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Winchester Tourist Guides - New Website

Winchester Tourist Guides new website, www.winchestertouristguides.com, was launched by the Mayor of Winchester at Abbey House on Monday 5 March. The website contains full details of the Guides' 2007 programme of special walks as well as information on the other services they provide.
The new website lists the full series of spring series of walks on Winchester's history starting every Saturday afternoon at 3pm from the tourist information centre in the Broadway until April 14. This Saturday, the topic is "Bullies or Benefactors - The impact of the Norman invasion on Winchester". In addition, every Tuesday evening from May until August the guides will offer a walk starting at 6.30 pm on a variety of subjects - natural history, suburbs of Winchester, historic pubs, ancient mills, Wellington, monarchs linked with the city and much more.

Increasingly, the Winchester Tourist Guides are providing guided tours for festivals and happenings in Winchester, for example, the Hampshire Food Festival, the Winchester Festival, National Architecture Week and the recently announced Year of Sculpture. The ever popular Chesil Tunnel & Railway Tours and Halloween Walks are now regular and firm favourites in the annual special walks programme. Booking details and the discounts that some of the walks attract can be found on the new website.

The website also provides information on the other services provided by the City's tourist guides. As well as their special walks, the Guides offer regular guided walks of the city centre for visitors - twice a day in the high season. They are also in great demand to take booked groups around Winchester and surrounding areas in English or in a range of foreign languages including Thai! Also popular are the talks on local history to organisations such as U3A.

The Winchester Tourist Guides are a highly trained group of professionals, all of whom have undergone in-depth training in order to achieve their Blue or Green Badge status - both qualifications are accredited by the Institute of Tourist Guiding. See the website for an explanation of the difference between the two badges.

The Winchester Tourist Guides have a close partnership with Winchester Tourism and the tourist information centre but are a completely separate and independent body.

Sue Coles, Chairman of the Winchester Tourist Guides, said

"We are very excited to have our own website, it will make it easier for both residents and visitors to find out about our walks and talks. A team of guides has been working on the website for six months with web designer, Ian Buchanan. We are all very grateful for the hard work they have put into the project. It has been a steep learning curve for the guides but they have really enjoyed it and feel a great sense of achievement."

 

Media contact:
Geraldine Buchanan
Winchester Area Tourist Guide Association
Tel: 01962 856787
Mb: 07801 418481
g@buchananr.freeserve.co.uk