Why I became a Guided Walking Holiday Tour Leader

I was born with the travel bug and 60 years later, I am delighted to say that I have not been cured!

I am incredibly lucky that I have been able to indulge my passion for travel with earning a living. I have sailed the seven seas and in my previous job, I worked as a Tour Manager across Europe & Asia with guests from the UK, South Korea, USA and Canada. 

There is something incredibly special about having coffee beside a canal in Venice one morning and then the next, after a strenuous walking tour around central Florence, sitting beside the Pita Palace with a nice cuppa. But one thing that I noticed during all my years of travel work was how congested our city centres were. We were spending a lot of holiday time in traffic jams and only able to drop off at designated points within the city. Once we were back on our coach and off to our next destination, my group were so exhausted from Verona or Paris or an over enthusiastic local guide’s monologue on the Moorish influence in Southern Spain. My lovely guests were sleeping through the hilltop villages of Tuscany or the fields of bright yellow sunflowers in Southern France.

 So why not actually walk along a path next to a field of sunflowers instead of speed past in a coach - not just see them - savour them!

Although I loved my job as a Tour Manager and met many lovely people from interesting walks of life, I felt that not only were we contributing to the polluting of the planet but we were failing to really “savour” with all our senses the essence of the country we were visiting. So that’s when I decided to become a Guided Walking Leader for Ramble Worldwide. What especially appealed to me about Ramble Worldwide was the fact that they use small family run hotels and restaurants where possible. Our guests have dinner where granny might still do the cooking and her son is the waiter. It’s clear that our visit really does make an incredible difference to a small community. Also it is so fantastic for our guests to eat home cooked meals that really are part of a nation’s character and heritage, and I feel really does add enjoyment and authenticity to a walking holiday.