Tours & Guided Walks

NB: For boat and train tours, see the Trains, Boats & Planes section.

Bath

BIZARRE BATH
Runs every night 30 Mar-31 Oct, meet 8pm at Huntsman Inn, North Parade Passage, £8 adult/£5 concs. No need to pre-book. Ffi: 01225 335124, www.bizarrebath.co.uk • Not really a guided tour of Bath’s historical and architectural highlights at all, but a 90-minute outdoor comedy performance, with added walking. If your guides Noel Britten and/or JJ don’t have you in stitches, then your English obviously isn’t up to scratch. Not designed for children, but not unsuitable for them either. Older kids will love it.

CITY SIGHTSEEING BATH
Buses depart from High St, nr Abbey Churchyard, in peak season every 15-20 mins from 9.30am daily until 5.30/6pm-ish, £11 adult/£9 senior, student/£6 ages 5-12/£25 family. Ffi: 01225 330444, www.city-sightseeing.com • Worth a punt, even if you’re a Bath native because if you’ve never explored your home town from the top deck of a bus, you’ve only seen half the old place. Your ticket price actually gets you two tours. There’s your basic Bath Highlights Tour, which in 45 minutes does the Roman Baths, Abbey, Assembly Rooms and such. Then there’s the Bath Skyline Tour, which takes in Claverton Down, the Uni and Prior Park Landscape Garden. A very pleasant and informative outing; remember to get the children to blow raspberries at snobby tour-bus-hating Bathonians.

GHOST WALKS OF BATH
Thurs, Fri & Sat all year round, starts from near Garrick’s Head pub, St John’s Place (next to Theatre Royal), 8pm, 2010 prices TBC but last year’s were £7 adult/£5 child, senior, student. No need to pre-book, unless you’re coming in a group of 10 or more. Ffi: 01225 350512, www.ghostwalksofbath.co.uk • Probably Bath’s most celebrated guided tour, lasting about two hours and taking in the city’s extraordinary wealth of spooky stories. If you’re around later in the year, book a place on their famous Halloween Night Walk, but do it early as they always sell out well in advance.

JANE AUSTEN TOURS
Every Sat & Sun (also BHMs) leaving Abbey Churchyard 11am (also 4pm Fri & Sat in July & Aug), £6 adult/£5 concs. Ffi: 01225 443000, www.janeausten.co.uk • Ninety-minute walking tour organised by the Jane Austen Centre, taking in all the places of Austenian interest in the central part of the city. No need to pre-book.

MAYOR’S CORPS OF HONORARY GUIDES
Meet Abbey Churchyard, outside Roman Baths, daily 10.30am, also 2pm daily except Sat, also 7pm Tue & Fri from May-Sept, free. Ffi: 01225 477411, www.bathguides.org.uk • Whether resident or tourist, you’ve got to give this excellent crash-course in Bath’s history a go. Approx 90-minute walk around the centre of the city takes us from ancient and medieval times, through the 18th-century golden age and onwards, all free of charge, courtesy of the very well-informed members of the Mayor’s Corps of Guides, founded in 1930 for the purpose of giving people free tours.

 
Bristol

BRISTOL MUSEUMS SERVICE
Ffi: www.bristol.gov.uk/museums • Runs a small programme of walks over the summer months, though numbers on each are limited and must be booked in advance. For details, visit website or get a leaflet from your local library or tourist information centre.

BRISTOL UNIVERSITY
Ffi: www.bris.ac.uk/events • Bristol University runs an extensive and hugely popular programme of talks and concerts through the year, as well as walking tours of various of its facilities and buildings through the year; many of these sites, such as Goldney Gardens, are of great historical significance. Some are free, some not, some need pre-booking, some don’t. No room to list them all here, so see the website - the chances are that you’ll find several things that’ll really interest you.

BRISTOL & SOUTH WEST TOUR GUIDES
Ffi: 0117 968 4638, www.bristolwalks.co.uk • Run their well-established ‘Bristol Highlights’ walks every Saturday through the season from 4 Apr to the end of Sept. They leave the Beetle sculpture in Anchor Square entrance to At-Bristol at 11am and the cost is £3.50 per person, free for under-12s, no need to book in advance. The guides also do other local tours including Redcliffe, Clifton, Harbourside, Bristol & the Slave Trade, Brunel, Bristol Wine Merchants and two new ones this year, Medieval Bristol and The West End; these can be booked by arrangement on the above number.

CITY SIGHTSEEING BRISTOL
Tickets £10 adult/£9 student, senior/£5 ages 5-15, but one adult can take one 5-15-year-old free/free for under-5s. Ffi: 0870 444 0654, www.bristolvisitor.co.uk • See all the best bits of Bristol from the vantage point of an open-top bus. Circular tours of the city taking in such locations as the Centre, At-Bristol, Temple Meads, St Mary Redcliffe, the ss Great Britain, Clifton and the Zoo. Tours run from 10am-4pm daily from April-Sept (weekends only in March & Oct) every 45 minutes or so, with more frequent services in school holidays, and all feature live commentary telling you about places of interest. A ticket is valid for 24 hours, so you can do half your trip one afternoon, get off and visit somewhere and still use it the following morning, or, for a somewhat higher fare (£15 adult/£8 child), you can get a ticket that’s valid for any three days during the season (they don’t have to be consecutive). All tickets will also get you discounted fares on the Bristol Ferry Boat Co and the Bristol Packet, as well as discount entry to At-Bristol, the Zoo, Blue Reef Aquarium and Horseworld. This is not just for tourists and visitors - everyone should explore their home town from the top deck of a bus, and this is a great way to see and learn a bit more about Bristol and some of its historic highlights. Modern children who don’t get to go on a bus very often, especially a bus without a roof, will adore it. Pack a picnic and you’ve got a fabulous and relatively inexpensive weekday adventure during the school holidays.

HAUNTED & HIDDEN BRISTOL
Departs 8pm most Fridays throughout the year from outside Bristol Cathedral, College Green - advance booking essential, £5 adult/£4 concs. Ffi & booking: 07766 258407, www.hauntedandhiddenbristol.com • Very popular walk around the central part of the city taking in some of Bristol’s most haunted buildings, as well as a few famous TV and movie locations and some celebrity tales.

PIRATE WALK
Every Sat & Sun 2pm, also group bookings by appointment, meet by the black beetle sculpture, Millennium Square, £6 adult/£3 child/£15 family. Ffi: 07950 566483, www.piratewalks.com • Yarr! Bristol’s colourful seafaring heritage brought to life by the irrepressible Pirate Pete with a tour of the city’s pirate haunts; Bristol does indeed have a rich and complex history of pirately deeds, but Pete’s emphasis is very much on entertainment. All good, clean, wholesome and very bloodthirsty family fun. Details of his book are also on the website.

DO IT YOURSELF…

There are plenty of tours you don’t need a guide for, and the nearest Tourist Information Centre or website will have plenty of them, some of them free.

Bristol Tourist Information Centre, and some local bookshops should have copies of the venerable Bristol Heritage Trail (RRP £2.95), a walk around town which fills you in on a lot of the highways and byways of the Bristol story - you’ll probably have noticed some of the little numbered brass studs in the pavement.

The TI centre and maybe some other places should also have the Bristol Slave Trade Trail (RRP £2.95). Compiled in 1998, it authors include Madge Dresser, Bristol’s leading historical expert on the trade.

The same places might also have copies of the Bristol Harbour Heritage Trail compiled last year for the 200th anniversary of the Floating Harbour. This wonderful (free!) booklet has five walks looking at different technical and historical aspects of the harbour, and even if you think you know the area, it has plenty of eye-openers. If you can’t get hold of one of the booklets, no worries; it’s all on a truly awesome website which was also set up to mark the Harbour’s 200th birthday. Go to www.bristolfloatingharbour.org.uk for downloadable harbour walks. It also has nature trails around the docks and Brandon Hill as well.

For the star-struck, there’s Bath’s Movie Map which points out notable film and telly locations in the Georgian City. Almost all of them costume dramas, of course. Download a PDF at tinyurl.com/ylkkrkw

The Bath tourist office website also has a tour of Jane Austen’s Bath in MP3 format at http://visitbath.co.uk/janeausten/audio-tour Download it to your MP3, put your best crinoline on, and away you go.

The Bristol tourism website at www.visitbristol.co.uk has five free MP3 tours to download, namely ‘Bristol Quayside Adventure’, ‘The Brunel Mile & City Docks’, ‘The Bristol Heritage Walk’, ‘The Bristol Churches Trail’ and ‘The Slave Trade Trail’. To download these go to tinyurl.com/bristol-mp3-tours

There are a couple of excellent walks done in 2006 for Brunel’s 200th birthday; one on Brunel’s Dockside and one on Victorian Bristol. These are downloadable as PDFs or Word docs from www.bristolreads.com/tours.htm

Off the conventional tourist track, Bristol East Side Traders, which promotes business and regeneration in the inner city, has two circular MP3 guided walks, one of Easton and one of St Pauls, with information on historic buildings and events, plus interviews with residents and music and poetry from local artists. Download from www.visiteastside.co.uk/walk/

Venue Days Out Guide - Bristol and Bath's best excursion guide. To order your copy ring 0117 942 8491. Only £2.95.