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SKY TOURS STORY
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The Channel
Island of Alderney and the 1066 Battlefield in Sussex
CHURCHILL COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE
FROM
PARACHUTES AND HUEYS TO THE MAYFAIR DOVE
Adrian Hill joined the paratroops at 17 and
by 19 was an officer in the Royal Engineers. After the Army he served with Her Majesty's
Diplomatic Service for almost 30 years. He jokes that he saw more wars and
combat as a diplomat - India/Pakistan 1965, Cyprus and the Middle East
1966-1968, South Vietnam 1969-1971, Northern Ireland 1971-1974 and later South
Korea. Following retirement he became an author, then Chief Executive of a major
industry association and Member of the CBI Council, before he retired again and took the
London Tourist Board examinations as a tour guide and later became a member of
the Institute of Tourist Guiding. He is married with two grown
children.
Adrian
founded British Sky Tours after working as a
guide for a private tour company with a Mayfair
address in London. Although he learnt much, particularly from the most
experienced guides, observing his fellow tour guides dressed like office
clerks for escorting families on holiday outings left him as bemused as
their
clients, mostly American. More significant, at least two layers of middlemen were
involved with every booking - the inevitable result, the overseas
visitors forked out the tour's actual cost twice over. This didn't
strike him as the proper way to greet valued tourists and determined
Adrian to create his own, more prestigious tour operation. He began by taking
overseas visitors from one end of the British Isles to the other,
showing them places off the beaten track, such as the remote far north of
Scotland.
Silbury Hill - largest pyramid north of
Egypt and older than its sisters in Ghiza.
Where travel is concerned,
nothing
beats first hand experience. Adrian has sailed in Royal Navy frigates
and Italian cruise liners, flown on every outfit from
US Ranger helicopter gun-ships in Vietnam to the Royal Flight, and travelled by every means
on land from ambassador's
limousine to an Afghan pony. John Esmonde-White has served in Europe and all over the
Gulf complete with Arab head gear as part of his uniform. He's sailed
cruising yachts around Europe from Normandy to Cape Trafalgar off
southern Spain - he was there for the 200th anniversary of Nelson's
great victory. Both were experienced at making contacts and the
diplomacy of building a team and network. Today all our visitors
benefit.
  
APART FROM THE JOB - VIP
VISITORS BY THE SCORE
When not serving in trouble spots Adrian planned
and escorted royal visits overseas - Princess Ann's two weeks at the
Seoul Olympic Games definitely the most memorable - visits by British Prime Ministers,
countless visits by ministers, politicians, prominent businessmen, also
film stars. Along the way he met his wife in Switzerland and was
Director of the British Information Services across Canada for almost
five years. He was part of the UK team for two G7 Summits. Despite a heavy workload in South Korea,
other jobs came his way- such as
arranging two tours by the Royal Opera House, another by the Royal Ballet, plus
as Britain's Olympic Attaché all on the spot
arrangements for Britain's 1988 Olympic Team at the Seoul Games, not to
mention a great deal of the preparation for a media contingent stronger
than the team. Adrian greatly enjoyed once again working with the US
Army on security for the Olympic Games.
Today at
British Sky Tours we provide our visitors with the same
relaxed style of comfort and organisation enjoyed by the Royal Family
when they travel. We treat you like royalty.
Spithead and
Portsmouth Harbour
WHY SKY TOURS
The idea of a sky tour to the Normandy D Day
landing grounds and assault beaches crystallised while flying on air rallies
to the Channel Islands with an old
friend from Army parachuting days.
Close friends since their
time in Cyprus, Dick Nesbitt-Dufort, a helicopter pilot instructor, after
leaving the Army became a flying champion, winning national events for
precision flying. Adrian often flew with Dick on air rallies - a kind of
reconnaissance test from small planes - hosted by flying clubs in the
Channel Islands and France.
During these competitions they
passed over many of the places shown on this website, looking for obscure
objects on the ground while obeying a split second time-table. Thanks to
Dick's airmanship they invariably finished with a high score - but also
through employing the same techniques they had used on combat missions over
such places as Borneo and Vietnam. Dick was generally regarded as among the
best helicopter pilots of his generation in the Army Air Corps. He and
Adrian were Army parachute instructors, therefore used to picking up landmarks and recognising ground features
with the mark one eyeball rather than modern GPS systems.
Their route out and home passed over the
invasion beaches. One summer afternoon, flying along the Normandy coast,
the idea came that many other people might enjoy the same spectacular
flight. There followed a lot of research, diplomacy and organisation on
both sides of the Channel.
Flying adds a spectacular dimension to any
holiday exploring the British Isles, makes possible easy cross-Channel
visits, even day tours to the Continent - and by employing their
old military skills, particularly for panoramic
viewing, brings alive battlefields and the sweep of Europe's history. The
idea was to bring places such as the Normandy beaches within reach of a day
tour from Central London. Moreover, seeing a historic site from the
air, particularly a battlefield, adds another dimension and helps a visitor
to understand far better what was involved when they explore on the ground.
There were other realms where he
wanted British Sky Tours in a different league. Military history is
probably more deeply understood and possibly better explained by those
with an academic bent who have worn a uniform and experienced combat: presently Dick is
reading for a degree in archaeology. Adrian is rare as a former British
soldier who has been in combat with the US Army and the US Marine Corps
and the South Vietnamese Airborne. Contrary to popular myth, Adrian
reckons that by 1969 the American Army had become extremely competent at
counter-insurgency and controlled the countryside in South Vietnam. He
was there when the war crossed the borders of
South Vietnam into Cambodia and Laos. Whatever one thinks about that
strategy there is no question that South Vietnam became a much less
dangerous country by 1970/1971 where you could travel safely from the Mekong Delta to
the DMZ unless you deliberately chose to go into a war zone along the
borders. John has served with Americans on
NATO combined staffs. This helps when researching and explaining the D Day landings
and battles of World War Two.
THAT SPECIAL
RELATIONSHIP
America and Britain may be staunch
allies whose armed forces work together but those forces have different
ways of doing similar jobs. This leads to debate sometimes! And the
atmosphere in America's and Britain's armed forces although similar is
not the same. You have to experience this at the sharp end to understand
and explain these subtleties. Moreover, having joined the paratroops at
17 years old, not only was his first overseas exercise a night landing
on Utah Beach, but his officers and NCOs included many veterans of Sicily, D Day, Arnhem and
the Rhine Crossing. His first Royal Engineers squadron commander had
been among the Argonaut - the original 500 trained as paratroops
after Winston Churchill gave the order to raise an airborne force. Some, including his brigade commander, the legendary
Johnnie Frost, had jumped at Bruneval and North Africa. The chaplin, Ron
Cox, ministering to Adrian's squadron of Royal Engineers, had landed
with the first wave of assault troops on Sword Beach on D Day. Adrian knew
Field Marshal Montgomery, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Lord Shimi Lovat who led the
Commandos at Dieppe and on D Day, Admiral Teddy Gueritz, then a young
Lieutenant Commander, who landed on Sword Beach to find his boss dead
and himself instantly promoted to beachmaster - he stayed on the beach
and under fire for another 19 days until severely wounded. General Tony
Younger as a Major led 26 Assault Squadron RE - the specialised tanks
that came ashore on D day - and on retirement became Director of the RUSI, as did Teddy Gueritz. Another
veteran was Gordon Philo who jumped with the Parachute Regiment on the
night. His memories were still fresh 25 years later when he served as
Consul-General in Hanoi - Adrian was Vice-Consul in Saigon at the same
time. While serving as Director of the
British Information Services in Canada, Adrian became friends with Charles
Lynch, one of the handful of Canadian war correspondents who landed with
the assault troops on Juno Beach. Since starting British Sky Tours he
has talked to veterans and returned with them to Normandy, including
survivors of the Pegasus Bridge and the assault beaches.
Kismet - My wife and daughter, Regine
and
Margot with Charles Lynch's granddaughter, Jessica above the Lutschinen
Falls near the Jungfrau in the Berner Oberland. Not only do Margot and
Jessica share an office, but they share a job and a desk in Geneva
University where both are working on Ph D's and Masters in Environmental
Science. How about that for two kids who started life about 3 miles from
each other in Ottawa.
The D Day veteran in John Esmonde-White's
family was his own father who served in the Royal Artillery and won a
Military Cross while commanding his battery. After the war, Denis
Esmonde-White became Monty's military aid when the Field Marshal was
Deputy Supreme Commander Europe for NATO. John has a wonderful
collection of letters - the Field Marshal expected his MA to write to
him every day when Monty was on holiday - and some of the early notes
and proofs for Lord Montgomery's military history From Normandy to
the Baltic. Denis Esmonde-White helped with the research and maps
for the book which became the Field Marshal's memoirs of the
campaign from D Day to the German surrender. A cousin of Denis won the
VC flying a Swordfish biplane against the German battlecruisers making
their 1942 dash through the Channel and Dover Strait. John has served in the UK including Northern Ireland,
Germany and the Gulf and worked with the US Army on joint planning teams. He is married
and has a grown up daughter.
WE'RE
ALWAYS LEARNING
Nowadays
professional battlefield guides spend a great deal of time on
research. Speaking French opens up two thousand years of history in
Normandy. Speaking German helps with understanding the pivotal decisions and
crucial events on D Day and other historic moments. Battlefield archaeology plays an increasingly important role
in discovering what really happened, particularly for an event long ago
when the written records are sparse or suspect as propaganda afterwards as with
the Battle of Hastings.
FAMILY AND GROUP TOURS
British Sky Tours began by taking small
parties to see the D Day landing grounds and beaches. Our parties have been
families, veterans and their loved ones, academics and military history
groups, company management on educational and reward tours. During recent
years we have
taken overseas visitors from Lands End in Cornwall to Cape Wrath on the
northern tip of Scotland, from Bayeux to Bern, from Agincourt to Blenheim.
German families particularly enjoy exploring the magnificent Rosamunde
Pilcher country around the far tip of Cornwall.
Though our guides are second-to-none for experience and
knowledge, ours are not passive tours where the guide lectures and the
visitors listen, rather highly stimulating and entertaining days. Very
quickly the day becomes an enjoyable, thought-provoking conversation which
flies, drives and walks in between meals! These mobile conversations
sometimes run for a few days without anyone growing bored. Our longest
so far has lasted nearly three weeks. And the same visitors came back
for another two weeks the following year! We've been operating for ten years now and work hard at improving and broadening our touring
repertoire.
We also put a great deal of
background information on our website. The reason is simple - the more
our visitors know before a tour, the more they get out of a tour on the
day. We don't want to spend your valuable time simply explaining what
happened - although obviously we do - rather we want you to go home
understanding why it happened and what great events mean for us today.
PILOTS AND PLANES
We started off by flying with Synergy
Aviation as our air partners, a private charter company founded by a
senior training Captain on retirement from British Airways with very
competent young pilots and an excellent safety record. Synergy Aviation
showed from the start why they have such an enviable reputation. Since then we've
also teamed up with the Mayfair Dove company owned by Bill Pritchard, yes, a
former senior training captain with British Airways. Bill and his
co-pilot Dave Frost, also a former BA training captain, have logged no
less than five years in the sky at the controls of air liners, mostly
jumbo jets and a large proportion of those hours spent teaching BA
captains the routes all over the World. The Mayfair Dove herself is a
very elegant and graceful aircraft, formerly with the Royal Flight and
thus fitted out for flying the Queen and other members of the Royal
family when she served with the RAF. So you're in very safe hands.
OUR CONTINENTAL
FRIENDS
Our partners on the Continent are all
chosen through personal contacts in the countries where we tour and we
have very good relations with the airport managers at the places we
visit on the Continent. We only suggest hotels that we know are really
special. Adrian is presently based in Bern, Switzerland's fairytale
capital, researching tours of the surrounding countryside including the
Alps and neighbouring parts of France and Germany. We enjoy the good fortune to have Barry Hyatt CTC as our
representative in the United States.
LOTS
OF CHOICE Greenwich Royal Observatory and Herstmonceux Castle
We can take you sky touring for a single day
although we recommend spending longer on a sky tour, at least two days, better more.
We can arrange a week, more if you wish, where you enjoy two or three of our tours
organised as a logical sequence. Start with 1066 through the Battle of Britain
and round off a unique week with the D Day sites and Normandy. Please feel
welcome to ask for quotes - your ideas or ours. And because you're
spending more than a day in our hands, we offer special rates. The overnight
costs - including the aircraft and guide -
work out at much less than you might imagine.
Our network of retired diplomats, naval,
military and air force officers is second-to-none. Give us enough warning -
direct or through Barry Hyatt our USA representative - and we can make most holiday
wishes, certainly in Europe, come to pass.
BECOME A BETTER
MANAGER
A thought for those in the commercial world.
Apart from stress free air travel around the British Isles and Europe -
there are numerous lessons from military history for any profession.
American companies regard our D Day air tours as a very effective form of management
training.
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We exchange
links with kindred spirits, most recently with the
Society for Military
History in the United States of America.
MANAGEMENT TEAM TRAINING
OUR TOURS PAGE
OUR CONTACT PAGE
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