Occasions
Some journeys deserve to be made a proper occasion of
An anniversary. A rather special birthday. The first summer everyone has finally managed to be in the same place at once. A family story you have always meant to follow.
When there is something worth celebrating, we begin there.
Perhaps it is dinner somewhere rather grand, a beautiful house in the country, a private day on the water, or simply the right table, in the right place, with all your favourite people around it.
We shape the journey around the occasion, rather than asking the occasion to fit around the journey - keeping everything relaxed, thoughtful and beautifully considered.
Because some moments are simply too good to do by halves.
Tell us what you are marking →What families come to us for
Six reasons, and the trips they turn into
There is no fixed calendar and nothing to buy a seat at. Each of these is built once, for one family, on the dates that suit them.
AnniversaryA fiftieth, or a fortieth
One evening is the reason for the trip. Everything before it slows down so that nobody arrives at it tired, and the days after it stay quiet on purpose.
ReunionThree generations, in one house
Grandparents who tire by four, teenagers who wake at eleven, and a middle generation trying to hold it together. One house large enough for all of it, and days that let people split up and come back.
- Homecoming
The parish the family left
The research is done months before you fly. By the time you stand at the door, we know who lived there, when they left, and who in the village still remembers the name.
Milestone birthdayA seventieth, marked properly
Not a party in a hotel function room. A table in a house that is still lived in, with fourteen people who were asked to come a year in advance.
RetirementThe trip that was always going to happen later
People who have deferred this for a decade tend to over-plan it. Most of our work here is taking things out of the itinerary rather than adding them.
RemembranceGoing back for someone who cannot
A place a parent talked about and never saw again. These are quiet trips, planned with more care about the day itself than any other kind we build.
How it is planned
What changes when a trip has a day at the centre of it
The date is fixed first
The dinner, the walk, the morning at the graveside. We place it, then build the trip outward so the day itself lands on rested people.
One house, not five rooms
For families travelling together we look for somewhere with a kitchen and a sitting room, not a corridor of hotel doors. It changes how the week feels.
Different energies, same trip
A seventy-eight-year-old and a nineteen-year-old do not want the same day. We plan parallel mornings that meet again at dinner.
Photographs, without a production
A photographer for two hours on the day, briefed to stay out of the way. Most families tell us afterwards this was the thing they had not thought to ask for.
A record, afterwards
Every property, guide and arrangement written up and sent to you. To return to, or to give to the people who could not come.
One person, throughout
The advisor who plans the occasion is the person you reach while you are away. Not a duty desk and not a local operator working from a brief.
The awkward question
What does a trip like this cost when there are six of you?
Less per person than the same trip for two, and not by a small margin. The largest single expense in most journeys is movement, and a group moves once rather than three times.
We publish the real ranges from trips we have already built, for four or more adults travelling together, whole trip rather than per person.
See the figures →
Give us the date and we will work back from it
Occasion trips are usually planned six to twelve months out, because the houses worth having are taken early. If your date is closer than that, say so and we will tell you honestly what is still possible.