White cliffs of Dover walking holiday in Kent, England
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
We organise its walking holidays within the local community using local products, local people and local accommdation providers. This means that we can offer locally baked bread, locally made pickles and chutneys and a variety of Kent produced cheeses. We know the source of the food we offer our walkers and they know that they are getting the true taste of Kent's local produce.
All of our accommdation providers are small independent inns and hotels or guest houses and are not part of large managed chains. Six years eyars ago we applied for assessment under the Green Tourism Buisness Scheme and for the last six years have been acreddited as a Silver Award holder by the GTBS. We are one of few tour operators in the South-east of England to gain this Award and it has been an important part of how we as a locally based rural business have adjusted how we organise the busines that helps to sustain the environment within which we operate.
This encouraged us to re-think how we sourced food for our walkers and we now only provide lunches using locally sourced ingredients and bought from local suppliers. This has enabled us to also provide walkers with an authentic taste of the best local produce that the County has to offer. This also reflects our bi-line on our earliest brochures which was simply 'discover Kent, its people and their history'. For it is the the everyday relationship between the local suppliers and producers that is at the heart an area's local history.
The majority of our customers arrive in the County by public transport and then spend their speend thier holiday on foot. To this end we provide a biefing paper on how to access the County by public transport which is available on our web site in the resources section. The resources section also offers information about the history of sites of local interest that can be found along the trail and this is availble to anybody regardless of whether they choose to take a holiday or not.
Community
Towards the aim of working within the community we work closely with the Kent Downs AONB, the National Trails' Organistaion and the Chilham Local Business and Retail Group. This has been extremely important in terms of how we increase out use of local suppliers and producers wherever this is possible. To this we hasve worked closely with the Chilham Business Group to encourage tourism within the local area based upon the network of local buisnesess within Chilham
In 2011 the Director had a book published by the History Press about the local history of the Pilgrims' Way - The Fact and Fiction of an Ancient Trackway, that has brought together much of the Historical and archaeological histroy connected with an important local tourist asset running through the County of Kent. This has also helped to play a role within the Canterbury Arts Festival and also support the local authorties Explore Kent Walking Festival offering wlaks to people within the local community. To this end we sent a volunteer to train as a walks leader for the Walking for Health intiative and undertook participated in the Kent Greeters workshop orgainsied by Kent County Council.
We also works with the University of Kent and each year presents a talk to students on the Contemporary Issues in Tourism Module about the way in which it operates as a small family run local buisness in conjunction with other businesses that are part of the local economy.
We meet all its walkers each day of their walk and as such we ensure that they are fully aware of of what the local rural economy has to offer them while they enjoy exploring the County. We have learnt from experience and listening to walkers over the years that it is very often the less commercialised local attractions and in particular the local history that accompanies them that visitors to the County really enjoy. As such we have produced our own audio guides to offer a comemtary on aspects of the local history associated with the area that are not always so accessible in mainstream guidebooks.
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