Jane Austen Country (3 Days) 

     We depart London and take a scenic route to Hampshire, “Jane Austen Country”, with a stop in Steventon, where Jane Austen spent her first 25 years.

Next, her home at Chawton is our destination, now open as a museum. It was in this quaint village that Jane spent the last eight years of her life, wrote and completed most of her most famous works, Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice amongst others. Once inside the house, we are in her world. Time and group interest permitting, we may also see the Selbourne home of Gilbert White, the first great naturalist.

Our next port of call is the ancient Saxon capital of Winchester. We will begin with a guided walk around the city; sights include the cathedral, where Jane Austen is buried, one of England's most famous public schools and the legendary 'King Arthur's Round Table'. If there is time, we may also visit the last monastery in England where pilgrims may still claim the 'dole'.

     Wiltshire & Dorset touring to Lyme Regis is today’s agenda. The counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire and most especially Dorsetshire, are ones where time literally seems to have stood still since the days of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. We'll be traveling through small villages and towns used by both as settings for stories.
We'll introduce you to a few ‘martyrs’ (such as the trade unionists of Tolpuddle, and those who died at the hand of 'bloody Judge' Jefferies), shopping in the lace and antique town of Honiton and perhaps a stop at Hardy’s cottage and monument, all dependant upon time and group interest.
Jane Austen's Lyme Regis is the highlight of our day! We'll spend time exploring part of Britain's 'Jurassic Park' and perhaps find a fossil or two along the shoreline near Lyme Regis, which was a popular sea spa town and the site of many Austen family holidays. The town of Lyme Regis looks much as it did when Jane spent time here, and sites from Persuasion are recognizable.

     Today, across the amazing Salisbury Plain where you'll see the great prehistoric temple of Stonehenge and a landscape simply littered with ancient burial sites.

Bath, the city of Georgian splendor and Roman antiquity is next on our touring trail. This was a city enjoyed by the social set of the 18th and 19th centuries, a setting for Jane Austen amongst many other writers; Austen fans will immediately recognize many streets and squares from her novels.

We will spend some free time here so you have ample time to explore and have time in the Jane Austen Centre and see the houses where she lived. The settings for the novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion can all still be seen within a mile radius of the Jane Austen Centre. Also a must is a visit to the famed Roman Baths and Pump Rooms, still remaining as it has through the centuries and as described in Northanger Abbey.

If we’ve time, we will visit the medieval village of Lacock which has hardly changed in the past 200 years. With its magnificent abbey, half timbered cottages and greystone houses it provides a perfect setting. This lovely place, where TV ariels, telephone wires and advertising are banned, has been used as a film set for many popular films such as the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle production of “Pride and Prejudice” and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". Fittingly, the local abbey was where George Fox Talbot pioneered photography.