National Trust will f leece you for every penny, says Bryson
AS A champion of Britain’s heritage, you’d expect travel author Bill Bryson to get on famously with the National Trust.
However, he has accused it of fleecing tourists by making them pay for every element of a visit – joking that it would soon charge for toilet paper.
The travel writer said he felt ‘grumpy’ after paying almost £35 to visit the Neolithic stone circle at Avebury, near Marlborough in Wiltshire.
Bryson, 63, a former commissioner of English Heritage, made the complaint in his new book The Road To Little Dribbling: More Notes From A Small Island.
He said he paid £34.39 for his visit to Avebury – which is 14 times bigger than Stonehenge – after forking out for parking, a map, tickets and a cup of tea.
As well as the prices, Bryson also criticised the Trust for a lack of explanatory signs and the way parts of the site had been turned into a ‘film set’.
He wrote: ‘The size and complexity of Avebury and the fact that a village stands in its midst make it awfully hard to get your bearings, and the National Trust does precious little to help.
‘If you want to know what you are looking at, you have to buy a guidebook. They like to charge for every individual thing. The day cannot be too far off when you have to pay for toilet paper by the sheet in a little booth manned by a volunteer.
‘Within minutes of arriving, I had paid out £7 for parking, £10 for a ticket to the manor house and garden and £4.90 for the small museum, and I still couldn’t find my way around the stones, so I went into the gift shop and bought a big handsome map for £ 9.99, which meant that I had spent £31.89 at Avebury without even having had a cup of tea. So I went and had a cup of tea (£2.50) and studied my map.
‘ Then, feeling ever so slightly grumpy, I went and wandered among the stones and everything was suddenly fine, for Avebury is both awesome and entrancing.’
Bryson saved his most barbed comments for Avebury Manor, the former home of renowned archaeologist Alexander Keiller.
The house on the edge of the village was restored in a part- nership between the National Trust and the BBC in 2011.
Bryson wrote: ‘I was particularly keen to see the manor house as I assumed it would be filled with Keiller’s personal curios and archaeological treasures.
‘But no. In what must be the cheesiest thing the National Trust has ever done, it had allowed the house to be made into a set for a now-forgotten BBC television series.
‘The accompanying museum, in a nearby stable block, was only fractionally less disappointing. Avebury is a World Heritage Site for a reason. It is an astonishing, fascinating place, yet the museum seemed perfunctory and uninspired, as if it were fulfilling an obligation rather than reflecting an enthusiasm.’
He said that Avebury ‘manages to be both fabulous and exasperating in about equal measure’ but conceded that the scale of the 28-acre site ‘takes your breath away’.
Jan Tomlin, general manager for the Trust at Avebury, said: ‘He did spend a lot with us – and that will all be put to good use.’
She added that free maps were available and the stones ‘speak for themselves’ so signage is not provided. She also insisted that Avebury Manor was a ‘million miles from being a film set’.