Top ten short breaks (Escape magazine, for English Country Cottages)
If you’re planning that mini escape but aren’t sure where to start looking, here’s Tim Locke’s top ten list of his favourite spots within a couple of hours of the peripheries of London.
There’s a potent mood of the murky, pagan past in and around Avebury, amid the rolling Marlborough Downs. The village is entirely hemmed in by Britain’s largest stone circle, set along a massive henge earthwork that by far outstrips nearby Stonehenge for sheer dimensions. From there, a stroll along the processional ‘stone avenue’ takes you to the site of the vanished Sanctuary. Past Silbury Hill, Europe’s largest artificial prehistoric mound, climb the path up to West Kennet Long Barrow. This 5,000-year old tomb housed some fifty burials, and you can walk right inside it: go there at dusk, and it’s positively eerie.
Nearby: Salisbury (cathedral, museum, market and Old Sarum), Stonehenge, Stourhead (mansion and grounds).
‘I love every stile and stump and lane,…as long as I am able to hold a brush, I shall never cease to paint them’ wrote John Constable of the Stour Valley. His most celebrated picture is of Flatford Mill, where he was born in 1776. The everyday scenes of rural life that struck such a deep chord with him have become something of a national institution: the riverside meadows by the Stour, the opulent medieval churches and gorgeously pastel-hued villages of plaster-and-timber houses have scarcely changed since his day. It’s prime territory for gentle, bucolic cycling or touring along meandering country lanes.
Nearby: Colchester (Castle Museum), Lavenham (timber-framed buildings, Guildhall, church), Sudbury (Gainsborough’s House).
You experience a real sense of arrival as you enter this southeastern corner of Dorset (not an island, despite its name). On the east side of Poole Harbour rises a huge, rugged heath, looking like the perfect setting for a Thomas Hardy story. And on a steep hillock in a break in the long Purbeck ridge, the precarious-looking ruins of Corfe Castle loom over the village of the same name, from where steam trains on the Swanage Railway chug down to the sea at Swanage itself. Purbeck has a quite staggering coastline, with tempting sandy beaches rising to roller-coaster cliffs further west. Among several geological marvels are the scoop-like bay of Lulworth Cove, the fossilised forest and the natural arch of Durdle Door.
Nearby: Brownsea Island, Clouds Hill (Laurence of Arabia’s cottage), Tank Museum (Bovington Camp),.
The Kent coast was for centuries an invasion target from across the Channel: the legacy is some of the most striking fortresses in the kingdom – from the high flint walls of Richborough Roman Fort to the Tudor Rose-shaped castles at Deal and Walmer. The king of them all is Dover Castle, with enough to fill a very full day. It has two millennia of history: Iron Age ramparts, a Roman lighthouse, an impressively complete Saxon church, and Henry II’s stone keep, which 820 years later stands virtually unchanged. Below ground, the castle’s Napoleonic-era tunnels are a secret world which witnessed the planning of the Dunkirk evacuation and D-Day landings in the Second World War, and the command centre, wartime hospital and telephone exchange have been vividly recreated.
Nearby: Broadstairs (seaside resort; Dickens’ Bleak House), Canterbury (cathedral, museums, abbey), Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (miniature gauge from Hythe to Dungeness).
We can thank William the Conqueror for the existence of this escapists’ paradise in the southwest corner of Hampshire. He set it up as a royal hunting reserve – deer still roam freely. The local landowners, known as commoners, have inherited privileges safeguarded by ancient laws, including the right to graze the ubiquitous New Forest ponies that you see everywhere. What has survived since Norman times is one of Europe’s largest lowland heaths, interspersed with patches of deeper forest, such as the Rhinefield and Bolderwood Ornamental Drives, with their magnificent show of exotic trees. Beautiful at any time of year, and you can roam pretty much anywhere, and there are welcoming pubs tucked away in quiet glades.
Nearby: Bournemouth (beaches, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum), National Motor Museum (Beaulieu Abbey), Winchester (cathedral, old city and museums),.
Within the high-ceilinged classical grandeur of the Pump Room, clinking teacups and the genteel strains of the Pump House Trio provide a perfect throwback to Georgian days. Then Beau Nash was Master of Ceremonies in Bath, and put it on the map as the place to see and be seen, and Jane Austen stayed in town and satirised Bath society in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. John Wood the Elder and Younger (father and son) were the architects largely responsible for creating the Bath-stone terraces, Royal Crescent, Assembly Rooms and Circus that make up Britain’s most elegant 18th-century townscape. The hot springs enthused the Romans to build baths and a water shrine, while Thermae Bath Spa (opening soon) will continue the tradition of wallowing in the waters.
Nearby: Bradford-on-Avon, Cheddar Gorge and Cheddar Caves, Wells (cathedral and Bishop’s Palace),
With skylarks and paragliders above, the patchwork of hedge-lined fields and woods of the Weald to the north and the sea to the right, the South Downs give an exalting feeling of feeling on top of the world, even if they aren’t particularly high. The South Downs Way follows ancient chalky tracks and crosses orchard-speckled, sheep-nibbled turf on its 101-mile journey from Winchester, to end spectacularly at dizzying cliffs of the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head just outside Eastbourne. Sample a stretch by driving up to Ditchling Beacon and walking or mountain-biking from there. Meanwhile the Ashdown Forest – in the High Weald – is the nostalgia-inducing landscape of sandy tracks and Scots pines where the Winnie the Pooh stories were set; and, yes, the Poohsticks Bridge is still there.
Nearby: Brighton (Royal Pavilion), Rye (old town, museums), Sheffield Park (gardens).
The celebrated Cotswold stone assumes a luscious deep golden hue around Broadway and Bourton-on-the-water. Sheep and the wool trade brought prosperity hereabouts from the 14th century onwards, and the legacy of those days is seen in numerous striking Perpendicular-style Gothic churches. Chipping Campden, with its generously wide main street, lined with former wool merchants’ houses, is a welcoming place for indulging in tea and scones, or browsing shops for crafts or antiques. Just to the north, encounter one of England’s most magical garden creations nearby at Hidcote Manor, a wonderful blend of formal and informal with topiary enclosing the whole site into a series of outdoor rooms.
Nearby: Batsford Park Arboretum (rare trees), Sezincote (Indian-style fantasy house that inspired Brighton’s Royal Pavilion), Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Royal Shakespeare Theatre).
Islands have for long been associated with sanctuary: at Osborne House Queen Victoria found her perfect retreat: ‘a place of one’s own, quiet and retired’. With her husband Albert she transformed a plain Georgian house into a spectacular Italianate pile surrounded by landscaped grounds sweeping down to the Solent. Ten years after it was completed, Albert died, and Victoria retreated for many years into her secluded world at Osborne. Inside little has changed since her death here in 1901, from the kitchen servery to the Durbar Room, which provides a setting for the sumptuous array of gifts from India. It is a memorable insight into the world of the 19th-century royals, instantly familiar from the movie Mrs Brown, which was filmed there.
Nearby: Carisbrooke Castle, Dinosaur Isle (Sandown), Tennyson Down (walking).
Nearby: Norfolk Broads (boating and walking), Orford Castle, Sutton Hoo (Anglo-Saxon ship burial site)