Private sightseeing tours by chauffeur

Every tour day has three or four immovable facts in it, and almost all of them are somebody else's. Timed entry tickets admit you within a half-hour window. Last admission at a large house is often an hour or ninety minutes before closing. Several major properties are closed two days a week, and the days vary by property and by season.

Planning starts with those and works outward. If the timed Stonehenge slot is at eleven, the departure from central London is at half past eight and everything else in the day sits after it. Reverse the order and the whole thing collapses, because a missed timed entry is usually a missed entry altogether.

The corollary is that some combinations do not work no matter how the day is arranged. Windsor and Stonehenge and Bath in one day is technically possible and produces about forty minutes at each, which is not a day anybody enjoys. We will say that at the enquiry rather than sell it.

Our chauffeurs are drivers, not qualified guides, and we say that plainly because the distinction matters. They know the roads, the parking, the timings and the practical shape of every place we run to regularly. They will not deliver a commentary on Norman architecture, and anybody who does so without accreditation is generally making it up.

Where you want proper guiding, book an accredited guide and they travel in the car with you. A Blue Badge guide with a chauffeur is the best version of a tour day: the guide handles the knowledge, the chauffeur handles the logistics, and neither is doing the other's job badly.

What the chauffeur will tell you is more useful than it sounds. Which entrance has the shorter queue at two o'clock, where the good coffee is, whether the walk you are contemplating is ten minutes or thirty-five, and whether the next stop is worth the drive given how much of the day is left.

The single biggest cause of a disappointing tour day is an underestimated walk. A car park described as "adjacent" turns out to be eight minutes across a field. A cathedral close is pedestrian for three hundred yards in every direction. A hill town has its car park at the bottom and the interesting part at the top.

We state these before you commit, in minutes rather than in adjectives, and we plan around whoever in the party finds walking hardest. That often changes the shortlist: two stops with short walks make a far better day than four with long ones if somebody is using a stick.

It also changes where the car sits. On a day with a slower walker, the chauffeur holds nearer and waits longer rather than parking efficiently a quarter of a mile away, which is a small cost in convenience for a large one in comfort.

A tour day in this country needs a wet version, and it is worth agreeing one at the booking rather than improvising in a car park in the rain. Gardens, walls, ruins and villages are all considerably less appealing in weather; houses, cathedrals, museums and galleries are largely unaffected.

The practical trick is to keep one indoor stop in reserve rather than rebuilding the day. If the morning is wet, the house comes first and the garden moves to the afternoon in the hope that it clears, which in the west of England it frequently does.

Two umbrellas live in every boot and a change of shoes in the back is a sensible thing to bring. The country is at its best in this weather and only if you are equipped for it.