Private tours of England

Yes, they sit next door to one another, which is why they are so often visited together. A day usually means a morning among the Oxford colleges and an afternoon working through a handful of honey-coloured villages, or the reverse if you would rather see Oxford quietly. Our Oxford and Cotswolds day tour follows that shape and can be weighted either way.

The dockyard holds several ships and museums on one site, including HMS Victory and the Mary Rose, so a day there is really several visits in one. It is a good choice for anyone with an interest in naval history, and it works well from London or from a cruise call. Our Portsmouth Historic Dockyard tour covers the journey and the day itself.

Brighton packs a great deal into a small space: the Royal Pavilion with its Indian domes, the tangle of little shops in the Lanes, the seafront and the pier, and the beach itself, which is pebbles rather than sand. It is our home town, which helps. Our walking tour of Brighton takes in the parts most visitors walk straight past. The coastline either side of it is worth a day in its own right, and our guide to the most scenic coastal places in southern England runs through the stretches we like best.

If you only have one day, Stonehenge paired with Bath is hard to beat: a prehistoric monument and a Roman and Georgian city in a single run west. If royal history is more your thing, Windsor Castle with Hampton Court makes the better day. For a first visit with something rarer in it, the Stonehenge inner circle and Roman Baths tour adds access most visitors never get.