Continued from Douglas Adams Tour: The Nerd Big Three
I enjoy coach tours for difficult-to-reach Adams sites because driving on the left side of the road is not easy. Though most of the places in my book are accessible via train and a reasonable walk, Glastonbury Tor and Stonehenge are exceptions. They’re out in the country, but both can be visited via a coach trip from London.
Group Coach Tours
Frequent world travelers will tell you that, “it’s the journey, not the destination,” or “it’s the people you meet that make it all worthwhile. ” Sometimes it’s true that meeting people worth your while makes travel fabulous. But the downside of joining a group tour is that coach rides on big roads are often tedious, and your fellow travelers are pot-luck.
You could be dealt a pair of young Chinese men who huddle under huge backpacks in the very last row of the coach, whispering constantly. When you arrive at the legendary village of Avebury to listen to the stones, the youngsters will reveal themselves to be obsessed with chasing and photographing sheep, forcing the tour guide to shout and run after them instead of conducting the tour.
You could have breast cancer survivors so glad to be alive that they are compelled to spend the drive time sharing details of their diagnosis and treatment. Or a young woman grieving the recent loss of two elderly parents who left her enough of an inheritance to take this vacation. This vacation that she’s so grateful for, she occasionally pulls out a kerchief and sobs into it.
If you’re very unlucky on the King Arthur Tour, the group bus lottery could land you a fellow traveler who has saved up meager pennies, for so many years, that they reek with the determination to fully experience the tour. You may find being trapped in a bus with them is as energetically overpowering as the olfactory torture of the nag champa incense they burned right before boarding the bus.
The Douglas Adams Tour
On any quest, there’s no knowing who you’ll meet up with…Unless you join my Douglas Adams Tour.
Then you’ll know that at least everyone will be an Adams fan (or friend of a fan).
You’ll know the tour will encourage scent-free personal products (because I’m sensitive).
And last but not least, by the time you board the bus, you’ll know the names and short biographies of the people you’ll be traveling with.
Because if it really is the people you meet that make a trip special, starting out with froody, fun, fantastic fans is bound to make this trip one of the most special in your life.
What do you think?