Every Christmas, do you have to listen to your tipsy uncle brag about those supposed family ties to Monacan royalty or the war heroics of great-great-great-grandpa so-and-so? Why not put those woolly stories to the test by using your next holiday to head to the country of your family's origin and trace back your ancestral roots?

There are several companies offering services to help navigate your way through the family tree. The most comprehensive is UK-based Ancestral footsteps, whose founder, Sue Hills, came up with the idea after working on the hit BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?

Her finely tailored genealogy tour essentially offers customers a similar experience to that of the show: intensive background research on your ancestry, luxury travel arrangements, a dedicated researcher who accompanies you throughout the visit, experts and historians who bring their stories alive, and a commemorative album.

Hills likens the trip to the ultimate mystery tour, with clients discovering clues about their family each day and in each location. Rest assured, you're likely to uncover a few ghosts in the attic, or at the very least some incredible stories.

Take one of Hills's most memorable trips, with television host Jerry Springer, whose emotional visit to Europe allowed him to discover the exact details of the death of his two grandmothers, who were both prisoners of Nazi Germany. More happily, he was able to meet a distant cousin for the first time, whose family had been presumed killed in the Holocaust.

We asked Hills to talk a little about her company's research process. Does it ever require contacting live people and asking them to dig through old photo albums long stowed away in attics?

"It starts by talking to as many family members as possible to get all facts and family hearsay," Hills explains.

"Then we start the genealogical research and start to build a tree. Thereafter it's putting the meat on the bones, visiting the area they were from and scouring everything from the local archive to the graveyard, streets, workplaces and so on.

"Talking to people in the local cafe or pub is always a good place to get info on who lived where and when, too. And yes, relatives are a great source of info and nearly all have old docs in the attic."

Of course, this kind of intensive research doesn't come cheap. A five-day luxury tour that includes months of research into your entire tree may set you back £20,000 ($33,000). However, as the price is per package rather than per head, costs can be reduced by bringing more of your family on board. So, with 15 members on the tour, that's around $2200 each. You can also reduce the number of days of your trip.

For those who have the time and inclination to be a little more hands-on sleuthing, there are other holidays suited to you. Scottish Ancestral Trail is a family history vacation company that offers ancestral tours with luxury accommodation and chauffeured transport. For folks heading to Edinburgh to uncover their Scottish roots, owner Lesley Gray recommends a two-day break designed to introduce you to the world of genealogy.

"Often people come to do the research here in Edinburgh where the records are all held, then find the process somewhat bewildering," Gray says.

"So this break gives you hands-on experience with a professional genealogist on your shoulder."

The break also includes the opportunity to view your ancestors' original records and archives not normally available to the general public. And once you have your family facts sorted, Scottish Ancestral Trail can organise a customised holiday based around your family's history.

Gray recalls one particularly moving trip: "I'll never forget when two American ladies stood on the quayside and threw roses into the river Clyde in Glasgow at the departure point from which their grandfather left Scotland on a ship to make a new life for himself across the Atlantic. They spoke to him as if he were there and spoke about his hard life in Glasgow and the wife and child he was to have in the future."

Josephine Leong, 56, recently completed a self-organised trip to her father's hometown, a small village in the Chinese province of Guangdong. While much had changed from the time her father had left, almost 85 years earlier, she was delighted to discover something close to her family's heart.

"One thing that made my day was being introduced to a villager," Leong says. "He was in his sixties, and the only one his age who can read and write well. He'd had three years of formal schooling which was a big deal for a villager during his time.

"I was thrilled when he wrote down for me the poem that my brothers have heard about and wanted me to find during this visit. This poem dated back 500 years, has 30 characters in it and each character is designated as the middle name of all the Leongs over the generations up until the Cultural Revolution, during which time old traditions were banned."

Be warned, your scavenger hunt won't likely lead to royalty or celebrity. "I was always told I was related to the first prime minister of England," Hills of Ancestral Footsteps says. "Then I found out that we were related to a branch of the same Walpole surname and from the same part of Norfolk, England but no, the PM was not my direct ancestor!"

Handy links

Scottish Ancestral Trail Scottish Ancestral Trail offers fully customised ancestral tours visiting the Scottish locations meaningful to your family history.

Polin Travel This company provides Jewish guiding and genealogy services in Poland, Cracow and Auschwitz.

Genes Reunited Build your own family tree, search more than 650 million existing names in family trees and history records, and hopefully uncover your family history.

Achievements Achievements is the leading international research organisation devoted to and specialising in all aspects of genealogy, family tree research, heraldry and associated artwork.

Who Do You Think You Are? magazine , A spin-off from the original BBC television program, the site offers loads of articles, resources and links to get you started on your family history project.

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