Latest / UK Travel Planning / Beyond London: Private Driver Guided Day Tours with Oz of My Tailored Tours

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Beyond London: Private Driver Guided Day Tours with Oz of My Tailored Tours · UK Travel Planning

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Your host is the founder of the UK Travel Planning website, tracy Collins.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: In this podcast, tracy 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.
• 0:24
  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.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Hi and welcome to episode 60 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: This week I am thrilled to be chatting to Oz from London-based private tour company, my Tailored Tours.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: You may remember that Oz was mentioned in episode 13 by Cheryl Ridpath Conway, who loved her family's private drive-ed data with Oz to Stonehenge, Bath and Castlecum.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I was very happy to meet up with Oz recently in London and announce my Tailored Tours as a UK Travel Planning preferred partner.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Oz enthusiastically agreed to come on to the podcast and I started today's conversation by asking Oz to introduce himself.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: So everyone calls me Oz.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: They all think that I'm an Australian, which is where you are at the moment, isn't it?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: It is yes.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, even my nephew is now calling me Uncle Oz and Uncle Ozzy, but it's actually Oliver, that's my full name.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: My Irish grandmother didn't like Ollie, so she called me Oz.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: And growing up, my dad was a history teacher, so I was always involved chatting about history at the dining table and learning about stories.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: And then both my brother and I decided to go and study history at university, and him along with all my other history major friends none of them do anything related with history whatsoever.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I started to work at a language school mid-university degree as a summer job and part of that job was looking after the students on weekends and taking them on walking tours.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: So we would take you probably see them all the time.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: You know the big, large tours of 40 teenagers from Spain and they're walking around and barely paying attention.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: I was one of those guys trying to give some information for them and quickly the school realized that I was actually pretty, pretty good at it because I could just read something and then, without looking at it again, I could just present it.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: And so that then led a couple of years later into me getting called up to do a tour of Amsterdam.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: And another company had found and heard about me and said can you do a tour of Amsterdam on Friday?
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: And I said well, I can give it a go.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: I've only been to Amsterdam once before, but we'll see how it goes.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: And they said well, we really need someone to step in.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Someone's just called in sick.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: So studied the history of Amsterdam and the Netherlands over the next two days and it went really well.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: 13 years ago.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: This is long before the idea of just looking at your phone and putting in on Google Maps where you're going.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: I was studying maps in my head and then trying to deliver it, thinking people, thinking I've been there like a million times.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: But it all went well.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: And that company hired me.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I moved to London because I'm originally from Kent, and then I started to do weekend tours and then eventually mini bus tours, which is getting close to where we are now and on the mini buses we would do 16 people small day trips and after doing that for probably about three or four years I was noticing that the thing kind of missing was that when you've got, say, three people from one side and they want to spend loads of time at Stonehenge and other people are like desperate to see Bath and spend a long time there and want to add Jane Austen stuff as well as Roman stuff, and you're being drawn both ways and it doesn't matter how much you know about things.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I thought let's downsize, let's also get driving and guiding sorted, because quite often you find that the coach drivers can be a bit miserable sometimes Always, but they can be sometimes.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: So if you take out that element that you can't control and you take out the element of people pulling you both ways, then eventually in 2016, I thought, right, I'll give it a go.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: There wasn't much of a market for private tours back then.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: A lot of people thought that the best you could get was a mini bus rather than a coach and do those.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, I was pretty much the first person I know that that went out and did this and the problem was no one knew about me, right?
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: So I ended up for the next two or three years contracting and doing tours for bigger companies where they had small inquiries group sizes of one to eight and doing trips for them.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: And the real big thing that started to get us properly noticed was, ironically, just the time off we had during COVID where we could probably work on our own sort of building brand, because we were just straight out working for a lot of other people, and then we started to build up our own reputation.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, we were mentioned on the podcast, which is great, and that's what I'm here today.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Well, you know I mentioned at the beginning that Cheryl in episode 13 mentioned you guys and how she they had had with her family, had had an amazing trip out to the Cotswolds and Stonehenge, a bath with you guys, and how much it absolutely.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: She just raved about it and from that moment I was like right, right, but I really, really want to work with you guys.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: So I was so happy when I actually managed to meet you in London a couple months ago.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: I remember I was just saying it was pouring down my rain but we managed to meet beside Victoria and have a good chat and talk to about.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: I can't believe it now, or two months later, and you actually on the podcast.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: That's gone quick.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: It has.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: It has, but also because I know that how much interest and how much people really want to have the experience of having that own private driver tour, yeah, and the ability for exactly the reasons you said, the ability that you can tailor it exactly how you want for yourself, which, of course, is kind of a guest that my tailor toes or your company tailored toes exactly about that, about making the turf yourself.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: So tell us a little about some of the tours that you do ours.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: The one that you mentioned that we did was was our most popular tour and still is the one that's in full demand, that is, seeing Stonehenge in the morning.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we like to get ahead of the groups as well as just having a private tour, we like to get ahead of them time wise as well.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: So it's always a slightly different start time will find figure out if someone staying near the Tower of London will get there really early, because you got to drive through London and I don't know if anyone's ever mentioned on the podcast, but the roads are just silly in London at the moment.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: Getting through the city is is crazy.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we'll probably start at 7am, whereas someone starting in Kensington will start at 7 30.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: So we make sure that the pickup time is exactly the right spot so that we can get down to Stonehenge and drive past another site called Woodhenge, which we link in with the story of Stonehenge.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: We get there nice and early, get ahead of the groups, and sometimes we're on the very first shuttle bus that goes up to the stones, which is great, and we have a really nice walk around, and always by the time that they leave, which is around about 11 o'clock, people are like wow, I can understand why you got us up early now, because people don't always understand that at first they're like oh, can we leave at 8, 30, enjoy our breakfasts?
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: And some of the other private tour companies that I know.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: They say, yeah, don't worry, we'll leave at 8, we'll leave at 9.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: But they're shooting themselves in the foot, in my opinion, because you've really got to get a good start to the day and as soon as people see Stonehenge, their faces like it's something that they've wanted to see their whole lives and you see in it properly.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah exactly Before.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: It just gets really, really busy and by 10 o'clock, half an hour after it's opened, it's already busy.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah obviously I'm just going to mention a little bit about your history degree.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: So obviously you know you can talk all through all the history of these different places that you're going to as well.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: You've got that background, so you're actually getting to use that degree that you've got.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I've also got a history degree.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: We did talk about that.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: So obviously that's a huge advantage as well that you've got that knowledge and they can share that.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I did teach history for a little bit Because I said my dad was a history teacher.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: He got me involved at his school shortly after I graduated and I quickly realized that it wasn't for me.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: I always thought I might go into being a history teacher, but the syllabus is so strict these days you can't teach what you want to teach it's these are the questions, these are the answers, and they've got to put down these keywords.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: And it's heartbreaking to mark some stuff.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: You can understand.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: A student's got a really clear grasp of what's happened in the past, but because they haven't said a specific word, you can't give them a mark.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: So I thought, right, I want to talk about history my way and I want to talk about lots of different things, and the way to do it is this so yeah, so that's why we got got involved in tour guiding.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And be a storyteller, because that's also what you do and that's the best way, and it was obviously.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I used to be a history teacher for a while, but also been able to tell a story, because that's really what gets people's interest, isn't it?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: But I'm just a story of the people behind who built.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: You know who put those stones there.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: I think that's the kind of key, as much as we know.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: So, after being in Stonehenge, where would you go next if you're doing that kind of that Stonehenge bath?
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: A morning start and then we would head an hour's countryside drive northwest into to Bath.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: On the way to Bath we talk a lot about Romans what did the Romans do to Britain, how they arrived in Britain, bit about Julius Caesar and Proclaudius, and then we talk all about the Roman baths, how it was a big part of their, their everyday life in all their major cities, and then the natural hot springs and and just the general importance of the Roman stuff.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: And then we scan forward to all the Georgian stuff as well and talk about it being a big spa town with Queen Anne's visit in 1703.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: And then how lots of different people change and build up the entire city, which makes it the only UNESCO World Heritage City in the country.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: And a beautiful city to visit.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: So how long would you spend in Bath and what does a tour look like once you get to Bath?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: So do you stay with the guests or how does it work?
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Tend to drop them off right in the city centre, which has very limited parking.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: So we drop them off as close as we can get them to the Roman baths.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: The clients normally to book their own tickets, so we do the tours and the tickets separately.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: But there is the option on our website to add the tickets if they want to as well.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: So we give them that flexibility.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: And sometimes people say, oh, we're not really interested in the Roman stuff, we want to do the Georgian stuff, so then they can.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: So they've always got the flexibility to change what they want to see.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: But normally they'd spend about an hour to an hour and a half seeing the Roman Baths Museum.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: There's no guiding allowed in there because it's a very small Roman temple and the floor is 2000 years old.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: They don't want.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Obviously, if I took three people around, then the big companies would want to take 40 people around and then it would just ruin it.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: So you get a really good audio guide.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: It takes you around and people know everything about it anyway, because we've spoken about it for the previous hour on the way there, yeah, perfect.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: We give them a bit of time, then sometimes we have lunch with them.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Sometimes they just want to walk off and get a quick lunch and explore the city.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: So it changes day to day, but generally it's about two to two and a half hours in the city centre for lunch Roman baths and anything else they want to see.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, perfect.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Then when we pick them up, we drive them up to the northern side of the city to see the circus and the Royal Crescent and the assembly rooms and we talk all about how it became a very popular spa town and reinvented in the 1700s.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: And you get, I mean, a great opportunity to see, can I say, that Georgian aspect of it.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Definitely and again.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: The coaches and minibuses are now banned from going there, so we can get in there.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: But the bigger tours aren't allowed to go there anymore.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's good, so you can, yeah, opportunity to be able to do that and get really kind of up there with them and then and then after that is that is that when the Cotswolds aspect of the tour kicks in.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly yes.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: So then we leave and we've got about a half an hour drive into the Cotswolds.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Talk about the countryside, Talk a lot about sheep, medieval sheep.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: And how the sheep used to be so big and the places used to be so thick and and all that stuff, and then link it in with some tidbits and some stories and origins of names which people really like.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: And then we give them the choice to see one of two villages, and one of them is Lake.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Hawk which is a beautiful little village with a lovely abbey, absolutely Nice little church and what you normally say for the, for the Harry Potter or the Downton Abbey fanatics.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's a must.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely they're really, really into that, because there's a few different bits that were filmed there and all the one that we normally go to which is more popular, is actually Castle Coom.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Because Castle Coom in my opinion, if you're not massively into the Harry Potter and the Downton Abbey stuff, I think that that is a prettier village.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: In fact it was voted two years ago the prettiest place in the UK.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Are you?
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: So people yeah, it was, yeah so get a really nice view and feel of that, If there's not a wedding going on, we go into the Manor House, we go to the bottom, where you always see people trying to get that picture that you always see on Instagram.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: I was going to say that Instagram shot and I was going to say this is where you know again, we're talking about the advantages of having your own driver tour guide is that?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I've been to Castle Coom a couple of times and can't get parked?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been through.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: So trying to get that shot from outside the car while Doug's driving, I'm going go slower, go slower.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: You can't park there at all.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: There is a car park, but it's about a 20 minute walk.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Downhill to the town and back uphill to go back.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: So what we normally do is drop them off in the centre, tell them all about the things to see, drive them around the whole town, which takes about 30 seconds, yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: And then we say that, right, have half an hour, take some pictures, go and explore, go in the pub if you want to have a little around, get some pictures, and then we pick them up about half an hour later and then make our way back to London.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: That's perfect.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And again, you see the advantages.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: You know you're going out with you guys.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Not only do you get all that information from you guys as you travel and which you know.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: We did a podcast a couple of weeks ago and that was we're talking about a couple of tours that that person had taken and she said that one of the things was that she could actually talk to British people, talk to Brits and ask questions about British life and what it was like.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: And that's the advantage.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: When you go out with you guys, you can ask all those sorts of questions about you know what it's like to live in the UK, what it's like to be English, what it's like to be British.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: You know what sort of biscuit you have with your tea or you know that sort of thing.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: So you can sit back, you can enjoy the countryside, you can relax.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: You're not having to worry about driving, you're not having to worry about parking, you're not having to worry about parking fines, you're not having to worry about any of that thing.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: You can just sit back, relax and you know us and his team take the heat for the day and you can just enjoy it.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Exactly, we worry about the parking fines, but they don't have to.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you don't need to.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: So I know you said that's one of your most popular tours and that is the one that Cheryl and her family took when they were with you.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: So what other tours do you do?
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Talk us through some of the other ones that you've got.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: We pretty much cover anywhere that's within two to three hours of London.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: The furthest one, and the one that we do and specialise in, which are not many tour guides know from London, is Glastonbury.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: So we do quite a lot of the mythological King Arthur side of Britain and that links in with Stonehenge as well.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: So we drive down towards Stonehenge, stop there, then we continue down the A3, a3 and see Glastonbury tour, glastonbury Abbey, sometimes the Chalice Wells, if people want to go inside there as well.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: I've actually got that tour tomorrow Right, so I'm doing that one, which is a much longer drive.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: It's about a 300 mile round trip.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: But there's not many, as I say, not many private tour companies that actually do that.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: So that's a good thing.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: If anyone's particularly interested in seeing the King Arthur stuff or seeing Glastonbury and returning back to London on the same day, then we can do that as well.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: The northwest section of London we would drive around to Oxford and link that in with either Windsor Castle or the other side of the Cotswolds and not the two villages we mentioned, but probably Stowe the Slaughters.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: You can have a lovely walk between the Upper and Lower Slaughter.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: We tend to avoid Borton on the water.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: But we can do that sometimes if people want to go there, and then we link that up sometimes with Stratford on Avon as well, stratford and the Cotswolds, oxford and the Cotswolds, or Stratford, oxford, cotswolds, whatever people want to do and sometimes Warwick I mean Warwick on Saturday as well.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: So people want to do Warwick Castle and Stratford.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Then it's a two hour drive up there but only about 15 minutes in between the two places.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: So, as the company name suggests my Tailored Tours we get a plethora of different requests and sometimes people want to see the world in a day and, to be honest, we actually turn those down.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: We've got a very good reputation online that we're slowly building and we really like the fact that we know the places and we don't want to promise the world in a day if we don't think the tour is going to be good.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: So we would suggest, from what they write, these would be the timings and either say right, you've picked four places, how about you pick three places?
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: And you do this.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: And then they say we want a bit more time here, as OK.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Well, maybe you want to take out this site and by the time you write down the actual timings, they understand it a lot better, because this is something that's very confusing and can be very difficult for people overseas is to see these wonderful tours.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: For example, we don't actually sell online Windsor Bath, stonehenge, and that is the most popular tour from London.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: It is yeah.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: I personally, having done that tour for about three or four years, think that getting to Stonehenge at nine thirty, when it opens, and getting to Windsor before the castle closes is very difficult, and to fit bath in between, that's the only way you can do the tour geographically.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: It's, it's.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: It's a wrap run from the start whilst, the clients don't realize it is quite stressful in potentially getting involved in, in Getting stuck in traffic or an accident on the way back to Windsor and it's really hard to say that you've booked this tour and you're not gonna get to go to Windsor, which I've had.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: That happen to me twice back when I used to do this tour for other companies.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: So we don't really recommend that.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we speak with the clients and they say what they want to do and we build something that they're happy with and quite often from the first email they soon realize that what they want to see isn't quite possible in a day Because Britain is small.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Of course it's much smaller than the many other countries and we can get around quite quickly.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: But with the addition of the the way it is, getting in and out of London and then getting around the town, we're just giving people realistic expectations.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: So when they arrive we'd rather over deliver rather than over promise and under deliver.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I think that's really important.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I mean because you, you know you guys pick up from from their accommodation and you drop back off at their accommodation in London.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: So that immediately is you say it's gonna add time for the day.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And and I totally understand what you're saying, I was because we do a lot of itinerary consultations where we kind of just Help people fine-tune that itinerary's and often that's the we find it's more trying to take things out because actually put too many things in and you know it's about Having the quality rather than the quantity yeah because otherwise you can just end up rushing around and you really don't get anything out of it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: And and I think you know that's the beauty of booking with a bribe a private tour company is like, like yourself Is that you can actually say this these are the places we're interested in, you know, these are our priorities.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Is this possible, is it doable, you know?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And if it isn't, you know gonna give them that honest feedback?
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: No, actually you can't, but this is what we can out of those things, this is what we can do and this is how we can work the day, and especially, I guess, once you find out as well when they're staying in London, because you're saying, like I say, it depends on a stay in London, that also can add time to the day and you don't want.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Also, if you don't be stressing around thinking that you've got to drive from place to place, it's just, it's just not much fun for it, for anybody really, is it?
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and and one of the things that you mentioned which is good as well is sometimes we say to people if they are staying, but on the border of Essex or in East London will pick them up early, earlier than we would normally pick them up, get through the city nice and quietly, but if they wanted to extend time sightseeing in the day, they would have the option.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: If they wanted to get off then finish the tour somewhere in West London or Central London, then just go straight into dinner somewhere Central and then make their own way back at the end of the day.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: And we give them that option as well and we say look, we just have to cater for getting through the city.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: We can drop you at your hotel, but you can actually add time to your tourism, seeing stuff because you're traveling a long way to go see these things.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: And then we can drop you somewhere West because you can get through the city in 20, 30 minutes if you use the, the tube, whereas it's gonna take you an hour, hour and a half to drive absolutely some people don't like doing that, which is fine.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: We drive them back.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah but we do offer that as as an option as well for those that do feel comfortable to get through the city and maximize their sightseeing time.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's a good idea, and I was also going to ask you about cruise transfers.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: While you do, you do that from Southampton, don't you?
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we do, and Dover as well.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: We put up at both of those places.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: We would link in Dover Castle With the port.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Maybe Leeds Castle can to Bre chill and nice little village in Ken and then drop off in in London or the airport.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: And likewise Southampton gives us a really nice amount of places that we can go and see.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Normally we would drive about 45 minutes up towards Sewellsbury, go, stop and see the cathedral or, just for a photo, stonehenge, very easy.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Winchester as well.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Sometimes requested bath Cotswolds and then drop them off at the airport or back in London.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's perfect.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: So so how many people can you?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: You know, kate, the four on your tours Is there like like minimum maximum numbers?
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: As little as we've had single passengers booked with us before and book a few tours with us.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Often it's between, I would say, two to six people, most popular group sizes, but we can take a maximum in some of our tour vans.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Myself and Christian we drive eight passenger seat tour vans.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: We do let people know if there's like eight fully sized adults they might find it a bit squish.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah particularly in the front double seat.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: So we explain that.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: But seven is very comfortable in our, in our tour vans and we've got Peter and Will that take seven passengers and Mark as well.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: So we've got five of us In the, the driver guide team and we would just, yeah, explain those sort of sizes.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: We don't not every guide knows every single place.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: I do all the places.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: But then I've got my own specialists in different areas, as you do as well with your contacts.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So if somebody wanted to book with you with my tele tours, Oz.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: How would they do that?
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: Well, they could just go to your website and and find us there, or you can go on our website as well.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: We also on on Viator and TripAdvisor.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: You can book through there, but we always recommend booking straight through us Because it's easier and you can add the bookings and you often get a better price as well.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: So it's good to book directly with us.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, on myTaylorTourscom.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I will put a link to your website through on ours.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Obviously, we've already got you on our preferred partners page because we have that with with everybody that we partner with and we recommend.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: So we know you've already got you've already got your picture on there in a link to a link to the website and hopefully we'll get some links as well to some of the specific tours so we can actually list on our website what is available as well at myTaylorTourscom and have a check there.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: But do mention that you heard about us on on the podcast or through the website.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Please, that's helpful for us.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: But it's like it's great.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it's absolutely wonderful to be able to partner with you, oz, it's.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: It's been yes to say at the very beginning.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: It was kind of on my wish list to be able to work with you guys.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: You know we pride ourselves as well as partner and with with companies that are highly recommended.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: That were people that we've spoken to.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: You've had a wonderful day out and, as I say, went.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: When Cheryl was describing the that, how much the hair in a family had absolutely enjoyed the day trip with you.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: I kind of knew that you guys were absolutely right for us.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah so you know it's brilliant to have you on board.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: So, as I say, I'll put the links to everything in Into the in the show notes.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Is there anything like any one tip that you'd give to anybody kind of visit in London and consider In a data it was anything you would kind of say to somebody for the first time that's considering that a private tour perhaps?
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: definitely a lot of people who have never booked a private tour and are thinking about the difference.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: They often say, yes, it's a bit more expensive.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Of course it is because we've just got to make sure because we're still paying the same amount of fuel as a bigger company.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: It's an economies of scale Situation that we've got.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: But they really do say as soon as they go, private people don't ever go back to booking public tours and that's not me saying it, that's what I get told on on a regular basis and that extra money that they pay, you've paid all this money to go on holiday, to go in London, which isn't a cheap city to go and visit.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: You've flown a long way.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: You've booked your hotels.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Why not just do that a little bit more and have a much better free experience where you can have your own control of timings and say, okay, we're not gonna miss the, the coach back home, we'll walk around at a nice pace, we'll get to the places before the bigger groups and Just in general, everything that they just generally happier, and having lunch as well.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: It's.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it can be quite stressful as you've got to meet an exact time and and you've not been served and you've got a, or if you're, your food down and and quickly get back on a vehicle.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: So there's none of that.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: With a private tour, you've got the freedom and flexibility to control your whole day.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely and, you know, worth every penny to be able to do that.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I'm totally, which is why you know we promote doing that independent working with you guys and doing those private driver-guided tours, because they are just so you, just, your experience is gonna be better.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: You're gonna learn more, which I'm always really keen to.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: You're gonna learn about England, about English people, because you're gonna be with them in the car or British, I don't know if everybody's English.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: That works for you, oz, but you know you're gonna learn that.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: You're gonna learn about there is a lot, a lot more and, you know, just gonna have a much more immersive, deeper experience.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: That's always kind of you know, something that I say.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I'm just gonna say thanks very much, oz, for coming on, and I'm sure we'll have you on a guest as on the podcast Sometime again in the future.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Talk through some more of your tours and and some of the stories that you know that you share and how things are going.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, it was brilliant having you on today, so thanks very much for coming on.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Thanks again to Oz for coming onto the podcast today.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: You can find links to the tours discussed and more in today's show notes at UK travel planning.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Comm, forward slash 60.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: All pop over to book directly at my tailors.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Comm.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: That just leaves me to say, for another week Happy UK travel planning.