Fancy a weekend away?
The question sounds simple enough. For some the weekend is a time for indulging in those small rituals at home that help you find your way out of the mental fug of the work week. But for me it always comes back to that proposition of getting away — even if for 48 hours — and the pure joy that comes with it. Because let’s face it, as a generation of Netflix and chillers — or maybe just Netflixers these days — we need more than ever to take time out for our health.
We’re stalked daily with grim updates on the Brexit edition of Deal or No Deal, or budget airlines folding and airports paralysed by ownerless drones. The Great British Weekend Away is an institution. So maybe it’s time to look a little closer to home, at the UK’s best hotels and B&Bs, which are quietly championing a very British sort of hospitality and becoming destinations in their own right.
Is it somewhere beautifully designed that you long to escape to? Hampshire’s Heckfield Place has been the scene-stealer of the year, but The Rectory in Wiltshire, the newly refurbished At the Chapel in Bruton or the quartet of Artist Residences have just as much charm.
Perhaps you want somewhere romantic to hole up for a night or two? A treehouse at Chewton Glen or a Scandinavian-style croft in the Scottish Highlands might be your midwinter night’s dream. Or is it a night at one of the classics that most appeals? From London’s grande dame, Claridge’s, to Soho Farmhouse, Nick Jones’s pleasure palace in the Cotswolds, each holds the highest standards when it comes to good food, great service and the comfiest of beds.
So here they are, the very best of British escapes. Each will have you longing for it to be Friday already.
Scroll the gallery above for nine of the best weekend escapes
