Nest farmhouse Good for Foodies Coastal Dog-friendly After a week that involved a charity shoot (we won), a fishing trip to the Wye (we lost) and dinner on board the gun deck of HMS Warrior, ease and serenity was top of the list for a couple of days, and North…
The Painswick Good for: Luxury Stopover Fine dining On a sporting pilgrimage, whether it is towards Gloucestershire for Badminton or south for the trout, finding somewhere decent to stay on route can be a challenge. I’m a great believer in trying to make the journey as enjoyable as the destination.…
Few of us can resist the chance to go places usually out of bounds or take a peek inside institutions normally closed to the public but Newmarket offers just that. Racing’s ‘headquarters’ has heritage and famous faces (both equine and human) in spades, and The Jockey Club Rooms are no…
Good for: Nevill Holt Festival goers Picturesque market towns History buffs Carrying off the role of both boutique hotel and vibrant village boozer isn’t easy but The Nevill Arms in Medbourne, Leicestershire manages it with aplomb. Any night of the week the pub will be busy with locals and the…
Rothay Manor – good for Food Walking Dogs The Lake District has romance stitched into its reputation: those winsome trees perched atop a rocky outcrop stir even the stultified into creativity. There are the Poets, of course, although I have always found them a little more sapping than spiriting. And…
For many of those who have grown up in or near Rutland, Barnsdale Lodge will long have been a fixture. In my memory it played host to a hunt bash where I was taken with someone particularly unsuitable, but thankfully those murky days (well, they were also quite fun) are…
In John Martin Robinson’s magnificent book A Guide to the Country Houses of the North West (1991), there are many examples of the private mansions of Lancashire that no longer stand or have been ousted into commercial or municipal use. Against this backdrop of progress, the 14th-century Inn at Whitewell,…
As one gratefully breaks away from the M1 and sets sail west past Chesterfield’s crooked spire, it is when the hedges give way to stone walls that the transition to the Peak District is marked. I spent much of my childhood yomping around bits of Derbyshire as my father was…
The Arch at Fonthill is cartoon grand: a soaring masterpiece built in 1755 to mark the entrance to the original Fonthill estate and welcome a steady flow of Georgian A-listers from Turner to Byron who visited this rolling corner of Wiltshire. THE ARCH, FONTHILL Perched on the hill beyond is…
I’M PRETTY sure the Elizabethans would have experienced the same bonhomie on welcome when The Pig at Combe was first built, in 1580, as we did on arrival. Walking through the front door into the 16th-century hall, there is no stuffy reception desk but a buzzy bar area, roaring fire,…
