FAQs

The term ‘Curated Experience’ is the name we give to our unique approach to touring in the England we know and love. Every ‘Curated Experience’ shares common characteristics; they are designed to be fully inclusive of cost, organisation and management, so that your focus can be on relaxing and enjoying your time in the area.

Each one is a carefully constructed journey through time, places, stories and experiences to provide a deep but engaging and varied experience of our bit of England. It includes incredible food and drink, the best we can find in the area, amazing stories that both challenge and illuminate our understanding of the world. They include collection and return from your accommodation, travel in a luxury vehicle, refreshments, both guided time and moments of private time and space – all at a relaxed pace with a highly capable, engaging guide alongside similar travels.

We also don’t share the itineraries – partly to protect the local communities and places we visit from the dangers of mass-tourism through being too visible through marketing and the online world, but also because we want the day to be a true adventure and for you to have those ‘wow’ moments in a way that is only possible if you don’t fully know what’s coming.
Our 'Signature Tours' are our core tours designed around this approach.

We rarely share full itineraries unless we are serving an itinerary that has been provided for us to deliver by a guest or travel partner.
On our Signature Tours and Bespoke Experiences we will share the 'must-see's on an itinerary, but almost everything else are exceptional places, stories and experiences off the beaten track. So why do we not share these in full?
First, as passionate travellers ourselves, we know that the travel experiences that have the most impact, and are most memorable, are rarely those that we can anticipate. Most of travel for the 'big stuff' but the big stuff rarely has the impact we imagine because it's already known to us, and it's often busier than we'd like as well, meaning it's less personal and meaningful.
Second. We know that the impact of discovering the places we share with our guests is much greater if they have no prior knowledge/experience of these places beforehand.  Just as spoilers for a movie, book or play can undermine the impact/experience for an audience, we know that sharing full itineraries greatly reduces the impact our tours can have on guests. 
Thirdly, as many of the places we visit are not on the international travel radar, we're keen to preserve these places and communities and protect them from the risks of mass tourism that could occur if we began openly promoting them. 
Finally, all of our tours are designed to adjust and adapt around our guests and conditions on the day meaning that by not having a fixed itinerary we can provide a much more personalised, qualitative experience that we can tailor as we get to engage and interact with you. We feel your quality of experience is much more important than slavishly adhering to a strict itinerary or schedule.

We do run private 'inner-circle' Stonehenge tours, but suggest them only if you are absolutely set on seeing Stonehenge at sunrise or dusk. They only last 30 minutes, cost twice the price and limit access to the visitor center and other facilities.
The new path that goes inside the henge (inside the ditch) was added to allow visitors to get within a few feet of the stones and has been designed to allow visitors to get close and take great shots of the circle without other visitors being too in the way! 
This, combined with the opportunity to enjoy the site and visitor centre at your own pace alongside a detailed, insightful private guided tour, that explains the context of the site's development within the wider landscape, means that we believe that our approach offers by far the best way to experience this magnificent monument - and is superior to an inner circle tour in most cases.

No. We pre-book entrances, such as at Stonehenge to ensure we minimise waiting times, and we always provide a personal, guided service whenever we can (and are permitted to do so). We pre-book lunches in most cases, so that food is ready to serve the moment we arrive, and we purposely focus on the unseen in order to share that authentic, quintessential England, away from the crowds, coaches and commercialised tourist sites.

Our guides are truly exceptional individuals.
They come from all walks of life, with eons of lived experience and a love of travel, people and our local region.
They are also highly emotionally intelligent and engaging individuals who recognise that the true value of what we deliver does not revolve around the amount of places visited, the number of facts shared or how much can be crammed into a day. Instead we all know that truly memorable experiences are built on feeling safe, with the time to connect to what we ae seeing and genuine relationships. All of our guides intrinsically know this and find huge meaning, and joy, in sharing, serving and connecting authentically with those they come into contact with. This is what makes the ‘In & Beyond’ guides truly special.

The UK, like Europe in general, is one of the safest places to visit in the world. Crime is generally low, with annual serious, violent crime rates such as murder across the country well below those of a major US city. Gun ownership is heavily regulated and monitored in the UK meaning the likelihood of being the victim of gun violence is similar to the chances of not being able to easily locate a cup of tea.

The UK is at very low risk of terrorism, with the UK security services doing a very good job of intercepting and disrupting the large proportion of the terror conspiracies. Those that do that do succeed therefore tend to be rare and very limited in scope and impact.

Our team is carefully chosen to provide the incredible service we are proud of. They are intelligent, emotionally aware and broadly experienced individuals who are reliable, responsible, capable and caring. Their primary responsibility is your safety and well-being and act with that in mind at all times.

Our driver-guides are fully qualified private-hire license holders assessed and certified by the local authority and are DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checked and certificated (at an extended level). This means that they have no criminal record and are authorised to work with children and vulnerable people.

Every experience is designed around our guests. By getting to know you and understand your needs and goals, we can create the best experience you could possibly have!
We are very sensitive and supportive of guests that may have particular requirements, such as medical conditions or impairments, and are used to working with guests across the age range, including families that span three generations or more in one tour!
Finally, we are committed to providing you with the best experience we can, and if that means adapting and changing things on-the-fly, we'll do it. Nothing is more important than your enjoyment and engagement!

It all depends on you; who you are, what your ideas and hopes are and what would make that an extraordinary experience for you. We’d then use the information we glean from you about these things, to create something that would make that magic happen. Ultimately, it’s always about you and what would be the best possible outcome we can create for you!

We are passionate about becoming a true ‘win-win-win’ company. This means that we believe a business is only truly successful when you ‘win’, our staff ‘win’, our local communities ‘win’ and the local, national and global environment ‘wins’. If this happens, our business wins.

We are therefore committed to minimising our environmental impact in any and every way we can. We were the first members of ‘Forest Carbon’ in 2017, the first and only government endorsed commercial vehicle carbon-credit subscription scheme that offsets vehicle emissions by planting woodland in the UK to off-set these emissions. We seek to be a fully electric fleet as soon as is feasible and will acquire our first electric vehicle in 2020. In the meantime, we use only the latest, cleanest diesel vehicles (Euro 6c regulations) and are investigating alternative diesel in order to reduce our footprint further. In early 2020 we enquired into a new fuel, HVO, which will reduce diesel emissions by 95%. It’s currently prohibitively expensive, but we will adopt this fuel as soon as the price comes into what we consider a reasonable premium. In the meantime, we’ve just joined Shell Oil’s new business fuel card operation, as they have just committed to making all business fuel card purchases 100% carbon-offset.

We use local suppliers as much as we can and enthusiastically support local business. We are and are seeking to remove non-reusable plastics completely within the next 18 months.

The UK’s national health service (the NHS) is free at the point of delivery, open to all, and accessible for all international visitors. However, the NHS reserves the right to charge non-residents the cost of services delivered, so travel insurance is highly recommended. That said, the costs of medical services and medication in the UK is a fraction of those charged in the US and is highly regulated.