Travel Insider Touring
Occasionally each year, we offer special touring opportunities to our readers, giving you a chance to travel somewhere together with other like-minded fellow Travel Insiders, and usually accompanied by Travel Insider David Rowell himself. Indeed, one of the best features of our touring is the great group of people you get to share the touring with – usually interesting and successful people, often but not always retired, and with plenty of past travel experiences.
Our group travel is quite unlike traditional group travel experiences. We keep the schedule’s flexibility as high as possible. For example, if weather changes, or if the group as a whole wish to substitute something for something else, then – if at all possible – we’ll adapt, adopt and improve to ensure the best experience for the group, based on the varying situation and circumstances as they unfold. If the schedule allows, of course we’ll add impromptu photo stops on request. And so on.
We also never over-fill the coaches we use. Typically our coaches are no more than two-thirds full, giving people who are traveling alone or who wish a double seat to themselves plenty of room to spread out, and meaning no-one has to suffer a bad seat (eg with a wheel well directly in front).
Where possible, we add some special extra features and experiences into our touring to further enhance your overall experience.
In the past we’ve had tours to many different parts of the world, ranging from Russia and China (and even North Korea) to Sri Lanka and Scotland’s Islands; from New Zealand to Turkey, and through much/most of western and eastern Europe.
In the future, who knows! If you have requests or suggestions, by all means let us know.
Covid Touring
We were one of the very first to cancel our touring schedule, back in February 2020.
We’re as keen as you are to return back to touring, and now, after two years seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, we believe it is now becoming appropriate to plan some tours for 2022.
Specific itineraries will be announced in late March. You can see a calendar of how these tours will sequence and can be combined on this page. (Notte this is for the previous season, will update with actual dates in late March.)
Here is the schedule of up-coming tours that we plan to operate.
| Tour | Dates | Status |
| Custom Touring | Your Choice | Do you have a group of people you’d like to arrange a group tour for? We can do all this for you – simply tell us where you want to go, when, what you would like to see and do while you’re there, your target price range and tour quality, and about how many people you expect in your group. We’ll do the rest. People can pay us or pay you, they can go through you or deal with us directly; whatever/however you wish it to be managed, we’re here to help and make it so. |
| Wild Wales | June 2022 | Wales – a small country of 641 castles (the most of any country in Europe), wonderful mountains and valleys, and beautiful seaside towns, is too-often overlooked by most international visitors. To remedy this, we are offering our first ever tour of Wales, with a comprehensive experience throughout the country. 7 days/6 nights. Optional pre and post tours. Connects with the Scotland’s Four Corners tour immediately after. (See the 2022 touring calendar for details.) Available to join later in 2021 |
| Scotland’s Four Corners | June 2022 | We take you as close as we can get to mainland Scotland’s “four corners” – its southern, northern, western and eastern points. We also include some islands and other experiences “in the middle”, giving you a chance to literally cover the length and breadth of Scotland. 10 days/9 nights. Optional pre and post tours. Connects with the Wonderful Wales tour immediately before and the Overlooked England tour immediately after. (See the 2022 touring calendar for details.) Available to join later in 2021 |
| Overlooked England | June 2022 | Cornwall is so different to the rest of England that there’s a nationalist movement to create a separate country in Cornwall. Our Overlooked England tour starts in Salisbury and meanders down the south coast, through Devon and around Cornwall, before returning back to the Cotswolds and ending in Oxford. 9 days/8 nights. Optional pre and post tours. Connects with the Scotland’s Four Corners tour beforehand. (See the 2022 touring calendar for details.) Available to join later in 2021 |
| The Great British Expedition | June 2022 | Here’s a chance to do the famous “From John O’Groats to Land’s End” tour (JOG-LE) of Britain in its entirety from the northeastern tip of Scotland down to the southwestern tip of England. You can join our Scotland Four Corners tour either when it starts or any time subsequently prior to the day we travel from Inverness up to John O’Groats, and then continue on for the rest of the Scotland tour and down to England and Land’s End, completing this tour either in Penzance after visiting Land’s End or staying on until the tour ends in Oxford three days later. If you wanted to, you could join earlier for some or all of our Wonderful Wales tour, too. At least 11 days/10 nights, and as much longer as you wish up to 27+ days. (See the 2022 touring calendar for details.) Available to join later in 2021 |
| Kazakhstan | ????2022 | Inaccurately laughed at as “the land of Borat”, in reality Kazakhstan is the most prosperous, progressive and stable of all the ‘stan countries. See for yourself this September, when we spend a week in Kazakhstan. Optional touring beforehand in Ukraine, and after in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Details to follow later in 2022, hopefully (Covid dependent). |
| Summer on the Rhine Cruise | 12 Aug (or sooner) – 19 Aug (or later) 2022 | A lovely mid-summer cruise up the fabled Rhine River, starting in Basel, Switzerland, passing through France and Germany, and ending in Amsterdam. |
| European Christmas Markets | 11 Dec (or sooner) – 18 Dec (or later) 2022 | The most popular of all our tours, a one week river cruise between Vienna and Nuremberg. The cruise itself starts on Saturday 11 December, and ends on Saturday 18 December. We have some pre-cruise suggestions, and of course, you can stay on after too if you wish. Ideally timed to fit between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now available to join |
| New Year Special Celebration | 27 Dec 2022 (or sooner) – 2 Jan 2023 (or later) | Yes, 2020 was a terrible year for most of us, and 2021 has been slow to get better. But – 2022! Now there’s a positive thought to seize upon, and to get it off to a great start, we’re planning a great celebration, including one of the best firework displays in the world, in one of the world’s greatest cities. Intrigued? Stay tuned for more. More details to follow. Available to join in early July |
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