The tours begin and end at London Heathrow airport (LHR).

The details below describe the tour highlights. Supplementary sites and stopping points will be included wherever feasible. All tours can be customized. So, once you’ve made a selection, we’ll contact you to review and refine the itinerary to reflect your personal preferences.

The guide prices shown below relate to escorted tours and assume double room occupancy in luxurious 4- or 5-star city center hotels. The actual price of your tour will depend on the make-up of your tour party, your accommodation preference, special needs, seasonal variations, availability and currency exchange rates. You will be provided with a firm quote before you book.

Guide price $4,650 per person (escorted / based on 2 people)

Bath

The Romans built Bath around the only natural hot springs in England and it’s been preserved for its marvelous Roman remains and its Georgian architecture in the Palladian style. That’s why the entire city has been designated a World Heritage Site.

Jane Austen lived in Bath – unhappily – from 1801 to 1806 and the city, especially its social life, provided inspiration for her novels. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were even set here. At the Jane Austen Centre – a modest museum commemorating Jane’s time in Bath – visitors are greeted on the front steps by Mr Bennet (from Pride and Prejudice). Actually it’s Martin Salter, who’s said to be the most photographed man in England! Bath has been used as a backdrop for many feature films and TV shows, including the BBC’s excellent 2007 adaptation of Persuasion, starring Sally Hawkins.

Avebury

Another World Heritage Site, Avebury’s stunning Neolithic henge and stone circles are a wonder of the ancient world. The henge survives as a huge circular bank and ditch, within which are three megalithic stone circles. The outermost stone circle is the largest of its kind in the world. It’s an awesome experience to wander among these standing stones, some of them towering high above you.

Dorchester

This charming town was the inspiration for Casterbridge in the novels of Thomas Hardy. In the town center there’s a striking statue of the man himself. Hardy’s last home is also here, Max Gate, where he wrote some of his greatest novels including The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891). His final novel, Jude the Obscure (1895), caused so much controversy that Hardy devoted the remainder of his life to poetry: he wrote almost a thousand poems at Max Gate. A trained architect, Hardy designed and built Max Gate in 1885 and lived there until his death in 1928. Attached is a beautiful garden and a pet cemetery in which Hardy buried his beloved dogs and cats.

Nestled in the nearby Dorset countryside is Hardy’s Cottage, the modest thatched home where Thomas was born in 1840 and spent the first 34 years of his life. He wrote his first great novel, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), in his bedroom here. Close by there’s Clouds Hill, the tiny rural retreat of TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). Lawrence would spend his “spare evenings” here and meet with friends, among them Thomas Hardy, and revising the manuscript of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence was living at Clouds Hill at the time of his death in 1935, age 46, in a motorcycle accident on a nearby road.

Guide price $7,390 per person (escorted / based on 2 people)

In addition to all of the above …

Salisbury

The beautiful and ancient city of Salisbury (Thomas Hardy’s Melchester) contains many timbered buildings and some of England’s finest historic houses. The city’s centerpiece is the ornate 13^th Century cathedral with its soaring spire and working 14^th Century clock. The Chapter House holds the best preserved of the four original Magna Carta manuscripts dating from 1215. Mompesson House (in Cathedral Close) doubled as Mrs Jennings’ London home in the award-winning film of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.

Nearby Wilton House, the magnificent home of the 18^th Earl of Pembroke, has been a setting for many feature films including Barry Lyndon (1975), The Madness of King George (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Mrs Brown (1997), Pride and Prejudice (2005) and The Young Victoria (2009). Scenes from The Crown (2016) and other TV shows were also filmed in the house and grounds.

Stonehenge

Standing on Salisbury Plain, just nine miles from the city, is the massive and mysterious marvel of Stonehenge: a ring of standing stones, each around 13 feet high and weighing around 25 tons. This stone circle is a masterpiece of engineering that archeologists believe dates from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. Together with Avebury and other prehistoric relics in the surrounding area, Stonehenge is a unique World Heritage Site. It makes an eerie setting for the final scene of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and was used as such in the BBC’s worthy 2008 adaptation, starring Gemma Arterton and Eddie Redmayne.

Guide price $10,150 per person (escorted / based on 2 people)

In addition to all of the above …

Torquay

The seaside town of Torquay is the birthplace of Agatha Christie: the “Queen of Crime” and creator of the inimitable detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The town is also famous as the location for the hilarious BBC TV series Fawlty Towers (1975-79) written by and starring John Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth.

A short distance from Torquay is Agatha Christie’s enchanting country home, Greenway. From 1938 (when she bought it) until her death in 1976 she spent most summers here completing and editing her books. Agatha called Greenway “the loveliest place in the world”: a fitting description given the beautifully landscaped gardens and stunning views overlooking the River Dart. The house and gardens are easily recognizable as the setting of several Christie stories, including Five Little Pigs (1943) and Ordeal by Innocence (1958). She would surely have enjoyed the brilliant TV adaptations of the Hercule Poirot stories starring David Suchet. The very last episode to be filmed – Dead Man’s Folly (2013) – was shot entirely at Greenway (Nasse House in the story).

Lyme Regis and the Jurassic Coast

The Dorset and East Devon Coast is yet another of England’s World Heritage Sites. The cliffs in this area, as well as being spectacularly beautiful, are an important site for fossils and provide a continuous record of life on land and in the sea since 185 million years ago. The main town – picturesque Lyme Regis – is aptly known as the Pearl of Dorset. Its iconic Cobb (harbor wall) is the site of a key scene in Jane Austen’s Persuasion in which Louisa Musgrove jumps off the steps, falls and is concussed. The BBC TV adaptations of 1995 (starring Amanda Root) and 2007 (starring Sally Hawkins) both filmed this scene at the Cobb. Lyme Regis is also the setting for local author John Fowles’ dazzling novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) in which the eponymous heroine – played by Meryl Streep in the 1981 film adaptation – will often stand on the Cobb staring out to sea.