Austen Adventure 2027

Optional add-onTransfer from Heathrow to Bath

Depart 12:00 PM · Heathrow Airport, London

Arrange an overnight flight to land on Sunday morning, or let us arrange your flights, too. If you're already traveling, simply make your way back to Heathrow. Then begin your Jane Austen adventure the moment you arrive in England with our optional Airport-to-Bath Transfer Experience, designed especially for devoted Austen enthusiasts. Instead of navigating unfamiliar roads or arranging your own transport, let us greet you personally at the airport and escort you in comfort to the elegant Abbey Hotel, your home for the first part of the tour.

Along the way, you'll enjoy a special stop at Basildon Park, an exquisite Georgian estate that played a memorable role in the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice. Fans will immediately recognize it as Netherfield Park, Mr. Bingley's home and the backdrop to several beloved scenes, including those charged early encounters between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. As you explore the stately rooms and sweeping grounds, it's easy to imagine the rustle of silk gowns, the soft strains of music drifting from a country dance, or the sudden appearance of a tall, enigmatic gentleman across a ballroom floor.

By the time you arrive in Bath, where Austen herself once walked, you'll already be deeply connected to the world of her novels.

Check in to The Abbey Hotel

4:00 PM

The hotel sits close to the centre of Bath, across the street from Parade Gardens and a short walk from Bath Abbey. The tour offers Double and Twin rooms, and Single rooms for an additional fee.

Welcome Dinner

6:30 PM · The Abbey Hotel

Begin your journey with a three-course welcome dinner at the Abbey Hotel. Meet your fellow admirers, share your love of Austen's world, and enjoy beautifully prepared dishes in a relaxed setting.

After dinner, explore Bath as night falls. Bath Abbey is beautifully lit after dark, and Pulteney Bridge and the foaming weir are a short stroll away. Or go back to your room and rest up for all that is to come.

Walking tour with a Strictly Jane Austen expert guide

10:00 AM

After a full breakfast at the hotel, your costumed guide will meet you in the lobby for a 2.5-hour promenade around central Bath. You're welcome to come in costume, too. Your guide brings fashionable Georgian Bath to life with stories of Jane Austen's life and times, pointing out the places connected with the author and her novels and sharing anecdotes about the Regency era and the social etiquette of the day.

Free time

Late morning to 2:00 PM

Wander Milsom Street's shops and bookshops, visit the Roman Baths, or find a quiet corner of Parade Gardens.

Afternoon Tea at the Pump Room

2:00 PM

The Pump Room was the social heart of Regency Bath and counted Jane Austen and Charles Dickens among its patrons. Sample the spa water from the historic fountain, unchanged since Austen's day. Then sit beneath glittering chandeliers, with live music from the Pump Room Trio or the resident pianist, for an afternoon tea of finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones with clotted cream, and exquisite cakes.

Evening visit to No. 1 Royal Crescent

5:00 PM

Explore one of Bath's most recognisable Georgian landmarks after hours, when the museum is quieter and more personal. The museum runs a Jane Austen audiovisual tour just for our group as we wander through the rooms together. Step through grand rooms furnished as they would have been in the late 18th century. See how Bath's fashionable residents lived and entertained, and how the staff lived and worked downstairs, from the kitchen hearth to the dog-powered spit. The visit ends with canapés and a glass of Prosecco.

Bath to Lyme Regis

Depart Abbey Hotel 9:30 AM

The drive from Bath to the Dorset coast is a journey through chapters of England's rural past. The Georgian skyline gives way to rolling green hills, hedgerows and villages of honey-coloured stone. Through Somerset, church spires rise above market towns, and the route skirts the Mendip and Blackdown Hills. Nearing Dorset, thatched cottages appear, the fields slope toward distant cliffs, and at last the road opens onto the wide sweep of Lyme Bay.

Walking tour of Lyme Regis and museum visit

11:00 AM

Lyme Regis is the seaside town Jane Austen loved enough to write into Persuasion. She visited in the early 1800s and set one of the novel's most memorable scenes on the Cobb, the ancient stone harbour wall where Louisa Musgrove takes her fateful leap.

A local expert leads you along the promenade and onto the Cobb, where the waves still break against the stone and the views of the bay and cliffs remain much as Austen saw them. Imagine ladies in muslin taking the sea air, and the bathing machines that let women enter the water modestly.

Lyme also holds a surprise: Mary Anning, the fossil hunter whose discoveries on these beaches helped change how the world understood prehistoric life. She was a small girl when Jane Austen visited in 1804, and Austen's letters even mention her father, a cabinetmaker, who quoted a price to repair a broken box lid. Mary's statue now looks out to sea, and the Lyme Regis Museum stands on the site of the house where she was born.

Afterward, there's time to browse the shops, eat fish and chips by the harbour, or simply sit and take in the scenery before the coach returns to Bath in the late afternoon.

Free evening in Bath

Bath to Lacock

Depart Abbey Hotel 9:00 AM

The drive to Lacock runs through some of Wiltshire's most picturesque countryside: rolling meadows, hedgerows, and stone villages with cozy pubs and medieval churches. Watch for Brunel's 1.8-mile Box Tunnel, opened in 1841 and still in use by the railway. As you near Lacock, the soft golden Wiltshire stone appears, and it feels as if time has slowed.

Lacock village and Abbey

10:00 AM

With its unspoiled streets, stone cottages and no modern intrusions, Lacock feels like a living period set, and filmmakers have noticed. The BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice filmed here, as did Cranford, Wolf Hall, Downton Abbey (both the series and the film), The Other Boleyn Girl, The Wolfman, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and three Harry Potter films: The Philosopher's Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and The Half-Blood Prince.

Your guide leads a stroll through the village, past traditional inns and independent shops. Then explore Lacock Abbey, whose vaulted cloisters and historic rooms hold centuries of stories, from medieval nuns to William Henry Fox Talbot, the Victorian pioneer of photography, who made one of the world's earliest photographic negatives of the Abbey's own oriel window.

Stay on for lunch at one of the village's inns or tearooms (lunch on your own) before returning to Bath.

Jane Austen Centre

2:00 PM

The Jane Austen Centre offers a snapshot of Austen's life in Bath and how the city shaped her writing. Costumed character actors guide you through, and you can try on Regency dresses, bonnets and coats, write with a quill pen, and have your picture taken with the famous Austen waxwork.

A note from Joan: Great Jane Austen gift shop!

Optional add-onTwilight at Thermae Bath Spa

5:00 PM · Additional charge; choose this option when you register

End the day in Bath's natural thermal waters. Relax in the warm, mineral-rich pools, admire the city lights from the open-air rooftop pool, and explore the Wellness Suite's steam rooms, infrared rooms and relaxation spaces. After your soak, enjoy a platter of meats and cheeses with a glass of wine, water or soda. Robe and towel are provided; just bring your swimwear.

Steventon and Chawton

Check out of the Abbey Hotel and depart 8:30 AM

Meet your coach driver and Jane Austen expert guide, load your luggage, and set off through the countryside to Hampshire. Along the way, you'll pass Stonehenge. There's no time to stop, but the view from the road is a memorable one.

The first stop is Steventon, where Jane Austen was born and spent the first 25 years of her life. Visit St Nicholas Church, where her father served as rector, and later one of her brothers.

Continue to Chawton through thatched cottages, chalky lanes and sweeping rural views. Jane spent her last years here, and the cottage where she revised and wrote her most famous novels is now a museum devoted to her life and work.

She came to Chawton because of her brother Edward Austen Knight, who had inherited a large estate that included Chawton House. A sandwich buffet lunch awaits at Chawton House before a tour of the house and grounds.

In the late afternoon, the coach takes you on to Winchester.

Check in to the Winchester Royal Hotel

4:00 PM

The hotel sits in the heart of the cathedral city, a minute's walk from the centre, with shops, restaurants and the cathedral close all nearby.

Free evening in Winchester

Find your own table for the evening. The Wykeham Arms, tucked between the cathedral and the college, is a Winchester favourite.

Guided tour of Winchester

11:00 AM

Winchester was the ancient capital of Wessex and of King Alfred the Great, and a Winchester expert guides you through more than a thousand years of its history. Walk beside the River Itchen to the ruins of Wolvesey Castle, the medieval palace of the Bishops of Winchester. Then step inside the cathedral, one of the longest medieval cathedrals in Europe, with its carved medieval choir stalls and one of its great treasures: the Winchester Bible, the largest surviving 12th-century English Bible, its pages still glowing with gold and lapis lazuli.

Jane Austen is part of this story, too. She spent her final weeks in a house on College Street, and she is buried in the cathedral's north aisle. Your guide will tell you the story of her last days, and you'll stand at her grave.

Free time in Winchester

1:00 PM

The afternoon is yours. Take tea at the Cathedral Refectory, visit the Great Hall and its legendary Round Table, climb the Westgate for views over the city, browse the independent bookshops, or walk the water meadows along the River Itchen.

Farewell dinner at the Winchester Royal Hotel

6:30 PM

Gather for a final evening together over a three-course prix fixe dinner in the hotel's Walled Garden Restaurant. You'll be asked for your meal choices a couple of weeks before the trip.

Optional add-onReturn to Heathrow

Depart Winchester 10:00 AM

Start your journey home in comfort with a private transfer from the Winchester Royal Hotel to Heathrow Airport in a spacious executive coach. Choose this option when registering.

Or stay on. Ask me about extending your trip.