Private driver guiding tours around mid and north Wales
So having taken up the role of a private driver guide in Wales, what difference is there between being a motorcycle and sidecar guide and a driver guide?
Motorcycle and sidecar tours
The motorcycle and sidecar used by Mid Wales Tours on their private tours can only carry two passengers. This ensures that the guest experience is unique to their particular tour.
Although the tours follow fairly fixed routes and are completed within a known time frame. A half day or full day tour. They can be very flexible to meet the specific needs of the guests. Changes can be made without worrying about the needs of other guests.
Private driver guided tours
The private driver guided tours by Mid wales tours can carry four guests and as such there may be slight conflicts between them as to what they want to see and when.
The private driver guided tours can be multi day and quite often are. This allows much more ground to be covered with multiple stops and visits over that time scale.
The motorcycle and sidecar tours provided my Mid wales Tours can also be multi day but guests need to stay in the same location overnight due to the difficulty in transporting luggage between overnight stops.
There is no such restriction during the driver guided tours.
Having said that. It has been my experience, that guests who stay more than one night at a location enjoy the tours much more than guests who travel from one location to another every day. It is the issue with packing and unpacking daily that causes stresses and strains.
Problems with pre booked private guided tours
It has also been my experience that, guests who come on multi day driver guided tours with Mid Wales Tours arrive with a fixed itinerary that quite often has been set by an agent and not the guests themselves.
So the first thing we talk about when I pick up my guests for for their private guided tour, is ‘what are you interested in? what do you want to do?’
I quickly learned that I need to ask the guests what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go. You have to be very flexible in your approach as a guide.
Most guests soon get fed up of castles and gardens especially if they are touring Britain.
So as guides we have to be ready with alternative visits. Agents know all about the castles and UNESCO sites to visit nut know very little about the alternative visits that can be made.
Things like, walking with lamas, salt tasting, craft centers, working flour mills, working woolen mills, river boat rides, pony trekking, farm visits, listening to choirs, bronze age and iron age remains. The list goes on.
