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On leaving school I’d trained as an Environmental Health
Officer, but left after deciding I wanted to be in a job
where people were pleased to see me. Now my training
came into its own. The next tours in the City & Village
Tours portfolio would be Hidden London & The Regent’s
Canal visiting Smithfield where I had trained as a meat
inspector (morning coffee used to be below the market
buildings in an old Bummaree porters pub) and the
City of London where I’d studied as a fish inspector at
Fishmonger’s Hall and old Billingsgate. To this day I
can still sex crabs!
The first City & Village Tours office was on the 22nd floor
of a tower block in Deptford before moving into our first
office in Greenwich where we stayed for 15 years until the
building was demolished to make way for the Greenwich
University School of Architecture and we moved to rather
splendid newly built offices at Deals Gateway at the
bottom of Blackheath Hill and here we remain.
I never did enrol for the Blue Badge course and I gave
up guiding trips myself back in 1999 but our Blue Badge
Guides are still asked about the girl who would put her
pushbike in the back of the coach. Today our team of Blue
Badge Guides is thirty strong. Among them are six guides
who have worked with us for more than 20 years.
I truly believe that our guides are among the very best in
the country. In 2003 for the first time there was an industry
awards category for guided tours and we came in second
- runners up to the BBC. The next year we won and in the
years since our awards tally has risen to eight times Best
Guided Tours and twice Best Overall Groups Supplier,
which is a bit like Best in Show at Crufts. The picture
below is me collecting an award from Moira Stuart back
in 2005. I didn’t stop smiling for months. One memorable
year we beat all the pillars of the establishment – the
Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace and the BBC.
That always cheers me up when I have to pay our taxes.
Every single one of those awards, won as a result of voting
by group travel organisers, is displayed in our office where
every member of the office team can see them every day.
What will be the future of the day trip? It’s all very well
picturing super-fast aircraft or trains that can whisk us to
the far corners of the globe in the blink of an eye for the
cost of a postage stamp and have us all back home in time
for The One Show but would you be able to persuade
your members to buy a new ten year passport if theirs has
expired?
Without doubt the times they are a-changing. Back in the
1980s the folk coming on our day trips included people
who had been born when Queen Victoria was still on the
throne! Certainly memories of First World War childhoods
were common. Today the retired folk who come on our
guided tours are of course quite different to that generation
and it is our aim to keep in step with what your members
want. What would you like to be offering your members in
the next few years? Do let us know.
After all, as history shows, we all like to know just
what we’re looking at.
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The Kettle
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