Advantages: Friendly, helpful, stress free
Disadvantages: On a coach for a long time

.... Last year we went on a camping trip to Biarritz in France with one of those companies that has tents there. This is a self-drive, self catering holiday, so you have to add in food, petrol, and motorway tolls on top of the holiday price. This easily topped £1300 and this was at low season!! Which brings me on to Shearings coach holidays. Shearings offer either half or full board so that takes care of most of the food. They also look after petrol (well OK, diesel in the case of their coaches!) and the road tolls. All we had to worry about was the bar bill and sun cream. In all, for me, the missus, and a 6 year old lad, it cost us £850 half board for 7 nights in resort and 3 days travel. Straightaway, we saw the value for money inherent in this type of trip. And of course, that led us to booking it (we've been back 4 days at the time... Read review

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Advantages: Lots of holidays on offer, can get some real bargains!
Disadvantages: If you don't like sitting for long periods....it isn't for you!

...Let me start by saying that I LOVE coach holidays!! I first travelled with Shearings (they've now merged with Wallace Arnold) with my parents when I was 13. We went to Lido Di Jesolo in Italy. I'm now 36 and have been to Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Poland with Shearings (in 3 weeks I'm off to Belgium with them) and I've been to France and Austria with rival coach companies. There's a huge range of destinations, but I'll put them into 2 simple categories. 1) Overnight Express: you stay on the coach overnight (and try to sleep) This means the holiday will be considerably cheaper and you arrive at your resort considerably earlier. 2) No overnight travel: You stay in hotels en route which means the holidays will be more expensive but easier for those of you who shudder at the thought of trying to sleep on a moving vehicle! POSITIVES... Read review

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Advantages: Fewer delays than trains
Disadvantages: Not as comfortable as trains, especially for travel sickness!

...I live in London and have friends and family in Wales so travel a lot by different ways. The train is slightly faster when all goes according to plan, but in general I have preferred to go by coach to certain destinations. Unless you are going to a big city with a direct line from your departure point, often coaches can be both quicker and more convenient. For example, to go from London to Chepstow is much easier by coach than by train, as you have to change twice and wait half an hour to get your connection. Given the large number of delays on trains journeys can be quite stressful. Another advantage of coach travel is that a set amount of tickets are sold, according to the number of seats available. Trains, especially those from London, will keep selling tickets and people will continue to board trains, standing in aisles... Read review

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Advantages: new experiences, meeting new people, seeing new places
Disadvantages: working out where to go

...Q: How many times a year do you travel? At least 6 times a year- but this can be for a weekend, a week or a fortnight, depending on where I go. Q: For how long do you go away? Usually at least a week, but I enjoy short trips, such as a weekend and day trips. Q: Do you stay in your home country or do you go abroad? I mainly stay in my home country (England) but I do enjoy going abroad but can only afford to do so biannually. Q: Do you organize your holidays yourself or do you go to a travel agency? I usually use a travel agency for longer trips and organize day trips myself. I am a member of English Heritage so visit their properties on day trips and on longer trips, wherever possible. My local coach company gets a lot of business from me, as I book day trips, weekends and week long trips with them to various... Read review

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Advantages: Wide Holiday Choice
Disadvantages: Only West Country branches

...ago, and another to the Welsh Canal in the Brecon Beacons, last year. Also, we wanted to book a Coach Tour from the Bakers Dolphin Brochure.(A weekend trip last September and an 8 day trip this April 20th). As Bakers Dolphin is a rival Travel Agency (based in Weston Super Mare, I think),LET’S GO do not stock these brochures, but they did not refuse. The Travel Consultant got on the phone, and sorted it out for us. Why did we not go to the Bakers Dolphin branch, you ask. Well, my youngest daughter is a Travel Consultant at LET’S GO, so who better to give the commission to! But I would not recommend booking a Bakers Dolphin trip again, as both were cancelled 4 weeks before departure! Now we have to wait until May for our trip to Lake Garda, which should have been this week. We have already booked our September holiday with LET... Read review

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Advantages: Independent, Specialist, Tailor-made travel
Disadvantages: Expensive!

...with the other Iceland brochures I looked at (after all, if they were vastly more expensive, I wouldn’t have chosen them in the first place). Let me give you an idea of what they charge (and I really hope you are sitting down at this point). For the “budget weekender” - 2 nights in Reykjavik with a half-day tour included- in peak season you would be paying between £407 and £545 per person, depending on your hotel. (I suspect you could get a week on a Costa for that!). So not cheap, then. But worth it? Well, I thought it was. I liked the flexibility of being able to have exactly what I wanted out of the holiday, I liked the feeling of independent travel (with a safety net) and I liked that I wasn’t herded onto an overheated coach by the same bored travel rep day after day as I was on so many of my previous holidays. And do I recommend Yes... Read review

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Advantages: A good, relatively cheap way to visit Europe
Disadvantages: Long coach journeys during the day

...My wife and I have used Consort Travel twice now, once to Switzerland in 2003 and to Austria this year - Christmas in fact. Each time my wife and I have used them we have been impressed with their prices, their coaches and drivers, the itinanary of our choice of holiday and the hotels we have stayed in. We liked the fact that there are local pick up points. Having said that our local pick up point was Reading Services. it would be nice to make the town we live in a pick up point since the coach drives right past it... The only downer on the holidays we have taken with Consort is the long coach journeys during the day. This is obviously not their fault. When you choose to go on a coaching holiday, then you have to accept the long journey ahead of you. At the end of the day, It's is a good way to see Europe and one which I would... Read review

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Advantages: Most Helpful
Disadvantages: Cant hurry time LOL

...to our needs. Pam my friend that will be travelling with me has been abroad several times in her life and says she has never known a travel agent as pleasant as what Travel Choice have been whilst booking this trip I certainly will be booking with them again any future trips that I decide to book. Not only do they do holidays they will except bookings for National Express coaches too,, also ferry crossings and other travel essentials.. This makes Travel Care a very useful shop to have in our locale in our local town. For anyone within easy reach of Chorley if you are planning a holiday or need to make travel arrangments then give Travel Choice a try, I am sure you will not be dissapointed. Their address is: Travel Choice 17 Market Walk Chorley PR7 1DE... Read review

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Advantages: Some like to follow good advice.
Disadvantages: Some don´t.

...´s not enough to have travelled through a city and looked out of the window of a coach, more dead than alive because of a hangover and taken in the info of the guide with only half an ear. When you come back home and simply write down what you remember without doing any research on the net, your op isn´t worth much. Does it matter where you put a castle or a museum, does it matter what a memorial is called, how many zoos a city has? Yes, it does. It´s not cool to write, ´Sorry, don´t recall the name at the mo´ and can´t be arsed to look it up.´ Of course it can happen that a mistake slips in, what then? If an attentive reader finds it and points it out, the writer can write ´Thank you´ and correct it as indeed some writers do. I can´t understand an insolent reaction of the kind, ´Who are you to tell me what is right and what is wrong? Look... Read review

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Advantages: Fairly cheap
Disadvantages: Very cramped, poor in-flight entertainment

...For one who has travelled throughout Europe by coach, including a 26 hour journey to former Yugoslavia, I was expecting my four and a half hour flight to Tenerife to be much more comfortable journey. How wrong I was! The tickets were booked by my partner's parents, so although I am not aware of the exact price that was paid for the tickets I know that they were fairly cheap in comparison to other airlines, although still more expensive than budget airline competitors such as EasyJet. However, the journey was certainly not cheerful! The seats were extremely cramped, with even less leg room than on most coaches that I had travelled on. The air conditioning system was poor, so I spent most of the journey trying to fan myself down with the in-flight brochure whilst trying to avoid hitting the person sitting next to me (or should I say... Read review

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