nice place to stay.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: There's a few hotels there as well, so it gives lots of options.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: For if you want to stay in Oxford, you can just take the train.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Takes 30 minutes, that's all, to get to Moreton and Marsh and then you've got Oxford on your doorstep and London Palace and the rest of the Cotswolds down south.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Um, but yeah, it's nice and easy for people to get to us.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: And then how many people do you have in your on your tours maximum?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: What's your kind of numbers?
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: so we have um 17 seats and minibuses so we can carry 16 passengers plus the driver guide.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Um, it's really nice.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: We're actually one of the only companies in and around the cotswolds that has, uh, these slightly larger vehicles.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Most tour companies in the cotswolds only offer private tours in sort of standard size cars like four to eight seater cars.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: We did things a little bit differently and we went and got the minibus license.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: It's a bit harder to get a minibus license than it is to get a private hire license, which is, I think, why most companies do the private tours only.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: But we put in that little bit of extra effort to get the minibus licenses because we wanted to make the tours affordable for people.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: A private tour in the Cotswolds is great.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: If you've got the luxury of a private tour, it's wonderful.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: But it can cost you upwards of well, anything upwards of 400 pounds and the rest if you're traveling on your own or just as a couple, that's quite a lot of money for some people.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: So we decided to do things a bit differently and sell individual tickets for our tour rather than.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: So you're buying a seat on the tour rather than buying the whole vehicle, renting the whole vehicle for the day.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: So our tours start from just 65 pounds this year, which is obviously quite a lot different from 400 pounds for a private tour.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, we're very affordable for solo travelers.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: We absolutely welcome solo travelers.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Um, we welcome couples and small groups of friends or family by whom you know they want to join a small group.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: It's a nice, fun and friendly way to get to know a few different people.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we create a really nice atmosphere.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking of a family.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: So is there a certain age from that you take on the tours?
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: So we don't allow children under three, and that's more from a safety point of view.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: It is actually legal for children to under three to sit on their parents' lap while they're travelling on a minibus, but we, as parents ourselves, we just felt quite uncomfortable with that.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: If god forbid in, if we had an accident and there was a child sat on a parent's lap, well, it just doesn't bear thinking about what what might happen.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: So we made the decision not to allow children under three and and it's not always a popular decision, with some parents who want to bring their babies but we felt that that was the right thing to do.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: But anyone over the age of three is absolutely welcome on our tours.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: We have people from, yeah, three to 103.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure what the oldest birth was.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: We've had definitely had some people in the 90s, um.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, we cater for everyone.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really lovely group and because it's a mixed group, we get people from all over the world.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: It's really interesting to be part of that group, um, and our guides are brilliant at trying to bring everyone together.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: One one thing that our guides always try to do.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: It's not always possible, but they always try to learn the names of all their passengers on the tour and quite a lot of our trip advisor reviews mention this and people really like it when you're referred to by your name and you get to know someone.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Um, it's sometimes difficult to remember some names, uh, and especially if our guides are doing lots of tours.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: But, um, yeah, that's one thing we tried to do always try to make people feel welcome.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: Tom and I, when we started the company, we were solo travelers ourselves, so one thing that we always wanted to do was try and make a tour that was accessible for solo travelers, and I think originally Tom wanted to do a backpacker tour bus, but that kind of market wasn't there.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: So the dynamic, the sort of demographic, is slightly different to what we imagined in the beginning of the company, but it's no less fun.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: It's really good atmosphere.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's great because you know it's accessible for everybody that can go on your tours.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: You know, as long as they're age three and above, they're fine.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: They can come on your tours and enjoy the Cotswolds.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: That's brilliant.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: So, Lisa, if people want to book with you, obviously I'm going to put a link to your website in the show notes for this episode, but it'd be good if you could share now your website, and also because you're offering a kind of exclusive discount as well to our listeners and our Facebook group as well, if you're a member of that.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: So if you want to share that, that would be really good.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, great, our website is wwwgocotsworldscouk.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: I'm going to spell that out because Cotswolds is notoriously spelt differently by different people, so it's G-O-C-O-T-S-W-O-L-D-S, cotswolds, not Cotswolds, or Cotsworlds or Cotswolds.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: There's lots of different spellings that come out of that.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: So gocotsworldscouk is our website and you can find all of our tours on there.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a discount code for UK travel planning members or Facebook group members and listeners.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So UKTRAVPLAN is the discount code and that will get you 5%.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Perfect, perfect.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Well, you, you know I'm sure that everybody listening to this podcast now who is planning their trip to the uk, or begonia, yep, yep, we need to do this.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: We need to go to the cotswolds, we need to go out, we go to cotswolds and and, uh, have some fun, which is clearly exploring such a beautiful area with such a friendly bunch of people.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's been great talking to you today, lisa and um.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: We've only met a couple of times to kind of chat about everything, but we get on so well.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: It's really cool.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: I can't wait.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Actually, I'll be over in the uk later on in the air, so hopefully we'll get a chance to meet up as well in person.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: That'd be great, we'd love to see you, yeah yeah so, but thanks so much for coming on, as I I will put a link to the company Go Cotswolds in the show notes and I'll also repeat the code there so that you can go onto the website and get yourself that 5% discount as well.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: But for this episode, lisa, it was absolutely fantastic talking to you, so thanks so much for coming on.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, chasie Nice, to speak to you.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the UK Travel Planning Podcast.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: As always, show notes can be found at uktravelplanningcom.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: If you've enjoyed the show, why not leave us feedback via text or a review on your favourite podcast app?
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: We love to hear from you and you never know, you may receive a shout out in a future episode.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: But, as always, that just leaves me to say until next week happy UK travel planning.