AS SUMMER draws near, groups of foreign tourists are a familiar sight in Chester, grouped around The Cross and taking photos below the Eastgate Clock.

This year, as for the last four decades, Chester's army of tour guides will take on the challenge of ensuring more than 40,000 visitors depart enlightened and ready to tell their friends about our city.

Green badge tour guide Tom Jones has shown thousands of visitors around the city in the last four years, and says the varied mix of visitors can make life interesting for the city's 40 guides.

'We are catering for people from all four corners of the world, so we have to be ready to adapt to change at any time, and deal with different cultures.

'For instance, visitors from the Far East don't usually know who the Romans were. French school-children have no idea what the Queen's name is, and are always amazed by our drinking habits - they see us drinking pints of beer which to them seems a huge amount.'

Not content with tackling such culture shocks in English, tour guides are available to guide visitors in Cantonese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Shanghainese, Spanish, Swedish and Welsh.

Tom, who speaks French and German, said working in a different language is just one of the many things that can cause disruption to the guides.

'The second tour I ever did was for a group of 40 French teenagers.

Contact point For more information contact group tours organiser Jessica Kingsley-Jones on 01244 402445.

The coach turned up and at the last minute I realised that the other guide didn't speak French, so even though group sizes should be limited to 25, my second tour was in French to a group of 40.

'One of the qualities you have got to have for this job is definitely the ability not to panic.'

Tom says he always enjoys rediscovering the city through foreigners' eyes, but is disappointed that many Cestrians don't take an interest in the history surrounding them.

He said: 'Something which strikes all of us is that we don't get enough local people on the tours. You get visitors from New Zealand, Canada or Italy but it is only a very small percentage who come from Chester.

'There was one chap who was born in Chester and came on the tour with a friend. We joked a bit that he could teach me some things about Chester, but at the end he said he was amazed at how much there is to the city.'

Group tours depart daily in Chester. Specialist tours include the Ghost Hunter Trail, Roman Soldier Patrol and the Secret Chester walk, which unlocks towers on the walls and the castle.

IF YOU have a gift for telling spooky stories, or can sum up Chester's history in German, conducting guided tours could be your forte.

The Guild of Tour Guides in Chester will soon be recruiting up to 20 foreign language speakers to be trained as green badge guides for the city. Ghost

hunter trail guides are also wanted, with separate training on the city's most popular guided walk.

Tour guide training will take place in the evenings and at weekends between September and May.

For more information on recruitment, contact Gerald Tattum on 01244 402150.