6Weekend
house Coffee serves the best flat white for
miles. From here, after wood-fired pizza
from Sutor Creek, you can embark to see
the world’s most hardy pod of dolphins
with EcoVentures. Ian Rankin’s a fan of the
place. You should be too.
Stay Newhall Mains, B&B doubles from
£160 (newhall-mains.com)Tobermory Mull
No purple prose, no photograph, prepares
you for Mull’s capital. It’s the most cheer-
ful, most escapist seafront in Scotland:
every-colour façades along Main Street
reflected in the bay, fishing boats unload-
ing creels, the tang of seaweed mingling
with that of vinegar and chips. Buy yours
from the van by the pier. Walk them off
with a two-hour coast loop to Rubha nan
Gall lighthouse. Or how about a digestif?
Tobermory Distillery has been producing
single malts since 1798.
Stay Glengorm Castle, B&B doubles
from £160 (glengormcastle.co.uk)Beddgelert Gwynedd
To attract visitors in the 1800s, villagers
invented a mawkish yarn about a prince
who mistakenly slew his faithful hound,
Gelert, directing visitors to the mutt’s faux
grave. All they needed to do was show
postcards of their village. It’s a charmer,
straddling a burbling river in grey stone
houses and blooming flower boxes. Slabs
of mountain rise on either side; the circuit
up to Moel Hebog is a belter; refuel after-
wards at Hebog Eat. It’s also a stop on the
West Highland line to Porthmadog, one of
Britain’s great steam train journeys.
Stay Sygun Fawr, B&B doubles from
£105 (sygunfawr.co.uk)Alfriston East Sussex
Welcome to the sweet spot of the South
Downs, as traditional in its pretty
green and medieval looks as it is
bohemian: there are arty curios in Objet
Trouvé, books in Much Ado Books and
vintage fashions in the Dressing Room.
Pillowing the lot are chalk hills made
for strolling: to Wilmington for the Long
Man Brewery; to Berwick church, painted
by the Bloomsbury set. “It’s enough to
float a whole population in happiness,”
Virginia Woolf reckoned. Still true,
especially if there’s fizz with lunch at Rath-
finny wine estate (rathfinnyestate.com).
Stay The Star, B&B doubles from £
(thepolizzicollection.com)a silhouette in silvery sea — King Arthur’s
Avalon, they say. At dusk that doesn’t
sound far-fetched at all.
Stay Gwesty Ty Newydd, B&B doubles
from £100 (gwesty-tynewydd.co.uk)Cromarty Black Isle
Although there’s a sense of space and
remoteness about this village poked into
the Moray Firth, Cromarty is a cultured
beauty. Art studios and interesting shops
(I recommend the Emporium bookshop)
occupy 18th-century whitewashed fisher-
men’s cottages. A new community-built
cinema is on the wharf, where Slaughter-Bamburgh
Northumberland
Is any village more thrilling for children?
Its broad greens provide space to run. The
butchers R Carter & Son sells sausage rolls
of the gods; the Potted Lobster is the first
pick for meals. The RNLI Grace Darling
Museum tells of the thrilling rescue by
Victorian Britain’s greatest heroine (a
memorial to her is inside St Aidan’s
Church). Behind it all rises our best castle,
a vast Norman hulk like ocular tinnitus —
you never quite get used to it. Tour its
battlements, then hit the beach, three
stonking miles of sand and dunes.
Stay Beadnell Towers, B&B doubles from
£99 (beadnelltowers.co.uk)Aberdaron
Llyn Peninsula
It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it village at
Wales’s Land’s End, a place steeped in
spirituality. Pilgrims embarking to Bard-
sey Island felt it (learn more in the Porth y
Swnt National Trust centre before you
cross on a day trip). So did the local
pastor-poet RS Thomas, who preached in
St Hywyn’s Church above a beach. Buy
fish and chips from Sblash Caban Pysgod,
then enjoy the walk to inspire poetry to
Mynydd Mawr. From its hillside Bardsey isAshford-in-the-Water
Peak District
When it comes to prettiness Ashford
doesn’t muck about. Its Sheepwash Bridge
is a beauty and, Visit England reckons,
our finest Poohsticks venue. Limestone
cottages are pillowed in immaculate
gardens. The village’s six wells are dressed
every June and leather thwocks on willow
at summer weekends. Did I mention
Thornbridge Hall? Listed, obviously. Mar-
vellous gardens. You can walk there en
route to the Monsal Head, one of the
Peaks’ best viewpoints. Since a visit is a no-
brainer your dilemma is over lunch. For
tasty pub grub try the Bull’s Head.
Stay The Peacock at Rowsley,
B&B doubles from £
(thepeacockatrowsley.com)
Great Budworth Cheshire
You may know Cheshire’s finest. Its red-
brick and timbers stood in for 19th-century
Hastings in the BBC’s War of the Worlds.
Camels ambled along High Street in
BBC1’s Our Zoo. Location scouts love the
place because it’s almost entirely grade II
listed. You will for its suggestion of a
gentler, more romantic yesteryear —
probably why Harry Styles wooed Taylor
Swift here. They had lunch opposite the
church at the George and Dragon, then
strolled for ice creams at the Ice Cream
Farm. So should you.
Stay The Roebuck Inn, B&B doubles from
£115 (roebuckinnmobberley.co.uk)
Polperro Cornwall
A Mousehole before it became famous,
where whitewashed houses jostle around a
pipsqueak harbour, where the community
has tackled traffic with a park-and-ride,
where a local choir sings shanties on the
quay on summer evenings. That’s not to
say there are no holiday lets or galleries or
pasty shops in Polperro’s cat’s cradle of
lanes: Polperro Bakery gets my money
(polperro-bakery.business.site). But the
mood is far less manic than other Cornish
honeypots and the beach quieter —
Talland Bay and remote Lansallos beach
are emptier still.
Stay Talland Bay Hotel, B&B doubles
from £210 (tallandbayhotel.co.uk)
Grassington Yorkshire
Grassington in Wharfedale, Yorkshire’s
best dale, starred in Channel 5’s All
Creatures Great and Small series. So it’s a
beauty; a cobbled square (home to a Folk
Museum), pale grey stone and slate, God’s
own country at the end of every street.
Unlike fictional Darrowby, however, it
buzzes with creativity — note the galleries
and shops of curios and higgledy-piggledy
bookshop — all tempered by a pervading
no-nonsense Yorkshireness. And that
makes real-life Grassington far more
interesting. Among abundant cafés, the
Retreat bistro always delivers the goods.
Stay The Angel at Hetton, half-board
doubles from £340 (angelhetton.co.uk)
Staithes North Yorkshire
Locals say Captain Cook came from
Staithes, but that can’t be true: he’d never
have left if so. England’s prettiest harbour
is a ridiculously picturesque muddle of
houses between cliffs. Cobbled ginnels
squirm downhill — they say Dog Loup off
Church Street is the world’s narrowest
alley at 46cm — past a cute butcher’s,
tearooms, a museum on Cook and smart
Staithes Gallery, until you arrive at what
was one of the busiest fishing harbours in
the northeast of England. Book with Real
Staithes to cast a line or go on sea safari.
Eat lunch at the Cod & Lobster.
Stay Estbek House, half-board doubles
from £275 (estbekhouse.co.uk)
Polperro, CornwallThe Star, Alfriston, East SussexGETTY IMAGES; PAUL MASSEY; ALAMYBamburgh, Northumberland