We’re delighted to welcome Rhys to the Rayburn Tours Education Team! With a bucket-load of wanderlust and an enthusiasm for helping groups create unforgettable adventures, we’re sure Rhys will feel right at home in his new Tour Coordinator role!
We did a quick Q&A with Rhys to get to know a little bit about him…
Tell us a little bit about your background.
Born and bred in Sheffield, I first caught the travel bug on my year abroad during my languages degree. I spent the year studying in Cologne and Yaroslavl’, followed by a very enjoyable summer in Odessa, teaching, sampling Crimean wines and swimming in the Black Sea!
I couldn’t wait to move abroad again and practise my languages after graduation. I was lucky enough to operate a tour to provincial Russia over summer, and afterwards land a teaching job in Zurich for a couple of years. Grappling with Swiss
dialects certainly kept me on my toes linguistically! Living at the heart of Europe also proved great for travel opportunities, with destinations in France, Germany and Italy only a short train journey away!
Missing my undergraduate studies and with a certain nostalgia for Cologne, I then decided to study for a bilingual, binational master’s degree in literature, in Cologne’s neighbouring city Bonn, and St Andrews in Scotland.
Considering my interests in travel, languages and teaching, the tour coordinator role in the Educational Tours department in Rayburn seemed like the perfect match!
What’s top of your travel bucket list and why?
Having spent time in Russia and Ukraine, Belarus is definitely high up on my travel bucket list. The country’s relative obscurity for Western tourists is certainly a pull factor for me. I also think the mix of Stalinist and modern architecture in Minsk would make the city a very atmospheric place to visit, and I would hope to see some of the amazing wildlife in the primeval forest of Belarus’ national parks.
What are you most looking forward to in your new role?
I am really looking forward to hearing about the unforgettable experiences that my groups have on their tours. I think this will undoubtedly be the most rewarding aspect of the job. The chance to travel and familiarise myself with the destinations is also a massive bonus of the role!
Meet more members of the Rayburn Tours team here!