On Location With Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, Morse, Midsomer and Father Brown | Travel Research Online

I would hazard a guess that, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, your anglophile customers have been watching endless episodes of Downton Abbey, Inspector Morse, Doc Martin, Keeping Up Appearances, Poldark, Midsomer Murders, Grantchester, and The Vicar of Dibley to name just a few of the British TV series appearing on PBS. Bridgerton is the new kid on the block, and you can read and see more in the story below after Downton Abbey.

You will know who these people are and instead of leaving them to imagine what the great castles, stately homes, gardens, market towns, villages and countryside really look like; talk to them about their favourites and let me help you put together a UK tour that matches their interests, time frame and budget.

Catch the vision and talk to them about converting TV fiction into touchable reality in the English countryside.

The Powerful Pulling Power Of Downton Abbey Interest in visiting Highclere Castle, aka Downton Abbey, will be boosted when the sequel to the successful spin-off film is released at Christmas. Filming is already underway, with all the key cast members including Hugh Bonneville and Dame Maggie Smith returning alongside several new faces. As most of your anglophile clients will have watched every single episode of Downton Abbey, capitalize on the pent-up demand by offering them their own 2-night On Location Tour with visits to some of the picture postcard Oxfordshire Cotswolds villages, featured in the different episodes and a ‘life below stairs ’visit to the great kitchens beneath a magnificent country house. Check with me for their 2022 opening dates.

Bath’s Starring Role In Bridgerton Based on the bestselling books by Julia Quinn, the period drama Bridgerton is set in England in the early 1800s. It follows the Bridgerton family, and their high society lives and romances (image courtesy of Netflix). The World Heritage city of Bath plays a leading role in the series, as much of the filming took place in the city, with the Georgian stone and grand buildings used as a stand in for Regency London. Use this link Google Earth tour (allow time for it to load) for a walk-through nine different filming locations as sets out the framework for a fascinating Bridgerton tour. Netflix was seen back in Bath last week, filming series 2!

Follow In the Footsteps Of Endeavour, Morse, Lewis And Hathaway Many of your clients (yourself included, perhaps?) will be fans of Inspector Morse, who then became enthusiastic about Inspector Lewis and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Hathaway. The fascination continued with Endeavour, which focused on Morse’s early years as a Detective Constable in the Oxfordshire CID. Many scenes of these much-loved TV series have been filmed in the heart of the old city of Oxford. Your clients will thank you for inviting them to see real places like the Randolph Hotel, Broad Street, the College quads and gardens, as well as the historic coaching inns and the cobbled alleyways leading to them, where the familiar words “Pint, Lewis?” were often spoken.

Discover the Corpse-Strewn Capital of Crime Just north of London, the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and the Chiltern Hills are where your clients will find Inspector Barnaby of Causton CID, a large clutch of miscreants and many law-abiding citizens. It’s a place filled with traditional pubs, village greens, village fêtes, and Sunday afternoon cricket. Of course, not everything is as idyllic as it appears, since murder, kidnapping and blackmail are all common felonies committed by the inhabitants of this fictional county. Since the beautiful towns and villages seen in ITV’s long-running detective series are real and easy to get to, come and walk in DCI Barnaby’s footsteps, sip a pint in a traditional pub, and explore the quintessential English countryside.

Go On Location With Father Brown and Agatha Raisin Parking your jetlag for two or three nights in the sheep-clad hills of the Cotswolds will enable you to discover locations used in the filming of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, the Catholic priest turned detective with a knack for solving mysteries in his English village. It’s also the place used as the location for much of the filming of Agatha Raisin, a retired London PR whizz turned Cotswolds amateur sleuth. A visit can also include some of her creator M.C. Beaton’s favourite pubs, tearooms, and shops. During the couple of days spent here, you’ll see picture-perfect towns and villages, castles, stately homes, some beautiful gardens and enjoy lunches in ancient English country pubs.

The Imitation Game Once Britain’s best kept secret, Bletchley Park is just 90 minutes northwest of London and was once the top-secret home of the Bletchley Park Codebreakers, where Alan Turing and other agents of the Ultra intelligence project decoded the enemy’s secret messages. It was also the filming location for The Imitation Game, the Oscar-nominated film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly. The hugely popular ITV drama, The Bletchley Circle (Series One and Two) was also filmed here. Today, you can walk around the restored Codebreaking Huts and historic buildings, explore the grounds, and learn about the major role Bletchley Park played producing secret intelligence — which had a direct and profound influence on the outcome of the conflict.

Paull Tickner, owner of U.K-based Custom GB, is known for his expertise in creating and operating imaginative, value-added tours of Great Britain and Ireland. Visit his website at www.customgb.co.uk or email him at ptickner@customgb.co.uk.