Offbeat and fun experiences

Weird, random, oddball, and just plain fun tours and activities you can sign up for in the U.K.

OK, ideally your entire trip will be fun. I get that. But this page is dedicated to exhorting you to seek out the quirky, oddball, weird, and truly memorable experiences throughout your British vacation.

You can climb The O2 in London, hit the comedy clubs of Manchester, or live out your own Robin Hood fantasy with a private archery session in Blackpool.

You can take a helicopter flight over London, a hot air balloon flight from Bath, or go skydiving above Stonehenge from Salisbury

Learn to surf in the North Sea off Yorshire or in the Celtic Sea off Cornwall, drive a rally car at Silverstone, or get a backstage tour of Manchester City FC's Legends Stadium. 

You can find brochures on fun and offbeat tours at local tourism offices in the U.K., or book ahead via one of our partner sites:

Offbeat tours

• Viator.com -
  • High-Speed Thames River RIB Cruise in London
  • Jack the Ripper Tour and London Ghost Walk
  • Climb The O2 in London
  • Hot Air Balloon Flight from Bath
  • Helicopter Flight in London
  • Stonehenge Helicopter Tour from Salisbury
  • Knife and Tomahawk throwing session in Blackpool
  • Tandem Skydive near Stonehenge from Salisbury
  • A Full-Day Surf Adventure in Newquay Including Two 2-Hour Sessions
  • Outdoor Rock Climbing Experience in Tunbridge Wells
  • Twickenham Stadium Tour
  • Alpaca Nature Walking Experience in Otterbourne
  • Detonation Escape Game in Manchester
  • Private Archery Session in Blackpool
  • 3-Hour Gorge Walking Adventure in Llangollen
  • The Best in Stand-Up Live Comedy in Manchester
  • Half-Day Rally Driving Experience at Silverstone
  • 2-Hour Private Surfing Lesson For Up To Five People in Scarborough
  • Interactive Dungeon Show in Nottingham
  • Manchester City FC Legends Stadium and Club Tour Including Lunch
  • Fly a Real Jet Simulator Around the World at Coventry Airport
  • Windsor Segway Adventure for Two
  Partner

Activities, walks, & excursions

• Viator.com - Best one-stop shopping site for all sorts of activities, walking tours, bus tours, escorted day trips, and other excursions. It is actually a clearinghouse for many local tour companies and outfitters, and since it gets a bulk-rate deal on pricing (and takes only a token fee for itself), you can actually sometimes book an activity through Viator for less than it would cost to buy the same exact tour from the tour company itself. (I once booked a Dublin pub crawl via Viator and later discovered that I saved about $1.50; also, the tour turned out to be sold-out, and they were turning away the folks in front of me in line, but since I had a pre-booked voucher I got in.)Partner
• Londonwalks.com - Since the 1970s, the gold standard in city walking tours and museum tours—and cheap, to boot. Just meet your guide at the appointed time and place (usually a Tube stop), pay your £10 (students or over 65s are £8; under 15 free), and prepare for a good two hours of amazing cultural insight and historic anecdotes. If you plan on taking three or more walks, buy a "Frequent London Walker" card for £2 from your first guide, then each subsequent walk costs £8. They also run popular excursions outside London for £18. Note that the fee just covers the guided tour; you pay for any admissions (or, for excursions, travel expenses) yourself.
• Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
• City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner

General tourism info

• VisitBritain.com
• VisitEngland.com
• Uktic.co.uk - local offices