サザンプトン発ニューフォレスト＆ソールズベリーデイツアー

This tour was the perfect way to end our time in the British Isles! Andy was positively brilliant!! His intimate knowledge of the area was evident in all that he shared, but he went beyond that by taking an interest in us and shaping the experience to fit our personalities. We started with a trip to Salisbury Cathedral. Andy got us there at the perfect time to join a tour guided by cathedral personnel. The cathedral itself offers fascinating history, amazing architecture and engineering as well as inspiration. The tour ends with the opportunity to view an amazingly well preserved original of the Magna Carta - one of 4 remaining. While we were touring, Andy must have been using what he had learned about us from our conversation on the way there to taylor his plans for the rest of the day perfectly for us. He began our tour of the New Forest, filling our heads with information about the area's history and the villages within it. We stopped at several interesting spots, and then he took us to a pub in Lyndhurst where we had the best pub lunch of our entire trip to the British Isles. The steak and ale pie was the real thing! While we were eating, Andy was doing some investigating based on my interest in Alice of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" fame and discovered that the heritage center in town had the original looking glass along with a good bit of information about Alice herself, who had lived in Lyndhurst. Of course, he took us there, where he seemed to enjoy my enjoyment of the place almost as much as I did. After that, he proceeded to make my husband's day by taking us to an active archaeological dig where they are discovering treasures for the shipbuilding past of Bucklers Hard near Brockenhurst. Andy introduced us to one of the participants in the dig, who obviously knew Andy. We had originally expected the New Forest portion of this tour to be almost an afterthought to Salisbury, but Andy filled the whole day with wonder, excitement, relaxation and sheer enjoyment for both of us. Now the New Forest is on our list of places we would like to explore further in the future. Even after the tour, Andy went above and beyond by supplying us with links to information about and enrichment from an area in Wales that shares my name (Rhonda - though the area adds an extra "h" to it). I cannot say enough about what a great day we had and what a great guide Andy was!