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Private Blue Badge Guide Recommendations

Tomorrow we will be back 2 weeks from a most wonderful 2 week family vacation in Europe. We spent our first 2 days in London. I wanted to share a couple recommendations for Blue Badge Guides who we absolutely loved.

Our first guide was Rosamund (Rozzy) Forester. She was our driver guide and really helped us make the most of the short amount of time we had to spend in London. She picked us up at the airport and from there she drove all over showing us sites and filling us with all sorts of information. She worked with me to create a day for my family that was tailor made to our interests. We would have literally been lost without her! It was so nice to leave the driving to someone else and not have to try to figure out how to navigate the busy streets of London. She really was awesome. Very knowledgeable, warm, friendly and witty. She really helped to make our trip truly memorable.

We also hired Rozzy on our second day to drive us outside of London for a stop in the Hundred Acre Wood and then on to Portsmouth to drop us off at the Brittany Ferry port. Her website is www.bluebadgeguide.com. Be sure to tell her I said hello and that I sent you.

Our second guide was Simon Rodway. He does walking tours and has quite an assortment of "specialty tours" and also tailor made tours. He led us on an excellent Sherlock Holmes walking tour. He was very knowledgeable and provided a very enjoyable tour. His website is www.silvercanetours.com.

I'd also like to add that I had originally contacted Janine Barton who is a driver guide recommended in Rick Steves' London guide book. For the dates I requested she already had a previous booking so she forwarded my e-mail to Rozzy and also gave me her contact information as well so we could get in touch with each other. From there we were able to come up with a plan and she then referred me to Simon for the Sherlock Holmes Tour.

Posted by
23642 posts

An unusual posting for a first time poster who has never been on this site before. Are we doing a little buzz marketing?

Posted by
4 posts

I have actually been on this site a lot while doing research for our trip. The entire Rick Steves website is an amazing tool for travel planning and has been extremely helpful in all the planning research I did. I am very thankful for all Rick's advice as well as other travelers who have shared their valuable insights. I just wanted to do the same and pass along my experience so as to possibly help someone else out in their planning.

I thought I had indeed signed up for the forum but did find I had not thus my recent activity. I have done tons of reading here over the past year of planning. Perhaps now that I have actually returned from our trip I may have something I can contribute and would love to do so in the event that anyone out there might find it of use.

I assure you that I have no ulterior motive nor am I "buzz marketing".

Posted by
1330 posts

Marie - What did you think of the Hundred Acre Wood?

Posted by
4 posts

I so wish we'd had more time to spend there.

We'd started our morning in London and it ended up taking a bit longer than I had expected to head out of town. The drive from London to Pooh Country was quite lovely and interesting with all the narrow winding roads. We were in awe of our driver guide, Rozzy's, and all the other local driver's abilities to manage to navigate 2 vehicles on what to us seemed like single lane roads. We were so very glad we had hired a driver! No doubt we would have been lost on the first roundabout!

When we got to Hartfield, East Sussex I had hoped to stop in at the Pooh Corner to pick up a guide of the Winnie-the-Pooh locations but, unfortunately, we arrived shortly after the shop had closed so we just moved on to the car parking area. From there the trails were easy enough to find and we meandered through a beautiful wooded forest for a short expedition. We could have easily spent an entire afternoon exploring.

Dear Rozzy had been kind enough to collect an assortment of sticks for us in advance so we made a trek through the woods until we came to Poohsticks Bridge. However, the skies were threatening a downpour so we knew we would not have much time to spend there. We still had a journey ahead of us to Portsmouth to catch our overnight ferry so after several rounds of Poohsticks we decided we had better move along and headed back to the car.

I would absolutely love to go back again someday to further explore the area but next time I will be sure to allow an extra amount of time and already have a map in hand so I will be sure to not miss any of the real places mentioned in the Winnie-the-Pooh books that we having fondly read over the years.