Written by Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire Inside one of Waddesdon Manor’s Rapunzelesque round towers is a room named after the Ballets Russes stage designer Léon Bakst. In 1913, Bakst painted the seven panels here showing scenes from Sleeping Beauty. This year both house and illuminated gardens have Sleeping Beauty-inspired installations. Artists involved include the theatre designer Tom Piper, […]
Two swans and six dusty-grey cygnets mew and whistle as they glide in single file along the canal. Silver birches wiggle their leaves in the gentlest of autumn breezes. Auburn, ochre, russet and shades in between glow in the afternoon sun. It’s time for a sit down and a cuppa. I’m not in a national […]
Blickling Hall, Norfolk Blickling Hall is a handsome house that boasts gothic architecture and plenty of atmosphere. However, the old Tudor house that once stood here is what truly made its ghostly name. It is said that Anne Boleyn continues to haunt her childhood home, carrying her own severed head as she walks the corridors. […]
Seabirds fly below the train as it crosses the Firth of Forth with late afternoon light sparking the water. A kestrel hovers over hay meadows near Kirkcaldy. The lumpy Lomond Hills are sun-misted and the woods are touched with autumn gold. The final stretch of the seven-hour train journey from London to Aberdeen runs along […]
I step out the door of Guirdil bothy at 2am to the guttural roar of a stag and the sound of the ocean lapping on the beach before me. It’s the height of the rut here on Rum, a Hebridean island where red deer outnumber people, and stags have been bolving all night. The skull […]
Some of Northumberland’s attractive coastal towns, wild countryside and interior villages are about to become more accessible thanks to a new railway line from Newcastle to Ashington set to open in December. Coupled with the Tyne and Wear Metro receiving its first new fleet of trains in more than 40 years, visitors without a car […]
Redford Farm Barns, Shropshire On a farm eight miles from Ludlow, these two beautifully converted and adjoining Victorian redbrick barns sleep nine and four respectively, with room for two more in the new shepherd’s hut. There is a huge open space for living, dining and cooking, with two ovens, two fridges and a big round […]
The big dining room has picture windows with gorgeous views of the River Caerfanell in its winding valley under the bulk of Twyn Du (Black Down). The sitting room has a wood-burning stove that’s throwing out lots of heat and as our group of 19, spread around several comfy sofas, start on pre-dinner drinks, the […]
A cheery welcome in the Lakes, Cumbria Four decades after my previous visit to Eskdale YHA (a scary night-time descent from Scafell), a nostalgic multi-day trek saw me back in one of Lakeland’s quieter hostels. The building’s exterior is unchanged, but, within, I found improved comfort levels and a cheery welcome from Rachel’s dedicated team. […]
You couldn’t make it up. As early autumn darkness deepened around Whistlewood Common – tealights a-flicker, guitars twanging around the campfire – I found myself sitting between Peter Wood and Gill Forrester. It was a pincer movement of nominative determinism: Wood, a woodworker and teacher of heritage crafts; Forrester, community and wellbeing manager at the […]