Protect your Investment with Travel Safe

SGT Advantage

Contact Us

Accommodations

Mini-Coaches

Why our Tours?

Booking Conditions

Before You Travel

Testimonials

Make a Payment

Click link for full info.  Make secure, online credit card payments.  NOTE:Transactions attract a 3.5% fee. Please add the transaction fee to the total amount entered. Thanks.

*Personal checks accepted with no transaction fee.

Tours by Destination:

London City Day Tours

Wales Tours

Ireland Tours

Scotland Tours

England Tours from London

England Tours from Manchester

Continental Europe Tours

Tours by Theme:

Garden Tours

Chelsea Flower Show Tour

 Literary Tours

Art & Wine Lovers Tours

Rock & Roll Tours

Battlefield Tours

Cruise Programs:

European River Cruises

European Sea Cruises

Custom-Design Tours

Self-Guided Europe Programs:

Independent City Packages

Self-Drive

Walking Tours

SGT World Ventures

Africa

Asia/Orient

Latin America

South Pacific

Polar Regions

Travel Links Page

Rock & Roll Links

BEATLERADIO

Special Group Tours

Toll Free: 1 866 725 5250

kate@specialgrouptours.com

A CLASSICAL EXPERIENCE
ENGLISH CLASSICAL MUSIC IS THE THEME OF THIS TOUR
3 days / 2 nights - Wednesday to Friday

Free! When you sign up we’ll send you some Classical Music CDs featuring the music of the main composers we’ll discover on this tour!

We’ll admit it; this is another cunning ruse to get you, the typically curious and educated Back-Roader away from those obvious, commercial attractions that litter the well-trodden tourist path. By taking an imaginative and thematic approach to itinerary design, we discover an England just as beautiful and interesting as the better publicised ‘honey-pots’. Our theme tours, based around specific interests, naturally appeal to those who share that interest - but they also have a habit of creating new fans who perhaps never previously quite understood what the appeal was before! Above all, they are wonderful voyages of discovery to stimulate the mind and the senses alike and take you away from the tourist herd.

This particular tour takes English classical music as its theme. Each place we visit is worth the time in its own rite. Our theme, however, takes you to places you’d never perhaps have considered visiting, or even heard of! Classic scenery, classic tradition, classic history. Yes, it’s a real classic tour!

DEPARTURE DATES & PRICES FOR YEAR 2008

Tour Code	Depart London	Arrive London
CLASS	Wednesday	Friday
CLASS1	07 May	09 May
CLASS2	09 Jul	11 Jul
CLASS3	10 Sep	12 Sep

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: $859 USD per adult sharing a twin/double room; $919 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

DAY ONE - Wednesday

Leaving London, with a musical soundtrack of course, we are quickly in the Surrey countryside and at the country house of Hatchlands. We’ll quote its own web site description ‘Built in the 1750s for Admiral Boscawen, hero of the Battle of Louisburg, the house contains the earliest recorded decorations in an English country house by Robert Adam – whose ceilings here appropriately feature nautical motifs. On display is the Cobbe Collection, the world's largest group of keyboard instruments, many associated with famous composers such as Purcell, J. C. Bach, Chopin, Mahler and Elgar. Hatchlands is set in a beautiful 174-hectare (430-acre) Repton Park, with a variety of waymarked walks offering vistas of open parkland and views of the house. The woodlands are a haven for wildlife and there is a stunning bluebell wood, which flowers in May.’ Worth our morning visit, we’d say!

Next, we cross Royal Berkshire to Gloucester, stopping for lunch in a typical English country pub, before arriving at the Cotswolds village of Northleach. Here, in the midst of a quintessential, honey-coloured stone village, virtually unchanged since the 1500s, we find a fascinating collection of self-playing instruments, Barrel Pianos, Musical Boxes, Automata and Polyphons at the totally unique Keith Hardings World of Mechanical Music.

Of course, remembering that our theme is merely a ruse to get us places, there’ll also be time to explore Northleach’s 14th century church, House of Correction, half-timbered buildings and timeless market square. You see, another place you’d probably never had come to but for the musical connection!

NIGHTSTOP: Cheltenham area

DAY TWO - Thursday

Today we explore a region few have heard of but which is fondly remembered by those who discover its charms. We are going to follow the Elgar Route, a 40 mile drive through the countryside between Worcester, Hereford and the Malvern Hills. Sir Edward Elgar was perhaps England’s best known modern composer whose music now provides alternative ‘national anthems’ and is always at the climax of the famed Royal Albert Hall ‘Proms’ concerts. On this route you’re going to visit a number of sites connected with the great man, such as The Elgar Birthplace Museum, and also see fabulous ‘ black and white’ Tudor cottages set in breathtaking countryside, visit Royal Worcester porcelain factory outlet, the Civil War commandery of Charles II, tour a magnificent 12th century cathedral, seeing the tomb of 13th century King John, and hopefully hear its choir and organ.

Yes, it’s a day of complete ‘Pomp and Circumstance’!

This evening (July departures only) we’ll attend a performance at the Cheltenham Musical Festival.

NIGHTSTOP: as above

DAY THREE - Friday

We’ll begin our day at the museum house of one Gustav Holst. Who? Well, we’re willing to place a small wager that if you don’t recognise the name you’d recognise movements from his ‘Planet Suite’. As the birthplace museum is in Cheltenham it affords us the opportunity of exploring England’s most complete, elegant Regency town. And the house itself is also a fine period home showing the upstairs downstairs way of life in times past, including a working Victorian kitchen and laundry, elegant Regency drawing room and charming Edwardian nursery.

We know that the ladies will enjoy some classic shopping experiences here so we’ll ‘tarry awhile’ before heading back through a selection of Cotswolds villages including Down Ampney, birthplace of Ralph Vaughn Williams, arguably England’s greatest composer since Purcell. Our classical connection introduces us to All Saint's Church, built by the knights templar in around 1260 and evidence of this can still be found inside. There is an exhibit at the back of the church dedicated to the life and times of Down Ampney's most celebrated son. Williams is himself buried in the somewhat grander Westminster Abbey – giving an indication of his importance.

Finally, our last visit of the day, before we reach central London, is the amazing Brentford Musical Museum. Here you’ll experience the fascinating world of automatic musical instruments, designed to provide music at the flick of a switch or at the turn of handle in the days before electronics and microphones. While you are at the Museum sounds from the past will fill the air: the sweet-toned musical box, the grandeur of the pipe organ, the subtle sounds of the concert pianist, the racy rhythms of ragtime. Whether the instruments graced the mansions of the wealthy, or were designed for more humble dwellings, their background is explained and you will see and hear them play automatically! In keeping with our ruse of introducing the less familiar, we’ll also show you the ‘Strand on the Green’, one of the Thames’s prettiest London suburbs.

Our tour ends in London where you’ll be dropped at a hotel of your choosing. Accommodation tonight is not included but is available for a supplemental fee.

If you are extending your stay in London then here are some classical London touring suggestions with a classic theme that you can visit independently - the Handel House Museum, the Horniman Museum, the Royal Albert Hall and the Wigmore Hall.

This tour may be combined with our weekly four-day In Search of Arthur, or with select departures of our Stately Homes and Gardens tour of Kent or Literary Southern England.

This tour is operated by Back-Roads Touring Co Ltd