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Jane’s Writing Table, Chawton

JANE AUSTEN COUNTRY
3 days / 2 nights - Wednesday to Friday

This stimulating specialty tour follows the trail of one of Britain’s favourite writers and includes the places which inspired Jane Austen, where she lived and wrote her most important works. Splendid scenery, stupendous historical sites, a feast of culture and the opportunity for some marvelous specialty shopping make this a simply lovely and well rounded holiday for the Jane Austen fan as well as their companions.

Visit Wessex, the counties of the west Saxons and where English history virtually begins. Not only a feast as a literary landscape for both Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, but this is a place where dinosaurs roamed, where prehistoric man made it his home followed centuries later by the Celtic tribes, who settled here before being colonised by invading Roman armies. It is the region of major medieval cities and some fabulous stately homes and gardens. It's timeless, it's pretty and it's a magical three days!

DEPARTURE DATES & PRICES FOR YEAR 2008

Tour Code

Depart London

Return London

JANE 

Wednesday

Friday

JANE 1

7 May

9 May

JANE 2

4 Jun

6 Jun

JANE 3

23 Jul

25 Jul

JANE 4

20 Aug

22 Aug

JANE 5

17 Sep

19 Sep

JANE 6

15 Oct

17 Oct

Departures on request outside this operating season. Ask us for details!

Travel dates don’t match this 3-day Jane schedule? Why not check out the 4-day Southern England Literary tour which visits several sites of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens and more!

 

This GUARANTEED DEPARTURE begins WEDNESDAYS as above from central London hotels below.
It is your responsibility to be there in plenty of time.

The Royal National, Bedford Way
The Corus Hotel, Hyde Park
The Grosvenor Thistle, Victoria Station
The Holiday Inn Forum
The Chiswick Hotel, Chiswick

08.00 (underground Russell Square)
08.20 (underground Lancaster Gate)
08.30 (underground Victoria Station)
08.45 (underground Gloucester Road)
09.00 (underground Turnham Green)

NOTE: Clients should wait by the concierge desk. Return drop-offs are to any central London hotel.

Cost: $779 USD per adult sharing a twin/double room; $809 USD single occupancy

What your tour price includes: Your accommodation for 2 nights while on the tour including both full breakfasts and dinners. Your price also includes all entrance fees to attractions, transportation, services of driver/guide-companion and all taxes and tips other than those you may wish to give your guide.

Airport transfers and accommodation pre and post tour is not included but can be reserved at a specially discounted price. Our London tour base is the Chiswick Hotel so you will be picked-up for your tour here at 09.00 if booking pre-tour accommodation with us.

Want to upgrade your tour package to include international airfare? Click here for info.

TENTATIVE ITINERARY

NIGHTSTOP

 

 

DAY ONE - WEDNESDAY

 

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'.

Hampshire

DAY TWO - THURSDAY

 

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.

 

Hampshire

DAY THREE - FRIDAY

 

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.

London

(own account, not included in tour)

 

Guests with an interest in Literary themed itineraries - read all about it! We also offer The Bookworm, a 12 day adventure in England and Wales; the 7-day Literary England tour; individual interest itineraries for Harry Potter, James Bond, Winston Churchill, The Tudors which explores the worlds of Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn & Shakespeare and several Literary Themed Day tours from London.

 

 

 

 

This tour is operated by Back-Roads Touring Co Ltd

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