Literary South England – 4 days and 3 nights tour

Follow the footsteps of your favourite characters and find the springs of inspiration that pushed the pens of their creators. No matter how much you love literature, you’ll find this England tour more enthralling than any award-winning novel. Guides help you read between the lines with an invitation into the workshops of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, AA Milne and Rudyard Kipling.

Suggested Itinerary:

DAY 1: (Saturday) LONDON TO KENT (D)
Your route from London follows the river, first through Deptford. This was the suburb of Samuel Pepys and where Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlow, was murdered in a pub. It’s a rare opportunity of seeing an ‘old’ London and a ‘real’ high street and one can still easily imagine you’re aboard a stagecoach from Charles Dickens time heading with Mr Pickwick to Rochester.

Fittingly, it is Dickens’s Rochester that provides your next stop. There are plaques on the places mentioned in his books, Mrs Haversham’s house is still here and Dickens himself lived here.

As this England tour continues, the third major site of the day is Knole. This interesting and grand house, the birth place of Vita Sackville West, was her inspiration for ‘The Edwardian’. It was also the setting for Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘Orlando’.

Stay overnight in Kent.

DAY 2: (Sunday) KENT TO HAMPSHIRE (B,D)
Start your second day of this England tour exploring more of Kent and East Sussex’s rich literary heritage. You can choose from a range of sites and properties according to the interest of tour participants. In the Ashdown Forest is the home of Winnie the Pooh and creator A A Milne. Fans of Arthur Conan Doyle and his timeless creation, ‘Sherlock Holmes’, will not be disappointed as we find a number of related sites. And if there are Kipling fans aboard, you can find the time to view his home of Batemans nearby Burwash.

You then take a scenic cross country route to Jane Austen country, with her home at Chawton being your destination. It was in this quaint village that she wrote most of her works and once inside the house, you are in her world.

Stay overnight in Hampshire

DAY 3: (Monday) HAMPSHIRE (B,D)
Today is your day to be totally immersed in the world of Thomas Hardy. You’ll visit places where some of the most memorable scenes from his novels were set, like the prehistoric temple at Stonehenge. You’ll visit towns and villages that are easily recognisable as the source of inspiration, like Winchester, Shaftesbury and Dorchester.

Unsurprisingly on this England tour, the area is used as a location for many period films and TV series. One such will be Nether Wallop. This beautiful Hampshire village is the setting for Agatha Christie’s ‘Miss Marple’ films.

Also in the area is the ‘Cloud’s Hill’ home of T E Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.

Stay overnight in Hampshire

DAY 4: (Tuesday) HAMPSHIRE TO LONDON (B)
You’ll depart your Hampshire base and take the short drive north to the neighbouring counties of Royal Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, through the Chiltern Hills to Oxford. En route, there are simply dozens of sites and attractions with a literary significance on this England tour. You can discover Thomas Grey tomb and original churchyard of his ‘Elegy’ fame. Nearby there’s John Milton’s 17th century cottage where ‘Paradise Lost’ was completed. In Beaconsfield, G K Chesterton conceived ‘Father Brown’, Robert Frost wrote some of his finest poems, in the Thames riverside village of Marlow Mary Shelly somehow ‘discovered’ ‘ Frankenstein, and a hundred years or so later Jerome K Jerome pitcher his ‘Three Men in a Boat’.

Your drive brings you to the ‘city of the dreaming spires’, Oxford. This is the jewel in the literary crown. The Dean of Mathematics at Christchurch College was one Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll and one finds ‘Alice’ everywhere. At an ancient pub in the town centre, C S Lewis and Tolkein, amongst others, met to talk and drink. And, of course, contemporary literature is represented by Colin Dexter and his detective ‘Morse’. A walking tour of the city, as well as being the finale of this England tour, will introduce you to these sites and to many, many others. Then you return to London.

Typical Inclusions:
• 3 nights accommodation
• Cooked breakfast daily
• Dinner daily
• Qualified guide/leaders
• All entrance and attraction fees
• All taxes and surcharges

Prices and departures may vary please contact your Concierge Traveller Advisor for more information.

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