It’s always a fun time for us when one of our overseas consultants comes to visit our North Yorkshire offices - no more so than when the consultant in question happens to be our good friend - and all-round nice guy - David Lanfear.
David’s role is our ‘man on the ground’ in Spain and Portugal, travelling from place to place, checking walking routes, writing notes, visiting hotels and sampling restaurant recommendations (well, someone’s got to do it!) in the company of his delightful partner, Linda, who just happens to be Inntravel’s staff photographer. While David walks and talks, Linda is busy capturing the essence and heart of the places they visit in images that will hopefully inspire you to follow in their footsteps. You will have seen many of Linda’s wonderful photographs gracing the pages of our brochures and website over the years and our photography holiday in Andalucia is also run by this intrepid pair.
Every year, David and I get together and discuss ideas for new holidays - sometimes it’s an area we’ve not covered before, or we’ve heard that the walking is good or where there’s a great hotel that’s ideal for Inntravel. Once back in Spain, it’s up to David and Linda to load up their camper van and hit the road, seeking out the quiet corners that we hope our customers will enjoy exploring. It’s something of a nomadic existence, but it suits David and Linda perfectly as they have a great love of the outdoors, a real sense of adventure and a natural affinity with the people and landscapes of their adopted home.
While he is here, David also takes the opportunity to talk to Inntravel staff (see below) about his role and about his forthcoming trips. He is a very entertaining speaker and his tales of strange encounters with cattle, chance meetings with octogenarian hunters and startling discoveries of the weird and wonderful are fast becoming part of Inntravel folklore. For anyone who has not heard David speak, his accounts of how he puts our holidays together is well worth travelling far to hear. (In fact, David is to be a guest speaker at a travel show Inntravel is organising in mid-October at a great venue in Newcastle - watch our website for forthcoming details.) We do not buy our walks ‘off the shelf’ - they are created from an idea, the pieces all carefully coming together like a jigsaw puzzle - and contain a lot of blood, sweat and tears (usually David’s!).
(Some of you may remember David as our on-board ‘entertainments officer’ who travelled back from Spain to the UK earlier this year with a coachload of intrepid Inntravellers who had been marooned on the Iberian Peninsula by the volcanic ash cloud. Inntravel don’t do ‘reps’ but we couldn’t have wished for a better one at that traumatic time!)