Trials of a Tour Leader

Armchair travellers can follow the adventures of seasoned Tour Manager, John Howes, as he leads readers through many surprises in more than two dozen countries. There's certainly more to a holiday trip than appears in the brochure.

For almost 20 years John Howes jas been a professional freelance Tour Manager, leading groups by coarch, train and air to place across Europe from Ireland to Russia, Scandinavia down to Switserland, Canada, America and China for a variety of national tour companies. He is also a sought-after lecturer delivering illustrated talks based on his foreign tours. He had spent the whole of his earlier career with British Rail - 30 years of which were as a journailst, press assistant, sub-editor, assistant editor and editor of a number of the industry's national publications. As a railwayman he became fully familiar with train travel abroad which helped him to build up a wide geographical and historical knowledge which he was able to use in his writings. John introduced and marketed an annual series of Getaway Tours for rail staff and their families, arranging special visits, travelling by train to popular European venues in spring and summer and to ski resorts in winter. Opportunity came towards the end of John's rail career to take early retirement; he did so - and immediately stepped into a new beginning: the world of travel, being engaged by national holiday companies as Tour Manager. The experience over the years has provided an abundance of adventures - amusing, exciting, fraught, memorable - recounted in Trials of a Tour Leader. All the stories are true, only the names have been changed.