Literary Highlights of Southern England
20 May - 1 June 2012
Tour Highlights
This tour is led by Susannah Fullerton, President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia with the assistance of Kay Schneider as tour manager. Share Susannah's total passion for Jane Austen, Hardy, Kipling, Trollope, Keats, Wordsworth, Dickens, Chaucer, Tennyson, and many more, and learn about their lives and writings. Highlights include:
- • Explore Jane Austen's home in the company of the President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, and visit Chawton Great House (not open to the general public).
- • Enjoy a gourmet lunch at Farringford, Tennyson's home, before walking onto Tennyson Down with its stunning views of the Isle of Wight.
- • Be guided by one of the residents around the medieval Hospital of St Cross which inspired Trollope's novel The Warden.
- • Stay in some of England's finest cathedral cities and enjoy walking tours with Susannah around their literary sites.
- • Delight in gardens created by great writers - Vita's Sissinghurst, Kipling's Bateman's and Sir Philip Sidney's Penshurst Place.
- • Follow Darwin's giant footsteps on his 'thinking path' at Down House.
- • Spend three nights at the historic Ashdown Park Hotel & Country Club, one of England's most exquisite country house hotels. Set in the lush green of the Ashdown Forest, it is surrounded by immaculate lawns, secret gardens, lakes and woodland trails.
- • Enjoy a guided walk through the old cobbled streets of Windsor in the company of Hester Davenport, biographer and author of Writers in Windsor.
Visits include Down House • Canterbury • Pilgrim's Way • Sissinghurst • Bateman’s • Ashdown Forest • Royal Tunbridge Wells • Rochester • Penshurst Place • Groombridge Place • Ightham Mote • Dorchester • Isle of Wight (Osborne House, Farringford Hotel) • Chawton (Jane Austen House Museum, Chawton House Library) • Lacock • Salisbury • Blaise Hamlet • Tintern Abbey • Bath • Prior Park Landscape Garden • Pangbourne • Windsor.
About the Tour
The rolling green hills and gorgeous villages of southern England have nurtured many great writing talents. This tour takes you on a literary pilgrimage through some of the best of these places. You will visit Darwin's home and follow his footsteps on his favourite 'thinking path'; you will see Jane Austen's cottage and the tiny table where 200 years ago she wrote her brilliant books; you will meander through Thomas Hardy's glorious Wessex and visit the home he designed for himself; and you will lunch at Tennyson's beloved Farringford and walk on Tennyson Down where he shouted his poems to the winds. You will wander in the lovely grounds and house of Bateman's, Kipling's home, and visit the palatial splendour of Penshurst Place, home to the great Elizabethan poet and courtier, Sir Philip Sidney.
Superb gardens have been included and you will enjoy a visit to Sissinghurst Castle, home of the notorious Vita Sackville-West, poet and novelist as well as gardener; and Groombridge Place Gardens, which diarist John Evelyn helped design. Towns and villages connected with movie versions of famous novels have been included. You will visit the glorious cities of Canterbury, Winchester, Salisbury and Bath, with their cathedrals and stunning architecture, and in Pangbourne, you will enjoy a walk by the river immortalised by Kenneth Grahame in The Wind in the Willows.
Susannah Fullerton will tell you about the authors' lives, recite their poems and read from their novels, and introduce you to the wonderful landscapes that inspired them. Indulge in a memorable journey through the world of great books as you travel through beautiful southern England.
