New Beginnings!

Having just completed my Blue Badge course for the South East of England, I am somewhat in limbo, waiting on the results. However, planning plenty of tours and talks that I can offer to visitors, both national and international is keeping me busy, which is good! I hope to be able to offer both group tours as well as personal and corporate tours (Prices on application).

What is a Blue Badge Guide I hear you ask? Well, its a professional qualification through the Registered Guild of Tourist Guides that I have taken a year to complete. It is a very intensive course and you are trained to the highest standard to be able to take visitors around museums, cathedrals and churches, on coach tours and walking tours too. I will also be good at pub quizzes!! The amount of knowledge you have to know is huge, not just about the area but also about the UK as a whole. Anything and everything from Architecture to Law, from History to literature. My brain is certainly feeling stuffed!

I'm sure you want to know who I am and why I wanted to become a guide - well, I'm from a very small village in Wiltshire, not too far from Bath. A west country girl at heart!

I graduated from Reading University with a First in History, then went and worked at the Costume Museum in Bath and at the British Museum in London, both jobs were as visitor/museum assistant. I then took a Medieval History MA course from Bristol University. As you can tell, History is my passion. I then veered off slightly from the norm with a job as Private Clients Manager for a Fine Wine Storage facility. I then found myself in Tunbridge Wells looking for work, and discovered the Blue Badge Course - the first in 10 years apparently! Went for the interview armed with a presentation on cider/ale in the South East and here I am now!!

My other main interests, as my friends all know, is pubs and real ale. Not just about drinking, but the social history surrounding pubs. I am also an active member of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) and hope to be able to combine my interest of History and real ale into certain tours. 

I want this blog to be a personal account of my progression to become a Tourist Guide - and will be updating with what I am up to in the interrum period before my results, and of course afterwards - the world of being a Tourist Guide!