Go Cotswolds: Real people. Real stories. Truly local tours.

Hi! We’re Tom and Lisa Benjamin, the husband-and-wife owners of Go Cotswolds.

We’re both British, but our story began far from home – in a backpacker’s hostel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, back in 2007! A chance meeting turned into a friendship, then into love. Six years later, we got engaged in South Africa, and in 2014 we were married on the pitch at Tom’s local cricket club!

Between us, we’ve travelled to more than 50 countries around the world. In 2017, our daughter Zoe was born – she had a passport from the age of 2 months old, so now the adventures continue as a family of three.

But, wherever in the world our family wanders, there’s no place like home. Home for us is a small town called Alcester, a small, friendly town just 10 minutes from Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s right on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, and it’s where Tom grew up, spending his childhood hiking the hills, running local trails and playing cricket in the Cotswold Hills village league. That’s where his passion for the Cotswolds was born – and it didn’t take long for Lisa to fall in love with the area too!

With our love for independent travel and a spirit of adventure, we founded Go Cotswolds to show visitors around this beautiful region we call our ‘back yard’. We create the kind of experiences we enjoy on our own travels, right here at home – fun, friendly, welcoming tours, with expert local guides who feel more like friends than teachers.

We’re also passionate about ensuring the Cotswolds stays beautiful for generations to come. Read more about our responsibility and sustainability ethos here. 

Our Driver-Guides

Our small team of driver-guides are all local to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Cotswolds. Tom and Lisa hand-picked each one, not for their historical knowledge or encyclopaedic brains, but first and foremost for their warm, friendly, kind personalities. Each one has a cool confidence and ability to make you feel at ease, without being brash, overbearing or ‘in your face’.

That’s not to say our guides don’t also have incredible knowledge! What sets us apart, however, is that our live tour commentary isn’t just a learned script – you’ll learn a lot, yes, but our tours are full of personal, unique, funny, heart-warming, interesting stories that only a local person could share.

Read our Tripadvisor reviews, and you’ll find our guests rave about our guides!

(Interested in joining our team? Check out our Careers page!)

Our behind-the-scenes team

Our business simply wouldn’t function without our fabulous admin team! In fact, we don’t know how we ever coped without Sue and Patrick, who both joined Go Cotswolds in 2024.

Sue is our resident sales and marketing guru. She’s the one who handles all the bookings, answers all your questions, plans, writes and posts all our social media content, and brings all the good vibes (and grapes) to the Go Cotswolds office!

As a guest on our tours, you’ll probably never meet Patrick, but as our Assistant Transport & Operations Manager, Pat literally keeps Go Cotswolds’ wheels moving! Supporting Tom, Pat makes sure our team of guides all know which tours they’re doing, on what day, in which vehicle and with which passengers (no small feat!). He also ensures our vehicles are kept in tip-top condition by scheduling regular maintenance and managing our cleaning team, and keeps our fleet and drivers safe and legally compliant.

Work with Us

We’re a small company with a big love for the Cotswolds – and we’re always looking for likeminded people to work with us!

Want to join our team? We’re always looking for new talent to join the Go Cotswolds family, whether as a driver-guide or a vital member of our office team. Check out our Careers page.

Travel trade? See our Travel Trade page to find out more about how we work with travel agents, tour operators, DMCs and more.