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The awards we have won over the years

I have always enjoyed eating out, whether at a cafe, a pub, a restaurant or some other kind of establishment. But I’ve never considered myself to be a ‘foodie’, so would not claim to be able to write an expert blog article on the subject of food as such. I am, however, very discerning about where I eat, and that has only increased over the last few years since I became a tour guide. The importance of my guests having the best possible eating experiences is fundamental to their whole impression of the tour, so great care has to be taken to ensure that the places we visit offer the best consistency from one visit to another. Other attributes that I consider to be essential are...

As those of you that have been guests of Unique Devon Tours know, we pride ourselves on giving the best service that we can, and we always aim to go beyond the extra mile where possible. This is well reflected in the Tripadvisor reviews that we have (to date 197 reviews, all of them 5 star - see here!), and the awards that we've won, when our efforts have been rewarded with some wonderful accolades at prestigious regional tourism awards, including gold at the Visit Devon Tourism Awards for the last three years running (2015, 2016 and 2017). back in October, I managed to make it into the final of the Wanderlust World Guide of the Year Awards (into the top 10 out of over 4800 nominated tour guides from all over the World).

Devon is increasingly popular as a destination for both US and Canadian travellers to visit, as word spreads about this beautiful area of the United Kingdom, far away from the crowds of Stonehenge, Bath and London. This most varied of counties has such an array of wonderful things to see and do, with beautiful and dramatic landscapes, that it's no surprise that visiting North Americans return home to tell their friends all about how wonderful Devon is.

One of the great pleasures of being a Devon tour guide is that I have a very wide variety of quintessentially local things to introduce my guests to, especially if they haven’t been to the county before. We really are spoilt for choice in Devon, like no other county in England, when it comes to reasons for why the county is unique. For instance, we have Dartmoor National Park, with its Dartmoor ponies, its granite Tors, its letterboxes and its incredible amount of Bronze Age remains, more than in any other area of the UK. Then there are Devon’s lanes, ancient and high sided, that cause my overseas guests any amount of anxiety, especially when they realise that they are not one way! Devon is the only county in England with two coastlines, and they are both beautiful as well. And then we have something that can only ever be done properly in Devon, and that is the Devonshire cream tea!

For anyone who hasn’t visited the Westcountry or heard of a cream tea, the name might not do it justice. Taking some cream, leaving it to clot and adding it to tea – sounds disgusting! Thankfully, a cream tea is something much more delicious! Devon Heaven Hampers are cream tea experts, selling cream teas by post across the UK, so they have put together this article to explain about the Devonshire cream tea, its origin and the regional differences that spark a lot of debate!

Understandably I wanted this tour to become one of my headline tours, since Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles are still hugely popular and recognisable around the world today. As I put the structure of the day into place, I realised that no matter how good the actual experience, I needed to get together some excellent publicity material, in particular some evocative images.