Talking Travel – Tour Guide

Hello and welcome to Talking Travel, your weekly women's radio station show for travel news, fascinating guests and answers to all your burning travel questions with myself, Kay. Now on today's program, we're going to be talking about tour guides and what makes a great guided tour. When I think of all the trips I've taken and I'm sure it's the same for you, when you're what's really been the highlight isn't necessarily the hotel or the food or the blockbuster sites. It's been a fantastic guide. But what actually makes a premier quality of a tour? It could be people taking time to explain a complicated historical event, answer the questions you've already asked multiple times. Or it could be they walk slow so you can keep up with them. But a guide needs to be comfortable, to take things slowly, talk through things, and to do so with a smile. So in today's show, I'm going to enlist the help of Steph, a London tour guide, and she can reveal exactly what goes into a great guided tour. But before we get Steph on the phone, let's play a song. Let's have Sharon Jones with this Land Is yous Land. This land is your land this land is my land. From California well to the New York island From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters I tell ya this land was made for you and me Me As I went walking down that ribbon of the highway I saw the le on that endless skyway now I saw below me that golden valley and I said this land was made for you and me As I was walking now they tried to stop me they put up a sign and said oh it said private property. Well on the backside you know it said nothing so it must be that side was made for you and me. One bright sunny morning well in the shadow of the steeple down by the way. I saw my people for you know not day stood hungry I stood wondering I was wondering if this land was made for you and me this land is your land this man is my land From Riverside, California up to state and I live well on down to Gusta, Georgia Ah, don't forget to say Philadelphia. Ah we moved on down to Mississippi, Houston, Texas, la Yay. You know this land is your land this land is my land long this land is your land oh, you got to believe that oh, it's my land. Welcome back to Talking Travel. And we're joined now by Steph Kuipers, a freelance London tour guide. So if you've ever wondered what it's like to be a Tour guide. Then Steph is going to enlighten us. Welcome, Steph. Thanks for joining us. Hi, Kay. Hi, Natalie. Nice to be there with you guys. Great, thank you. So we just kick things off. I wondered how long you've actually been a tour guide. Oh, gosh, I think I can. Yes. That's eight years now. Eight years and counting. Eight years, wow. So fair amount of time. And how. How and why did you start leading tours? Well, so I. I came to London and I was a little bit like, oh, what, what do I want to do? I knew I always wanted to be a writer, but of course, in between, I wanted to. To have a job that, you know, was taking me away from, from the inside. So I wanted to be outdoors, I wanted to work with people. And then a friend of mine who's a tour guide told me, well, come on one of my tours. And I watched him do it and I thought, oh, this isn't so hard. You know, I can do this. You tell a couple of jokes, you make friends with people. It's great. You get to chat a bit about history, which I love. Brilliant. And you're outside, I guess, as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very important. So I know, looking at your website, you've run a wide breadth of tours. Do you have a particular favorite tour to lead, and if so, why? Well, as a freelance tour guide, I sort of work for a lot of different companies that offer, like, a wide variety of tours. And, you know, I lead my own as well. I think the favorite that I do for companies is I do a Harry Potter tour, which is quite fun, which, you know, is always good for both kids and adults, and everybody's always enjoying themselves. And I get to chat about Harry Potter, which is great. Historically. Yeah, historically, I would say the old city of London is my favorite tour. So we get to walk around, you know, like where the old Roman London was, where the old city walls used to be. We get to really get to grips with the history of London as a city and how it's grown and evolved over the last decades and centuries. So that's one of my favourite, favorite tours. So quite a meaty tour, then. I guess that. Yes, absolutely. A lot of information. Yeah. Well, speaking of information, as a tour guide, how do you actually do your research and put it all together? Well, you know, I'm lucky. I love to read because books are really the main thing that we focus on. I do sort of. I have done a lot of tours, not just in London, but in other countries. So that works for logistics and the setup of a tour that works really well, but most of it is research, is walking around the area, especially when you're creating a new tour. It's walking around the area, seeing what connects, seeing how the themes of the tour that you want to write, you know, work well, and sort of making it follow because it's not just enough to string together a bunch of facts, you have to make it entertaining for the people who are going to be walking around with you. So, yeah, lots of books. I suppose, after all, they are on a holiday and not a history lesson in that sense. No, exactly. Exactly. So that's why I've got some friends who are wonderful historians but probably wouldn't be great tour guides because, you know, they've either got a niche subject or, you know, they're. They're great at imbuing the information, but not so much at, you know, transferring it to sort of the. The everyday traveler, you know. Absolutely. And now you mentioned you do tours all around the world, but particularly in London. Do you feel. Is there a particular story about London? But actually, before that, maybe I'll ask you. There's a song that you like to play to get you in the mood to do a tour. Okay. Well, I like. I like a lot of sort of upbeat songs, especially when you're about to go and you walk around the city. Recently, a song that I've been listening to a lot is actually a classic by hall and Oates and it's called you, you, Make My Dreams, which I really like. I think it's a really cheerful song. It starts off great and you really. Yeah, it's really bouncy. So I really like listening to it when I'm on my way to one of my tours. Great, Jim. Well, let's have a listen to that. And in the meantime, listeners, if you have any questions for talking, travel and stuff, please email presenterswimmynsradiostation.com or tweet us womensradiostation back. 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Welcome. You make my dream come true. Wow, wow, wow. You. You make my dreams come true. Listen to this. I'm down on my day Dream on that sleep should be over by now. I know. Yeah you making my dreams come true. Oh yeah I'm waiting for waiting for you girl. Oh yeah. You make my dream come true. You. What a tune that was Paul and Oates with you Make My Dreams. How uplifting. Welcome back to Talking Travel on Women's radio station, where today we're speaking to Steph Kuipers, a freelance London tour guide. So welcome back, Steph, as we were mentioning there before, your fantastic choice of song. Very, very, very. I've got my. We all had our toes tapping here in the studio. Yeah, it's a great one, isn't it? It's a good one for sort of getting ready for things. Absolutely. So I can see why you listen to that before a tour. But we were mentioning about London is There a particular story about London that goes down well on your tours? Well, I mean, it's, it's a sort of classic, very, very well known. But the, the Nelson In a Barrel of Rum always does well in Trafalgar Square. It's, it's one that a lot of people know and, and it always, it always gets a laugh, you know, like having a stiff drink, relating, of course, to Nelson's being stuffed in a barrel of rum. But I think one of my favorite, favorite stories was, you know, I really, I really like the story of Boudicca, of, you know, the Romans. Sort of. Obviously we, we owe a lot to the Romans. London as a city, Londinium, you know, that's the old Roman name. But I do love the fact that initially when the Romans were like, yes, we're going to take over, you know, all of this area, that Boudicca and her Iceni tribe were like, no, you're not. And they actually waged a full scale war against the Romans. They actually won quite a lot of ground and sacked all of Colchester and a good part of London as well, before the Romans had to send reinforcements from Rome to subdue this, you know, warrior woman. And she was really, she was a real, I think, inspiration. I think we can learn a lot from somebody who, who doesn't take, who doesn't take, you know, anything lying down. So, yeah, great attitude. Now we have a statue of her, actually. There's not a lot of statues of women, unfortunately, in London, but we do have a statue of her near Westminster Bridge where she's on her chariot looking very, very fierce. Natalie's nodding. She has seen it. I haven't seen it. It's beautiful. It's well worth walking past and sort of raising your fist and being like, yeah, okay, on my, on my bucket list. But on your tour, Steph, what questions do you get asked the most by, by your customers? So I do get, funnily enough. What kind of tree is this? Seems to be a general tourist question across the world, not just in London. But I do get bits about the royal family. Of course, they're very popular with travelers. Right. Especially right now. Yeah, especially right now, indeed. And then of course, like, you know, just historic ones. And I quite like it when people ask, you know, when they have a mix of things, when they mix history with sort of pop culture, which, you know, there's a lot of in London as well, you know, a lot of film locations, but also, you know, how things connect in London. And certainly about the older, you know, royal History, which I quite like. And sometimes about the rebellions in the city of London, you know, Wat Tyler and all those, all those things that I like to talk about. So if you get sort of an intrepid traveler who's been to London a few times, then that's really great because they've sort of. They like to get into the nitty gritty of things. Okay. And you were talking about intrepid travellers who visited London maybe several times. If you do get one of those travelers, what areas of London would you then advise them to explore? So, well, of course, looking at London with, with fresh eyes is always great. So going into the old city and actually, you know, I don't know, a lot of people who have heard or seen of Guildhall, you know, when they go and see it, they're always a bit like, oh, wow, this is right here in the middle of London, the old Guildhall building, which is beautiful. You know, if they've been to London a few times, I do recommend going outside, you know, so basically going down to Greenwich or up to Camden or perhaps even to the Hampstead Heath area and just having a look of what the little, the different boroughs, because that's the beauty about London, I think you can, you can travel, you know, half an hour in each direction and you get a completely different feel city. But they're all London, you know. Yes, absolutely. Good, good tips, good tips. And what's your personal favorite place to go in London, Steph? Oh, okay, so my favorite, which is becoming less and less of a secret, but back in the day when I started touring, I mean, even though Borough Market's been, you know, very much a publicized. Absolutely. Borough Market is one of my number one places to go. I do love the south bank in general. It's one of my favorite sort of stretches of Thames to walk and wander. But Borough Market, sampling all the free food, I'm a bit of a foodie, so. Yeah, absolutely. Any, any new sort of food market that pops up, that's where I am. That's where you are, yeah. Good. Good choice. And would you say, what would. What has been the most unusual request from one of your tours? Oh, some people, some people, like, legitimately, like, ask, like, you know, the best way to visit the Queen and everything like that. I'm a bit like, well, you know, it's not, it's not like I have her on my phone or anything. You know, we don't, we don't like, have tea every other week, but, but there's a, you know, I think sometimes because it's such a sort of mythical almost figure, especially from people who don't have a monarchy in their country. You know, it does sometimes, like, they're like, oh, well, can we. Can we meet her? And I'm like, no, no, not going to happen. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, she is quite busy, you know. I know. Oh, how funny. How funny. Now, we were talking off air a little earlier, Natalie, the producer and I, about. About what makes a good tour guide. We could pick out tours we've been on that have really stood out and been absolutely fantastic and others that, you know, are just forgettable, but we couldn't quite work out why. But what would you say, as a tour guide, makes a fantastic tour guide? So I think. I think there's a couple of things I think you have to be. You have to engage with your audience, and I think that's so important to engage with the travelers, because if you're just reciting a script that you've learned, you're going to lose them. They will know, you know, and I think you have to. So the best thing is to have almost too much information. So you can pick and choose depending on the mood of the group. If you've got a group that's more like, oh, we want to know more about, you know, the history, or we want to know about more of the details of this that you can immediately slot that in. So you definitely have to be able to engage with your group. And I think my other thing would be, you've got to be great at improvisation because as a tour guide, and I think many, many tour guides would agree with me, you. You don't know what's going to happen. You know, there might be a protest march that you didn't know about, or there might be a marathon happening, and your usual route will be, you know, closed, closed off. So you've got to be quite calm, I suppose, as well. It's like a little bit like being a cabbie and knowing the knowledge, as they call it, about with how, you know, how you get around these things and being able to tell your group and making it, you know, not like, oh, gosh, this has happened, but being like, hey, guys, little bit of a detour. It'll be an adventure. Come, let's go left here instead of right. But, you know, who knows what will happen? But still being in control. I'd imagine that would make it humorous, actually. Something you probably remember. Yeah, I think it's good. I think sometimes when that happens, that's when you get the most interesting tools and people generally are really, really happy to go along with you if you're a good tour guide and you've built up that trust within the first, you know, 10 minutes, they'll, they'll follow you anywhere. So who knows where you may lead them? Aha. And what do you do then, Steph, when you're not leading tours? So I'm, I'm, I want to be a writer. I'm working on my first young adult novel and being a writer is always really handy when, when I'm writing new tours as well, so. So, yeah, that's. Writing is really a big passion of mine. Okay. And a final question for you today, Steph. What do you enjoy most about being a tour guide in London? Well, I suppose I think it's that looking at London with fresh eyes. For example, recently I, for International Women's Day and with the coinciding with the sort of reveal of the statue in Parliament Square of Millicent Fawcett and the hundred years since some women were given a vot in the uk, me and a friend of mine, we wrote a women's tour. And like I mentioned earlier, there's not a lot of statues of women in London. So it was really quite interesting to look at which statues there are and why of those women and why those women were represented in London history. And it really made me look at London in a different way. And it was so, so interesting to read about all the different stories of the women in London and who had shaped its history. So that to me is, is why I am still a tour guide after eight years. Because something like this comes along and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a London that, that was undiscovered to me, which I now get to discover again. So always learning and discovering. Yeah. And looking at London in different ways and continually being surprised by London, even though you know it really well. Absolutely. And any tours coming up that our listeners might be able to join or. Well, we're hoping to roll this women's tour out on a sort of semi regular basis and hoping to, because when we did it for International Women's Day, we got a really great response. We had a huge mix of women and men and people from all walks of life come onto it. And of course, now at the time, the statue of Millicent Fawcett hadn't been unveiled yet, but it has now. So now it'll be an even better place to stop and sort of finish the tour and sort of celebrate the women of London. So we're hoping to roll that out later on. Well, fantastic. Do keep Women's Radio Station updated with details of the tour. We can share it, of course, on our website and social channels and get the word out there. It's a fantastic thing. Absolutely. So a massive thank you for joining us. It's been great to talk to you and find out a little bit more about the tour guiding world. Yeah, well, thank you for having me. So you've been listening to Talking Travel on Women's Radio Station. If you wanted to listen again or catch up on our previous programs, you can head to the presenters page on womensradiostation.com thank you all for listening and we'll see you again next week. Bye. Women's Radio Station will give a voice to your brand. Advertise your product, services or goods on air with a package tailored to suit you. 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