Every tour on our schedule can be taken privately — the Scenic Lakes days, the literary days, the Dales. Same route, same places, same storyteller, with nobody else in the vehicle and nothing on the timetable but you.
These are the same days we have been refining for years. Taken privately, they become something quite different.
Your guide is talking to you rather than to a vehicle full of strangers, which changes the whole texture of a day. Questions get answered properly, and then followed somewhere interesting. You linger at whatever holds you and move on early from whatever does not. If the light is doing something remarkable, we stop, because there is nobody waiting to be somewhere.
A tour is a route. A private tour is a day.
The Eight Lakes mornings and afternoons, and The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour — passes, water and viewpoints, run for your group alone.
Beatrix Potter, Wordsworth, Brontë Country and the Dales of All Creatures Great and Small.
House-and-garden days that only ever run privately, for guests who would rather spend the day indoors and in gardens than crossing passes.
Birthdays, any decade. A twenty-first, a fortieth without the children, a ninetieth with every one of them — the day built around whoever is being celebrated.
Graduations, anniversaries, retirements and family days. Seven seats, one price, nobody hurried and nobody left behind. Children do better on these days than people expect.
Want the day itself designed differently — a different route, a different subject, a different time of day altogether? That is a bespoke tour, and it is the more interesting conversation.
A note on autumn. A private day earns its keep more obviously between September and November than at any other time of year. The roads are quiet, the fells turn rust and gold, and the waterfalls are running properly again — but the days are short and the weather moves fast, which is precisely when having somebody who knows which pass is open this morning, and where the light will be at three, is worth something. We plan the day around the hours that are actually good rather than the ones on the clock. More on the season in our guide to the Lake District in autumn.
Every scheduled Lake District Tours tour is available privately for one to seven guests, alongside five private historic house tours. Prices are per group rather than per person: half days from £459, full days from £915. Collection is from your accommodation across Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Grasmere, Oxenholme and Keswick — Keswick and further-out addresses on full days. Free cancellation up to twenty-four hours before.
Looking for a chauffeur? Chauffeur-driven tours of the Lake District explains what changes when the driver is also your guide. Still deciding? What a private tour costs, and when it is worth it sets out the sums per person. Private tour or hire car compares the day with driving yourself. And if you are not sure whether you want one of our tours or a day designed from nothing, private or bespoke explains the difference. Here for a short stay? Two days without driving is a private itinerary with timings and prices.
A personal reply with availability and a straight answer on price. Or call — we answer our own telephone.