Today I visited Workshop in Nottinghamshire. Specifically to visit Mr Straw's House, a National Trust property, with my friend James. We were told to be at Mr Straw's House for a 2pm tour, it transpired that our start time was actually 2.30pm, when we had to view an introductory DVD, and the house tour would start at 2.45pm. At 2.30pm we assembled at reception, and found that the two people who were going on the tour with us "were not quite ready". Suffice to say we did not start to watch the DVD until 2.40pm. Running 10 minutes late by this time, we had to wait further - "because the previous tour is running late". The tour started (started might be a loose description) at 3pm. We got in to the house to find the guide still talking to the previous group who were in no hurry to relieve her of her services.
After a further delay the guide started to tell us about the house, where upon a young man took over as guide, going over the same ground as the previous guide. He was just the downstairs guide, the woman who had briefly started to talk to us was the 1st floor guide. The young man stressed the point several times that he himself was from Worksop and had relatives in the town. Why this was deemed relevant I do not know. The added complication was that one of our party was not British, and had difficulty comprehending English.
At each part of the house the previous group were only inches ahead of us as we were arriving, and as a result I felt we got a less-than-adequate level of attention from the various guides we encountered.
The whole experience would have been enhanced by a more efficient management of the flow of visitors; there was a lot of time we were left to our own resources because the guide was helping another party.
I am not a great fan of "guided tours" but this was one of the worst in my experience thus far.
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