A year in the life of a tour leader - April, May & June

When Life Doesn't Wait for the Season to End

Home. That’s where I am, and where I have been for a while, now. Fifteen days exactly. At least that's what the calendar says, and calendars are wonderfully objective things. In the middle of the tourist season, though, fifteen days feels suspiciously long. Long enough for the house to become reasonably clean again. Long enough to reduce the administrative Everest occupying my office into a respectable hill. Long enough to remember where the good coffee mugs are kept and to rediscover that my husband does, in fact, still live with me.

Outside, the continent is slowly roasting under another heatwave. Inside, I am enjoying the miracle of decent insulation, with a coffee that has gone cold on the desk, right next to a tea that has gone stone cold as well. I am also something I haven't had in months: enough headspace to think about something other than tonight and tomorrow.

Two days ago, I opened this blog intending to write the next chapter of this little series, only to discover that the last entry dated back to March. Which, in itself, tells you everything you need to know about April, May and June. I didn't stop writing because I had nothing to say. I stopped because there was no headspace left for anything but the next few hours. Two days ago, I opened my calendar to backtrack from April to the end of June and started taking notes about this post: what I did, what I learnt, the mistakes I made, the lessons I learnt. This post has been the hardest one to write in this series so far, because it contains a lot of emotions and a lesson that has been learnt the hard way. 

One post, three months, ninety-one days, sixty-six of them spent away from home, one birthday, one wedding, a funeral, and enough miles to qualify as a migratory bird.

April - The Comfort of Knowing Too Much

April started with one of those tours you could almost lead in your sleep. I knew every supplier by first name. I knew exactly which joke each one would make before they made it, which passengers would ask where the toilets were before we'd even stopped, and every menu well enough to fill in for every waiter along the way.

There is a strange danger in knowing an itinerary too well. Passengers love it because everything feels effortless. Tour leaders secretly fear it. We are curious creatures by nature. We thrive on learning. We enjoy solving problems more than we'd probably like to admit. We spend winters filling notebooks with new stories because, deep down, we know that if we stop discovering, we eventually stop transmitting genuine enthusiasm. You can only tell the same story so many times before you sound like an old teacher who is not thinking about what they are saying anymore, like an old broken record, really.

Comfort in repetition on tour resembles those old pyjamas you refuse to throw away. Wonderfully warm and cosy. But not exactly sexy.

I knew then that I had been leading this tour too many times. I really appreciate everyone along the way, all our suppliers, but the lack of novelty had been killing me for quite a few months already on that particular itinerary. If I am honest, I could feel back then that that tour felt like a goodbye. Not an “Adieu”, but a “it’s not you, it’s me, I need a break, we need to see other people”. Which is the decision I made a month later, that’s probably the time a decision needs to sink in.

Thankfully, April had more thrilling plans in store. When that tour ended, I went home for my only 2 days off and at home in April. Take the dog to the vet’s, unpack, wash, re-pack in two different bags, for two completely different back to back adventures, deal with the most urgent admin, before you are in trouble. Leave. This is what a two-day break looks like for tour leaders during the season. 

My husband, our dog and I escaped to the Cotswolds. Between two tours, my husband, our dog and I escaped to the Cotswolds. Officially, it was a recce for future walking tours. Unofficially, it was a few precious days of remembering what life feels like when nobody is asking you where to meet after lunch. I even did something rather radical. I switched my phone off. Not silent.

OFF

No suppliers wondering whether next Tuesday's group preferred sparkling or still water. No office asking whether I happened to know a restaurant near a cathedral seven hundred kilometres away. No "quick questions" requiring forty-five minutes of unpaid work. The world, rather annoyingly, carried on perfectly well without me. I should probably remember that more often.

At the end of this hike, we met with family to celebrate a birthday, and it was… Well, like anytime with extended family. Some great times, and some family members you are ignoring in an effort to keep peace and enjoy your time with your loved ones.

From this celebration, I repacked my suitcase, left half of it with my husband and flew straight to the start of my following tour. A brand new tour, finally! A brand new tour could mean endless hours of preparation, and that is the reason why so many tour leaders hate going on brand new tours. But there is another way… 

People imagine guiding as a solitary career. It does not have to be. Behind every successful tour I lead is an invisible network of colleagues quietly helping one another. We exchange itineraries, compare notes, recommend suppliers, warn each other about roadworks, suggest museums, share contacts and occasionally rescue each other from ideas dreamt up in offices by people who have apparently never looked at a map.

There are guides who collect information like dragons sitting on mountains of gold. But I have been extraordinarily lucky to find like minded colleagues who will share everything they have, the way I do it too.

April also took me back to places where I had lived many years ago, during another chapter of my life, with another person. I hadn't realised how apprehensive I was about returning until I found myself walking those familiar streets again. Funny thing, memory. It edits without asking permission. The sadness had quietly dissolved somewhere over the years, leaving only the beauty of the places themselves. It felt less like reopening an old wound than visiting an old friend. 

Talking about an old friend, I found one of mine on this itinerary. The simplest joy of a tour leader - to realise out of the blue that one of your friends will be in the same place, at the same time, and find familiarity, support, good company and laughs on the itinerary. Priceless. 

May — The Weight of Judgement

If April gently eased me back into the season, May simply threw me into it. One of my passengers, Helen, arrived visibly struggling. She could barely walk a few metres without stopping to catch her breath. Within minutes I knew that I was going to have to make one of those decisions nobody wants to make. The office left it in my hands. Tell headquarters immediately and she would certainly be sent home. Talk to her first and perhaps there might be another way.

She knew exactly why I had come.

"I'm not going home," she said.

After a long conversation, Helen promised that if she stayed, she would remain independent and would never allow the group to become responsible for her. It sounded reasonable. Like the humane decision to make. It was a compassionate decision. It also turned out to be the wrong decision.

As the days passed she became increasingly dependent on other travellers, many of whom were retired nurses and found themselves unable to refuse helping. And that’s when it started to happen… The aggressive snaps, the forgetfulness. I am not a doctor, but as a tour leader, you start being able to detect early signs of dementia more efficiently than a sniffer dog at the airport can detect foie gras in your luggage. Although this time, I was never quite sure whether it was dementia or being manipulative. 

So why do I regret letting her stay along? Maybe. Because despite all my efforts and help, despite the whole group’s help, Helen was never particularly thankful. She just thought it was normal. Well, this is another lesson learned.

May also brought one of the happiest moments of my professional life.

After months of preparation, doubts, paperwork and the sort of administrative gymnastics only French bureaucracy can inspire, my own company started to really take off. There are few feelings quite like watching an idea leave your notebook and become reality. Calling suppliers I respect and saying, "I'd like to work with you, but my way." Knowing they'll be treated fairly. Paid properly. Respected. That shouldn't feel revolutionary, yet, in tourism, it mostly does.

Towards the end of the month, I found myself on another tour with one of the best drivers I've ever worked with. We barely need words anymore. We anticipate each other instinctively, solving problems before passengers even realise they exist. The group itself was a reminder that the world travels with us. Two Russian travellers. Two Ukrainian travellers. Sixteen other people. One coach. Eight days.

Outside, the news grew darker every evening. Inside the coach, people shared biscuits, stories and photographs of grandchildren, trying to leave conflict at the door. Human beings, it turns out, are often considerably better than politicians.

June — When Life Catches Up

In May, I had to manage the whole of June. Why? Because June was full of my own tours, most of them led for the first time. So I was managing bookings, schedules, and trying to lead tours at the same time. I had June planned down to the millimeter: days scheduled between tours, recce, admin, a wedding, recce, tour. At least that was the plan. 

Reality looked at my beautiful planning, laughed, and decided it was time to throw it all up in the air.

The tour was ending. I was sitting in my hotel room finishing paperwork before heading home. Two passengers still needed saying goodbye. Half an hour separated me from the end of another successful trip.

Then my youngest sister called. She never calls. We exchange messages. Photos of our dogs. Family gossip. Silly videos. But she never calls. Before answering, my stomach already knew what my mind refused to imagine. I saw my watch, made a mental note.

I had 25 minutes to deal with whatever this was. 

She asked if I knew where my husband was. I said “home”. She asked if I could call him. For a brief moment I thought something terrible had happened to him. But I quickly realised that there was no way for her to know if anything had happened to him. She was trying to get someone next to me before breaking the news. 

“Just tell me what’s wrong.”

"Dad is gone."

My world came to a stand still. Silence. For the first time ever, my brain was quiet, empty. Something extremely unusual happened. I did not know what to do. What to say. I was lost, really lost. Just a few seconds, I imagine. Before it all started to rush back in.

“Where are you? Are you alone? Who already knows? Who needs to know right now?”

She was safe, with someone. We shared the load of calling the rest of our siblings, and my father’s oldest brother. This will have to do for now. I never even asked what had happened.

10:25am. I had to pull myself together enough to go and finish the job. Thankfully the last two passengers were more self-focused than caring and they never even saw my swollen eyes, never even noticed the change in tone and attitude. I said goodbye, they left. 

Within the hour, my colleagues had started reorganising their own schedules to cover the tours I could no longer lead.

"I've got yours."

"I'll take next week."

"Don't worry, take care of yourself and your family."

No hesitation. No discussion. Just people quietly carrying one another. We often speak about tourism as a competitive industry. We forget we can choose to create it as a family.

The days that followed were nothing like the ones I'd planned. Instead of scouting new itineraries in a relaxed way, I found myself organising funerals. Instead of researching museums, I was dealing with police reports, insurance companies and banks. Instead of resting between tours, I was learning brand-new itineraries late into the night because life, rather inconsiderately, continues even when yours has stopped entirely.

There is a particular cruelty in this profession that I don't think many people see. We spend our lives looking after other people's families and parents. We remind them to drink water, to wear hats, we care for them, make them laugh, get to know them, and share extraordinary moments with them. We become temporary daughters and granddaughters to hundreds of people every year. Meanwhile, our own family members go about their life and face their struggles while we're somewhere else, creating memories for strangers.

It is the unspoken bargain of this job. Most of the time, we don't think about it.

Until one day, we have to.

Somehow, in the middle of grief, life still insisted on happening.

We celebrated my sister's wedding. I smiled when I needed to smile. I led tours I had never led before. I learned routes at night. I answered passengers' questions by day. I hid in hotel rooms to make phone calls to the police, insurers, my father’s former clients, between dinner and breakfast.

And, somehow, everything happened anyway. Not gracefully. Not elegantly. Simply because there wasn't another option.

What These Three Months Taught Me

April reminded me that curiosity is not a luxury in this profession. It is what keeps us alive.

May reminded me that leadership is rarely about finding the perfect decision. More often, it is about carrying the weight of imperfect ones and learning from them.

June reminded me that life will not wait for my tour to be over.

I have spent years believing that my greatest responsibility was towards the people travelling with me. Perhaps it still is. But these months quietly rearranged something inside me. There will always be another itinerary to perfect. Another season to prepare. Another traveller waiting at an airport somewhere. There will not always be another coffee with dad.

I still love this profession with all my heart. If anything, these months reminded me why I chose it in the first place. It has allowed me to live a thousand lives, meet extraordinary people and witness the very best of humanity more often than I ever imagined possible. But it has also taught me something I intend not to forget.

The road will always be there. The people we love won't.

And if travelling has taught me anything over all these years, it is that the most important journey we ever make is not always the one that takes us furthest away. Sometimes, it is simply the one that brings us home.