Close to Home:  ‘I want them to feel like visitors, not tourists’

Published in the Spokesman Review

Lindsey is a travel agent with Travel Management, Inc.  She’s from Oxford and is as English as tea and crumpets.  When she lived in Oxford, she arranged for foreign students to study at the prestigious university there.

Now she lives in Coeur d’Alene.  Last year, she asked North Idaho College’s alumni association if teachers might like to visit Oxford.  The idea evolved into a garden tour off England’s trampled tourist path.

“I wanted to show people the parts of England no one knows about,” she says.  “I want them to feel like visitors, not tourists.”

Lindsey took 30 travelers to London, then south to the sea and the Isle of Wright.  They inhaled the heady mix of fragrances at the world-renowned Chelsea Flower Show and tested an imposing hedge labyrinth at the 10^th century Leeds Castle in Kent.

But their finest moments came at Rotherfield Park, the private estate of Sir James and Lady Scott.  The Scotts invited the group into their grand 16^th century home for tea, then took them on a tour of the carefully landscaped grounds.

“We could easily have been in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Sense and Sensibility’ “ says traveler April Muhs.  The Scott estate was used in the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

“I though how fun it would be to have gardens like that and be the one in charge:  George, I need you to prune the potatoes,’ “ she says, with a royal wave of her arm.

Motivation supplanted weariness as the group returned home.  Betty Schmehl immediately pruned her lilacs and built a scalloped fence from the shoots, just as she’d seen in England.  Erna Rhinehart trimmed her bamboo and April pulled out her watercolors.

The tour netted the alumni association $2500 for scholarships and even left Lindsey glowing.

“I loved seeing my country from their perspective,” she says.  She’s already planning next year’s tour to France.  “Everyone said it was great, and that was nice.”

 Submitted by TMI President, Rhonda Sand