Excursions

Excursions are traditionally organised on the two non-playing Wednesdays. Sometimes additional excursions are arranged over the weekend (Saturday / Sunday) and even on other days where the target customer is non-playing guests or an outing that can start late in the day.

Generally the Wednesday excursions want to be to places that cannot be reached easily by public transport or for which the advantage of being a formal group has significant benefit. That is, when the congress is held at the Anytown Conference Centre, a coach trip to the Anytown museum downtown is likely to be a waste of a Wednesday.

Some excursions are pure tourism. Some provide time to also relax and drink beer or coffee and maybe play informal Go in the venue.

SGBailey: A personal opinion of some excursions I have been on or offered.

1992 Leeds Castle at Canterbury

About an hour's coach ride from the congress, an interesting venue and places to relax and play Go - Good.

1997 Boat trip at Marseilles

I managed to avoid this one. It sounded poorly planned, no refreshments available and folk got marooned on a desolate island for too long - Bad

2002 Plitvice lakes at Zagreb

A superb destination and generally good. Could have been improved by allowing longer (an hour) to rest, drink and play at the lakeside ferry area. The timing for the lunch was poor - we were late for it and it caused problems. - Good

2002 Assorted Castles at Zagreb

Good selection of places to see. The only problem was the lunch which was poor. - Good

2003 Pushkin Palace at St Petersburg

The right choice for a destination, but we were not warned we may have to queue for four hours to enter the palace. I chose to leave the coach at Pushkin to stay in the palace grounds for longer and return by public transport (easier as a return journey) which made it a fine day. - Good intent, Medium result.

2005 Karlovy Vary at Prague

A poor beginning, the coach left late due to confusion over who was on the trip and then the coach had to make two loo stops en route - we were an hour late at KV. KV was fine, the tour guide knowledgable and the meal OK. The free time - as always for me - was far too short, so again I elected to stay and return by train (in fact I returned by an Airport bus). - Good except for the timing.

See also the list of excursions at the various EGCs.

See other Starting points.