Lessons from the road with Alex Graeme

World Guide Awards

No careers advisor said that being a tour guide was an option. My parents ran a B&B in Devon, and I helped out: making beds, serving breakfasts, showing our guests around the garden and woodlands. But up to the age of 40, I worked mostly in social services.

Being a guide was just a dream. I didn’t feel I had the confidence or competence to do it. Then my parents, who had this big house that our family had lived in for 150 years, were no longer able to run it. So I gave up my job and moved back to Devon to help them clear it out. Then I thought: what am I going to do next?

The scariest thing was heading into new territory. Then I spoke to a local guide who was retiring. He told me that, for a year after 9/11, Americans stopped travelling and business dried up for him – but, in spite of that, he didn’t have a negative thing to say about his work.

You need to know an area’s strong points. After all, who doesn’t enjoy seeing wild ponies on Dartmoor? You quickly learn what makes people happy. Devon has great food and drink, literary history (Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes), fossil-hunting on the Jurassic Coast, and lots of castles, legends and ghosts.

It’s good to surprise visitors. W We run family history tours for people who contact me to build an itinerary around their ancestral roots. I’ve even been able to locate long-lost relatives; when I introduce them, I can just stand back and watch the laughter, tears and hugs.

Every guide fears that question they can’t answer. I It pays to ask an expert. For my Hound of the Baskervilles tour, I was in touch with a man who’d written about the author Arthur Conan Doyle’s time in Devon. He actually came to me, because I have a connection to the book – my great-grandfather, who was vicar of

Worldguideawards.com

Ipplepen for 42 years, was a Dartmoor expert – he gave Doyle the locations for his story.

Dartmoor is like nowhere else. O One spot I love in particular is Grimspound, a late Bronze Age settlement. But whereas you’ll find thousands of visitors at Stonehenge, for example, Grimspound is nearly always quiet.

I still smile at some reactions. Guests are fascinated by Devon’s endless narrow lanes. I’m often asked if they’re one-way; if I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll say yes – then a 30-tonne tractor will turn the corner and I’ll hear an intake of breath.

You have to think fast. I was asked to take a Russian oligarch and his family on a tour of the coast – and then the yacht died. No boats were running, so I got lines and buckets, and took the family crabbing off the quay at Dartmouth. The kids had fun, and the father was happy because he could tell me my that technique was poor and that he would show his sons how to do it properly. It shows that, even if you’re the 568th richest person in the world (and he was), if you’ve not done something before, it can be fun. wanderlust.co.uk March 2019

Named Top UK Guide at the Wanderlust World Guide Awards, Alex Graeme of Unique Devon Tours talks about starting over and what he’s learned so far… Dartmoor is like nowhere else. After all, who doesn’t enjoy seeing wild ponies?