We
are pleased to announce our latest holiday package, the English
Ancestral Adventure. This vacation brings North American tourists
from Virginia to Kent to discover more about their ancestral roots.
We have partnered with the award winning The
Black Horse Inn, at Thurnham, near Maidstone and are using
the Jamestown 2007 initiative as a hook for the Ancestral Adventure
holiday package, enabling visitors from the state of Virginia
to make their own pilgrimage to England.
Many of Virginia’s historic roots are to be found in Kent – from
the inspiration for the Stars and Stripes in All Saints Church at
Maidstone on the Washington memorial and Pocahontas, the Indian princess
who married one of the first Jamestown colonists and is buried at
Gravesend, through to families such as the Wyatts from Boxley, and
the Culpeppers and Fairfaxes and their connections with Leeds Castle.
John Freeman, owner of The Black Horse Inn,
said: “The Jamestown
2007 provides an exciting opportunity to help increase the existing
steady flow of customers from North America. With transatlantic flights
direct between Kent International Airport and Norfolk Virginia starting
in Spring 2007 we’re hoping that this innovative partnership
will boost tourism in the area.”
The Jamestown 2007 project is being supported
by a coalition that includes Kent Tourism Alliance and VisitBritain.
The link with Pilgrims walking between Winchester and Canterbury
has encouraged many Americans to take holidays in Kent.
Walk Awhile’s managing director Derek Bright said: “With
a popular National Trail running right through the county, the North
Downs Way, the theme of pilgrimage is inescapable and is so closely
tied up with the history all around the county."
Walk Awhile has been organising vacations
over the last four years for visitors from the United States. More than a third of
Walk Awhile’s customers travel from the United States, highlighting
the attraction that the county’s historic sites and landscape
hold for Americans.
The Black Horse Inn, on the Pilgrims Way,
Thurnham has been named Rural Pub with Accommodation of the Year
for the South East in the prestigious Tourism ExSEllence Awards
2006. Earlier in the
year Walk Awhile was awarded Silver Accreditation by the Green Business
Tourism Scheme for its walking holidays along the Pilgrims Way. Further
information about this vacation. Price of vacation
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