Houses and Gardens of Southern England & the Chelsea Flower Show

19 May - 8 June 2013

Tour Highlights

• On this tour, led by Richard Heathcote, author, TV presenter and director of Carrick Hill, Adelaide, and his wife, landscape architect Margaret Heathcote, you will:
• • Gain an insightful understanding of English identity by exploring the historical relationships between literature, landscape, the country house and gardening
• • Wonder at the magnificence and variety of exhibits at the Chelsea Flower Show
• • Experience a wealth of English country houses of every period, type and association, each carefully chosen for its unique beauty and history
• • Enjoy an exclusive evening at London's Travellers' Club, the oldest and arguably the most interesting of all institutions of this type
• • Explore English poets', novelists' and essayists' 'sense of place' through many fascinating site visits, including a 'Bloomsbury day' with an expert lecturer visiting Berwick Church, Charleston and Virginia Wolf's Monk's House
• • Understand the importance of England's maritime history to national pride and identity through a visit to Portsmouth's magnificent maritime museum
• • Delight in the eccentric folly of the Dymchurch – Dungeness miniature railway
• • Decode Britain's prehistoric landscapes from an expert archaeologist at Avebury and West Kennett Long Barrow and enjoy an exclusive, private visit to Stonehenge at sunset
• • Learn about the importance and meaning of castles for English history by visiting key examples like Carisbrook, Scotney and Hever
• • Enjoy masterpieces of British architecture such as Canterbury and Winchester cathedrals and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton
• • Visit the National Fruit Collection, Faversham, to learn how Britain is conserving a vast number of species in a living gene bank

About the Tour

This tour combines a visit to the world famous Chelsea Flower Show with a fascinating tour of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire that looks at the Englishness of England. Site visits concentrate on five key components of English identity, elements that are so loved as to infuse the English soul. These are:

• • English history and heritage;
• • English literature;
• • The English countryside and the villages that nestle in it;
• • Country houses, great and small;
• • Gardens and gardening.

All these 'loves' mingle so intimately that they at times are inseparable. English writers, for example, have lived in country houses and used them as the settings for their novels. Countless poets and novelists have celebrated the countryside, contrasting it to the 'infernal wen', London. Many, like Vita Sackville West, have been avid gardeners, aware that their creations play a role, however small, in augmenting Britain's historic landscape. Britons find inspiration, confidence and solace in their history and heritage, represented physically by their castles, churches and cathedrals, country houses, villages, gardens, historic ships like the Mary Rose and HMS Victory, antiquities (like Stonehenge and Avebury Stone Circle), and even their heritage trains and other elements of the industrial past. In additional to London, this tour stays in three country centres from which we make visits to a large number of very diverse sites, of which the most ubiquitous are country estates, gardens, and literary locations like writers' houses.

21 DAYS London (2 nights) • Royal Tunbridge Wells (8 nights) • Brighton (3 nights) • Winchester (7 nights)

Sites Visited London (Geffrye Museum, Huguenot houses in Spitalfields, Ham House, Garden Museum, The Travellers Club, The Chelsea Flower Show, The Chelsea Physic Gardens) • Down House (Home of Charles Darwin) • Chartwell • Ightham Mote, Sevenoaks • Knole • Sissinghurst • Great Dixter • Penshurst Place • Hever Castle • Groombridge Place • National Fruit Collection, Faversham • Canterbury Cathedral • Leeds Castle • Dymchurch Railway to Dungeness • Berwick Church • Charleston • Monk's House, Lewes • Borde Hill Gardens • Parham • Royal Pavilion, Brighton • Petworth • West Dean Gardens, Chichester • Avebury Stone Circle • West Kennet Long Barrow • Portsmouth Historic Dockyard • Winchester (Castle Great Hall, Cathedral, Hospital of St. Cross & Jane's Austen grave, Winchester • Special evening visit to Stonehenge • West Green House Gardens • Osborne House • Lunch at Farringford Hotel • Carisbrook Castle and Museum • Jane Austen's House, Chawton • Chawton House Library • Wisley Royal Horticultural Society Gardens