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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
Our Ashdown Forest Explorer tour is a gentle,
sociable and entertaining day. It visits beautiful
places, has minimal walking, includes morning
coffee and lunch at Heaven Farm and a guided tour
and cream tea in a beautiful country house. So it is
perfectly possible for your members to enjoy this
day out without once putting their hands in their
pockets! That’s got to be a winning combination
for group organisers looking for something special
to fill a coach for a memorable day out.
Come and meet the tour guide on the edge of the
forest at Heaven Farm just south of East Grinstead.
Morning coffee and biscuits, included in the tour
fee, are all laid out in the Old Stables ready for your
arrival at 10.30am.
During the morning sit back to enjoy the Ashdown
Forest Explorer. A massive and ancient forest once
covered much of South East England but in Sussex
the mighty oaks were felled to fuel the furnaces of
the iron industry leaving the wild heaths and moors
that we see today. We pass through the ancient
market town of East Grinstead, home of the World
War II Guinea Pig Club, where we see the longest
row of mediaeval houses in the country. We’ll also
drive through the forest village of Hartfield which is
Winnie the Pooh country and then back through the
Chelwood Gate to Heaven Farm for lunch included
in the tour price. From October to Easter we’ll serve
steak and mushroom pie but during the warmer
summer months it’ll be a tasty ploughman’s with
local farm cheddar unless you opt for the hot meal.
In the afternoon we visit Saint Hill Manor a
beautiful 18th century country house. Far more
intimate than a stately home tour; it is more like
viewing a private house with the estate agent’s keys.
There are no roped off areas. The house has had a
succession of distinguished and eclectic owners
including the Maharajah of Jaipur, an American
Ambassador’s wife and an acclaimed science fiction
writer and founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard,
have each left their stamp on this interesting house.
There’s an article about the people who have lived at
Saint Hill Manor in the April 2012 issue of
The Kettle
our online magazine:
click
o read it
. A rather
unusual feature of Saint Hill Manor is a fascinating
monkey mural, filling a whole room and painted by
a nephew of Winston Churchill for the wife of an
American ambassador and it is here that we finish our
day in style with a cream tea before heading for home
at 4-45pm.
Available weekdays throughout the year (excluding
26 Sept to 15 November) with easy walking and lots
of opportunities to sit down.
Adults & Seniors: £25.00 Coach Mileage: 20
Saint Hill Manor and (inset) the splendid Monkey Room Above
Archie McIndoe was the pioneer surgeon whose Guinea Pig patients
convalesced as guests of a former owner of the manor.