footsteps travel co uk

Northampton agency Footsteps Travel sets up first shop

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An independent Northampton travel agency will open its first shop on Monday (October 2) after seeing its turnover treble following the pandemic.

Footsteps Travel is moving into the former premises of Northampton Travel in Harborough Road.

Established in 2007, the agency specialises in escorted coach day trips and holidays. It also offers other holidays such as cruises, group travel and solo breaks.

Footsteps Travel was founded by Jo Brooks who now has a team of seven.

It is a member of Protected Trust Services and has been working from an office at a bowls club.

Brooks said: “The business would not be the success that it is without the fantastic team I have working alongside me – from the escorted guides, inhouse travel consultants and admin team.”

The growth in turnover since the pandemic was attributed to the fact that escorted travel gives people “peace of mind and security”.

She said the “human touch” has helped the business to thrive since Covid, as some customers may be deterred by email or online interactions.

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Here at Footsteps Travel UK Ltd we have been arranging coach trips since 2007. We pride ourselves in giving every booking the “personal touch” however big or small, which is why we have customers returning year after year.

Need Help? 01604 717939

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Eastbourne has always been a firm-favourite holiday location with its old-fashioned sweet shops and prominent Victorian buildings

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Attracting holidaymakers since the Victorian times, Eastbourne is a bustling seaside resort that epitomises classic British holidays with its traditional seafront attractions, friendly atmosphere and picturesque vistas. Between the Bandstand & the Pier, the famous Carpet Gardens are the centrepiece of Eastbourne's Promenade with vibrant floral displays & fountains.

Monday 17th June - Friday 21st June 2024

5 days / 4 nights

Twin / Double - £499pp

Single - SOLD OUT

£50pp non-refundable deposit upon booking and balance due 6 weeks prior to departure.

- Bluebell railway (optional extra)

- Hastings & Rye

Cock Hotel - 9.15am

Sixfields - 9.30am

Should the holiday you require show no availability, please contact us:

We may be able to obtain additional rooms upon request

- Depart Northampton - Free time in Windsor

- Free Day - Optional Bluebell railway trip (additional £20pp)

- Hastings & Rye

- Travel back to Northampton

Please Note

- Our itinerary is for information purposes only and is subject to change

Best Western York House Hotel

80 well-appointed standard, executive and deluxe guest rooms, many offering panoramic sea views all with free WiFi, Flat-screen televisions with freeview and radio channels, bluetooth clock radios, hairdryers, tea & coffee making facilities and telephones. An indoor heated swimming pool and a unique open-air sun verandah with comfortable and contemporary lounges makes this one of the most popular hotels in Eastbourne. All single rooms are double for single occupancy.

https://www.yorkhousehotel.co.uk/

Price Includes:

Welcome tea/coffee on arrival

Porterage upon arrival and departure

Full cooked breakfast each morning

3 course menu, with a minimum of 3 choices per course 

Jug of water and tea & coffee each evening during dinner

Free use of heated indoor swimming pool

Footsteps goody bag per room

Footsteps Tour Manager onboard

Below is a list of pick-up points available on this tour.

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To make a booking firstly select the correct number of passengers that will be travelling. This will perform an availability check to see that there is sufficient space on the tour. If the date you want is available select the Book Now button and you will be guided through the online booking process. If your date is unavailable you can use the Call Back facility to discuss further options.

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About Our Family Travel Blog

Hello! We’re the Brittain family and this is our family travel blog site documenting our travelling and holiday adventures with our family of two adults, four kids and one dog…

We’re from Southampton, England. Mum and Dad are Andy and Bev and our four kids are Ryan who’s now 18, Alicia who’s 16, Luke’s 12 and our youngest, Emma, is 8. They’re a real spread of ages and all four of them are very different characters.

For as long as we can remember, we’ve loved travelling and holidays – it’s always been our absolute favourite thing to do. But there’s no doubt that it’s a very different experience doing so when a new baby comes along – and very different again when the second, third then fourth arrive!

What we get up to

But we’ve always tried our best to keep up with as much travelling as we possibly can – and also to spend as much time doing the same kind of stuff we might always have done even if we didn’t have them with us.

We love spending time exploring, getting away from typical tourist hot-spots, getting out in to nature and in to the ‘real’  parts of the countries we’re visiting. Spending a week sat by an all-inclusive hotel pool isn’t really our thing (though not to say we haven’t done or wouldn’t do it).

You’re more likely to find us hiking through the mountains to a remote lake or searching for hidden jungle waterfalls.

We’ve always been really keen to pass on to the children the same sense of adventure, love of the outdoors and of different places and cultures that we’ve always had and that means just getting out there and doing stuff, even when having babies, young kids or teenagers in tow might make that a bit more of a logistical challenge than it would be with just the two of us!

Why we started this family travel blog site

Wherever we’ve gone, one thing we’ve always found useful is advice, information and reviews from people who’ve been to the same places before us.

For this reason, we’ve always wanted to pass on our own experiences and advice to others who might come after us too. Andy was obsessive about writing about everything we did on TripAdvisor and was one of the top ranking TripAdvisor reviewers from our area.

So we thought we’d start this blog, so we could write about everything we do in much greater detail and hopefully provide a valuable and interesting site of information and advice for people doing their own travelling and holidaying with their kids.

Keep up to date on social media

We hope the content on our site is interesting and useful for you and helps you with your own travel and holiday planning. We’re always happy to answer questions on the places we’ve been to – you can message us on any of the social media sites and we’ll happy reply to any questions there.

And if you follow our social media profiles, you’ll be able to stay up to date with where we’ve been lately and where we’re going next – as well as benefit from our travel tips and advice we can offer from our own experiences.

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UK Footsteps

We’ll Help You Enjoy The Best Of The UK

Have the best UK vacation ever with the top places to go, things to do & places to stay in the UK! 

Our goal?  To make sure you love exploring the UK as much as us.

Hi! I’m Georgia.

I’m the chief writer for UK Footsteps. I’ve been exploring the UK all my life, and I can’t get enough. I head back whenever I can. There is so much to love in the UK from the culture to the food to the history and the countryside. It’s all amazing.

I love writing for this site so that you can have a complete guide for your UK vacation. I also want to provide you with the encouragement to go!

All the content on this site has been written from thorough research including our personal experiences. I travel in the UK as much as possible to ensure this site is up-to-date and as helpful and informative as it can be. I hope this site will help you whether you are new to UK travel or have been many times before.

Learn more about this site here.

Recent Guides…

Here at Footsteps Tours Ltd we have been arranging coach trips since 2007. We pride ourselves in giving every booking the “personal touch” however big or small, which is why we have customers returning year after year.

Need Help? 01604 717939

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1. What payment types do you accept?

We accept the following * Debit/Credit Cards * Bacs Payment * Footsteps Gift Voucher or Credit * Cash We do not accept cheques.

2. Do you have to pay in full upon booking?

All of our short breaks require a non-refundable deposit. The full amount will be quoted on the website for each trip.

3. Do coach holidays have an onboard guide?

Yes, all coach holidays have a Footsteps Travel Manager on board thoughout your holiday.

4. What are the coaches equipped with?

We use Poynters Coaches who are members of the CPT federation and meet all the safety requirements. All 53 coaches offer spacious seating, air conditioning & WC as standard.

5. Are there refreshments available on the coach?

For coach holidays we offer a hostess service offering hot drinks & bottled water for 75p each.

6. Do you offer cruise holidays?

Yes, we offer group holidays for cruising and can also offer tailor made individual bookings for most cruise lines. Please call for a quote.

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

I discovered a little-known app that made me a Spanish speaker in months

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‘Un vaso de agua por favor, sin limón’ (can I have a glass of water without lemon please) and ‘lo siento, no entiendo, soy Inglesa’ (I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I’m English) might not seem like the *most* useful Spanish phrases.

But for a long time, these two sentences were all I could speak of that language – learning them from my late grandfather, who retired to Spain in his sixties .

I wish I had picked up more Spanish over those long summer holidays. But as a child, all I cared about was turning a deeper shade of brown than my three sisters, and reading at least six Sweet Valley Highs over the span of two weeks.

For years, as someone who considers themselves linguistically challenged, the idea of becoming bilingual was almost unfathomable.

But now, after an immersive experience, I’ve found an app that has made learning genuinely useful sentences so simple that conversational Spanish feels well within reach. 

I use Fluenz on both my laptop and phone, and the app is perfect for dipping in and out of. 

So, if I’ve got 10 minutes on the Tube , I’ll do a spot of vocab work on my phone, but if I’ve got an hour or more to spare, I’ll open my laptop and get to grips with a new verb or sentence structure.

My desire to learn came after seeing so many of my bilingual friends – while travelling in Bondi, Australia – switching effortlessly between their mother tongue and English.

It made me jealous, so I decided last year at the age of 36 that I’d put excuses aside and do my level-best to learn another language.

I can’t say I was wedded to any one in particular at first.

Originally, I toyed with Italian. My partner grew up near Venice, so it seemed like an obvious choice.

But I had a better understanding of both French and German from school and friends – and having once tried to learn Korean for an ex-boyfriend, I know from experience that languages and lovers often don’t mix.

I eventually settled on French . But after reaching the 50-day, 100-day and then 150-day streak on Duolingo, I realised that while my vocabulary had improved – of course it had – I didn’t honestly feel like I was getting much better at the language for whatever reason. 

Soon after I came across Fluenz – a company that offers Spanish language immersion holidays followed by ongoing software-supported learning, boasting serious results.

Having always imagined I might one day follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and live out my twilight years on the Mediterranean, I quickly gave up the idea of French, booked a trip to Mexico City , and set about learning Spanish instead.

A fresh new take on what a holiday usually is, and quite the opposite of a ‘fly and flop’, Fluenz don’t just offer classes. 

And at £5,500, the trip wasn’t cheap, but also included in the holiday is a bougie cultural experience, dinner at a Michelin-star restaurant and an after-hours tour of the National Museum of Anthropology – perfect for anyone with a penchant for travel.

During the immersion you have four hours of lessons a day – plus the chance to practise in your down-time while enjoying seeing the sights of the city.

Perhaps more importantly, in addition to the lessons, all students are given lifetime access to Fluenz’s language learning software, which we were encouraged to use in the lead-up to the trip as well.

Foolishly, I didn’t use it in advance, but I’ve kept up my learning since getting home.

On the last day of the immersion, during the closing party, a note of caution came from one of the tutors – ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it.’

And use it I have, with the sort of fervent commitment I’ve never had for anything before in my life.

Unlike some other apps and language learning courses, Fluenz uses a method they call building blocks, which means learning a verb, such as ‘I want’ or ‘yo quiero’ and building a sentence from there. 

That means they focus on phrases that are genuinely useful when travelling, like ‘can I buy a charger?’ ‘I’m paying with a card’ or ‘I’d like to order drinks’.

I may miss the bespoke lessons and the undivided attention of the brilliant tutors, but the app has been an easily accessible way to continue my learning on the go – wherever in the world I am. The lessons are excellent.

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Divided into speaking, listening, reading and writing, there’s an incredibly large collection to choose from, and they’re all designed to help users hone their grasp of Spanish.

There are five levels to get through, with about 30 different lessons per level, each lasting around 45 minutes.

There is also an old school flash card system, which offers a great way of practising new words and phrases.

However, there’s no autocorrect here – your spelling must be perfect.

In my case, video tutorials really help me get to grips with the most difficult aspects of the language so instead of learning the direct translation of a sentence or phrase by rote, I get a deeper understanding of why sentences are structured the way they are.

There is a fair amount of repetition, which can sometimes feel frustrating, but I’ve come to accept the reality that this is the only fool-proof way of becoming fluent in another language.

There is, however, nothing quite like practising in a Spanish-speaking country.

But while I’ve got an eye on another immersive trip in Costa Rica or Colombia, I’ll keep using every feature of the app to improve my intonation, increase my vocab, and, most importantly, order that cold beer in pitch perfect Spanish.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected] .  

Share your views in the comments below.

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Conor Gallagher hails influence of Chelsea legend fuelling his Euro 2024 pursuit

The Chelsea midfielder, 24, has fond memories of watching Lampard star on both the international and Premier League stages and now hopes to follow in his decorated club and country footsteps

• 02:00, 14 May 2024
• Updated 05:03, 14 May 2024

Conor Gallagher says Frank Lampard’s legacy is fuelling his pursuit of England stardom.

The Chelsea midfielder, 24, has enjoyed an impressive season at Stamford Bridge after a productive loan spell at Crystal Palace two years ago. Those eye-catching Eagles performances earned him a maiden England call-up in November 2021 and the following year, Gallagher got a first taste of major tournament action as part of the Three Lions squad in 2022.

Gallagher has fond memories of watching Chelsea legend Lampard star on both the international and Premier League stages and now hopes to follow in his decorated 106-cap footsteps.

Gallagher, reflecting on his memories of watching the Three Lions on television as part of a new LG OLED TV collaboration ahead of this summer, said: "I remember watching England and the team with Lampard, David Beckham and Steven Gerrard when I was younger.

"Frank is a legend of Chelsea and England - he obviously got over 100 caps and a good amount of goals too. For someone to look up to, he is perfect for me.

"I don’t remember so many [details] of the games watching it back then as I was a bit younger, but now it just means the world to pull on an England shirt.

"It’s really special to represent your country and a very proud feeling for me and my family - I’m looking forward to hopefully putting the shirt on many more times.

"It’s massive to inspire the next generation - we have a fantastic squad who have achieved a lot already. I’m buzzing for this summer - it’s an honour to play for England and to be at a major tournament is incredible. Hopefully I can play my part as well.

"I just want to be part of the squad, be there and feel a part of it. We have a talented young squad with so many talented players, so it’s a really exciting time for England. I’m really looking forward to it."

Gallagher's international debut came just four months after England's agonising defeat on penalties against Italy at Wembley.

And following a searing season at Selhurst Park, he was rewarded with a string of international appearances throughout 2021 and 2022.

Gallagher reckons recent major tournament heartbreak in 2022, in Russia and on home London soil will benefit England in Germany as they battle it out with the continent's best once more.

He added: "We've not won the trophies we think we can despite coming close a few times, so hopefully the next step is winning a trophy. I reckon previous experiences will help us a lot this summer - just having that experience, playing in big games against top countries in tournament football.

"I think it will help us in upcoming matches and we’re all really excited about.”

The England men's team caught up with LG at St George's Park recently as part of the leading TV manufacture’s ongoing partnership with The FA. From 13 May until 11 June this summer, football fans seeking the most immersive footballing experience from home can save up to 20% on all LG TVs and 50% off soundbars when bought with a LG TV. Visit LG.com/UK/TheFA

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Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk are set to lock horns in a huge bout on May 18 with each fighter attempting to etch their name in boxing history as the first undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999. The stakes couldn't be higher as the pair will go head to head for the prestigious WBC, WBA, WBO, and IBF titles.

MORE ON Premier League The FA Steven Gerrard Frank Lampard David Beckham England football team Chelsea FC