A Warm Welcome to Wessex Continental Travel

[inspic=18,left,,0]Coachholidays.com are pleased to announce the inclusion of the 2008 tour programme from Wessex Continental.

Wessex Continental Travel, based in Saltash near Plymouth, operate tours from the Avon, Devon and Cornwall areas via the Plymouth Ferryport. Pick ups for most coach tours start in Bristol and follow a route down to Plymouth via the main towns.

As well as sightseeing tours to France, Spain and Portugal, John Hill the owner of Wessex Continental is keen to point out their specialist programmes of Wine Tours and Jazz Tours, which are quickly becoming some of their most popular events.

As John says “Yes, we also run wine tours and have been doing so for over 25 years. The Tour Director who travels with these holidays is Stephen Barrett, the well known broadcaster and writer and wine lecturer. The tours shown are our public programme but are in no way the complete picture. We are happy to arrange a wine tour to any destination.”

A programme of holidays featuring Jazz at the hotel (and on the ship) started about 15 years ago with a visit to Cantabria in Green Spain – the area of Spain stretching from the French border at Bayonne, starting with the Basque Region and continuing through Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia eventually finishing at the northern border of Portugal. As the popularity of these tours increased Wessex Continental made a second departure to Brittany in Spring and in 2008 a third, longer tour has been added, to Portugal.

In addition to the Panama Jazz Band Wessex Continental will also be handling the arrangements for two more Bands in 2008, the Dart Valley Stompers who play Trad in a driving manner and the Band of Gold, a versatile band with rock and roll and swing as their mainstay but also playing the Blues and Latin American rhythms. The Dart Valley Stompers and Band of Gold are led by award winning Jeremy Huggett and the visit to Spain with them also features New York trombonist Jim Fryer.

Led by trombonist Colin Kingwell, the Colin Kingwell’s Jazz Bandits have been in existence since 1956. They have played in Denmark, Holland, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Cyprus and U.S.A. The band plays in the New Orleans style and is popular in clubs and festivals throughout the U.K. An ideal band for dancing and rapport with audiences.

In particular John wishes to promote the benefits of travelling with a local tour operator.

“Our aim is to design no-hassle tours that will please you and persuade you to return with us in the future. To do this, we go out of our way to select suitable hotels; to avoid any daft departure times; to make the travelling as leisurely and as comfortable as possible and not an endless yomp for hours on end. We listen to what our clients say and where appropriate we will make refinements and after doing this since 1974 we’ve generally got it right. Almost all the trips use the Plymouth Ferryport so the boring drive into the traffic jams of the East of England is avoided and when your holiday ends you are home in a jiffy.

We don’t attempt to do it as cheaply as possible. As they often say, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. We strive for value for money at all times and we don’t cut corners. We want to provide a holiday that we would be pleased to join ourselves (and do!) so that means every aspect has to be spot on.

When making your holiday decision we hope you’ll consider our programme very carefully and that you’ll choose your local, caring Operator who’ll look after you all the way.”

Coachholidays.com is looking forward to working closely with Wessex Continental in the future, and promoting their coach tours from the South West. Look out for their holidays appearing on this site soon.