Seven of the best English Heritage sites to plan a weekend break around
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There's something about this ruined fort that once guarded the Hardknott Pass at the top of the Esk Valley that really fires the imagination (free; english-heritage.org.uk). Like Hadrian's Wall, it dates from the second century, and as you wander among the remnant walls and towers it's easy to visualise the Dalmatian soldiers once stationed here, marching to and from its sister forts at Ravenglass on the coast and Ambleside in the Lake District. Get there on the La'al Ratty steam train from Ravenglass (from £16; ravenglass-railway.co.uk) or drive up and over the terrifying Hardknott Pass, continuing to the charming Drunken Duck Inn in Ambleside.Details B&B doubles from £150 (drunkenduckinn.co.uk)
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This circular tower, on a rocky headland over the Fal estuary, was one of 30 forts and blockhouses built under Henry VIII to defend England's coasts — it still has an arsenal of guns to prove it (from £13.10). If you're self-catering you'll have it to yourselves when it closes; the Custodian's House (sleeping two) and Callie's Cottage (sleeping four) are within the fortress walls. Otherwise catch the foot ferry to St Mawes (from £9; falriver.co.uk) and visit St Mawes Castle — Pendennis's sister fort — on the other side of the estuary (from £9). Overnight at St Mawes Hotel, then venture to the St Just-in-Roseland church the next morning to see what John Betjeman described as the 'most beautiful churchyard on earth' (open daily, free; stjustandstmawes.org.uk).Details B&B doubles from £175 (stmaweshotel.com)
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The 'did they or didn't they' relationship between Elizabeth I and her handsome master of horse Robert Dudley remains one of the most compelling romances in English history. The queen gifted him this Norman castle in 1563 and he returned the favour by spending a fortune on it, readying it for her visits (from £15). Though the castle is now a ruin, the spectacular privy garden he created for her final stay in July 1575 — a 19-day extravaganza involving fireworks and a floating island complete with Lady of the Lake — has been restored using 16th-century descriptions and archaeological evidence. A young William Shakespeare may have attended or been inspired by the celebration; the town of his birth and the 12-room Townhouse boutique hotel are a 30-minute drive away.Details Room-only doubles from £100 (stratfordtownhouse.co.uk)
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Pilgrims seeking spiritual contemplation still walk barefoot to this tidal island, and it's reachable by car, along a causeway. The poetic setting lends the site an air of mysticism that is enhanced by its vestiges of early Christianity, from Anglo-Saxon runic name stones to the ruins of a 12th-century priory that replaced the 7th-century monastery (from £9). Children will enjoy the trail inspired by animals from the Lindisfarne Gospels, created before the devastating Viking raid of AD793. They'll love rolling down the dunes under Bamburgh Castle (£19; bamburghcastle.com) and spotting puffins and seals on Coquet Island (£20; puffincruisesamble.com). Base yourself at the Whittling House restaurant with rooms in Alnmouth for local seafood and a stylish night's sleep. Details B&B doubles from £150 (thewhittlinghouse.co.uk)
This mighty fortress is a no-brainer for anyone fascinated by the Second World War (from £25.90). Eighty-five years ago Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay coordinated Operation Dynamo from here, evacuating 338,226 Allied troops in 900 craft from Dunkirk. The story is told in the Secret Wartime Tunnels, while other tunnels are dedicated to the sieges of 1216 and 1217. It's a hit with families too — there's a siege-themed playground, a 12th-century keep and a northwest spur with panoramic views to the White Cliffs. A smart stay is on the cards after your visit at the Rose, just along the coast in hipster Deal. Details Room-only doubles from £110 (therosedeal.com)
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Not content with having a collection of paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough and co, this neoclassical stately home on Hampstead Heath is hosting an exhibition of John Singer Sargent portraits of American heiresses this summer (until October 5). Entrance to the house (remodelled by Robert Adam) and grounds (laid out by Humphry Repton) is free, as stipulated by the Iveagh Bequest Act of 1929. Which leaves plenty of money for dinner, bed and breakfast at the Bull & Last, a gastropub in Highgate with seven rooms, one named after Dido Belle, the illegitimate daughter of a former slave, who grew up at Kenwood.Details Room-only doubles from £170 (thebullandlast.co.uk)
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The thrilling remains of this Benedictine monastery, towering over a headland above this popular east coast town, will forever be associated with Bram Stoker's Dracula: when the blood-sucking count comes ashore as a black dog he runs up the 199 steps to the gothic church and graveyard at their foot (from £11.80). Whitby is not the only atmospheric abbey ruin in these parts. An hour's drive to the west, in a wooded valley of the River Rye, takes you to the grandly derelict Rievaulx Abbey, which has inspired British artists from JMW Turner to John Piper (from £11.80). And half an hour south of here is Byland Abbey, in yet more idyllic countryside (free). Conveniently, it stands right opposite the esteemed chef Tommy Banks's country pub with rooms, the Abbey Inn.Details B&B doubles from £245 (abbeyinnbyland.co.uk)
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Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
‘We downsized somewhere we'd never heard of'
This time last year, Jeff and Sheena Evans had never heard of Hildenborough, a pleasant Kent commuter village two miles north-west of Tonbridge and five miles south-east of Sevenoaks. Fast forward 12 months and the couple now live there with their cavapoo puppy, Beau. Their new floor-to-ceiling windows look out over greenery, trees and a carp pond – a view that's a world away from the one they enjoyed from their three-bedroom house in a gated development in Marbella on the Costa del Sol. 'The sunshine was fantastic – there's a romance about Spain and the way of life there,' says Jeff, 74. He had lived with Sheena, 70, in the country for 24 years and had intended to retire there. 'I'd play golf, and the summers were wonderful with people sitting outside long into the night every day of the week for four or five months. We miss that quite a lot.' For the most part, it was a desire to be close to their son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons that prompted the couple to downsize in the UK. 'We woke up one morning and thought: 'What are we doing? We have family and grandkids back here',' says Jeff, who runs a logistics business. Post-Brexit red tape also played a significant role in their decision. Non-EU citizens can now stay in Europe for only 90 days within any 180-day period without needing a visa and so the couple began the process of applying for a Spanish residency permit. After five years of continuous legal residency, one can apply for permanent residency. 'It was incredibly complex to get the visa in the first place,' Jeff says. 'You had to get things like reports from your doctor in the UK and take out private healthcare in Spain, which is very expensive. 'If you have Spanish residency, they don't want you to come back to England for long, which would make it difficult to see family – and if you run a business, you also have to move your tax affairs to Spain and I didn't want to do that.' Once the couple had made the decision to move back to England – and after enduring a rather 'traumatic' year of selling their Spanish house, suffering two aborted sales before it finally went through – they had to choose where to go. The last place they had lived before moving to Spain over two decades ago was Kingswood, in Surrey, and their son and his family live in Borough Green, Kent. Jeff needed easy access to London for work, so they ended up with a vast search area across both Kent and Surrey. They rented a property while they looked for a UK home and last September while visiting family they came across Berkeley's Oakhill, a 30-acre gated development in Hildenborough. 'I said to Sheena: 'Where's Hildenborough?' But it turns out our daughter-in-law's brother used to work there when it was offices and it looked lovely – a beautiful Grade II-listed building that had been converted into apartments,' Jeff explains. They went to see the site that day and the next morning put in an offer on a large two-bedroom apartment, which they bought for £930,000. They moved in two months later, at the end of November last year. Jeff decorated the apartment and, because they sold all their Spanish furniture with the Marbella house, they had to furnish it from scratch. 'That was expensive but exciting,' he jokes. Their leap of faith has paid off and they are getting to know their new area, often travelling into Tonbridge or making the 25-minute journey to Tunbridge Wells. 'I didn't know Kent that well, but it's a beautiful county and we've found some great restaurants and nice artisan coffee shops,' says Jeff. Most importantly, he and Sheena now spend plenty of quality time with their family who are only 20 minutes away, and they are making friends – helped by their puppy Beau, who joined them at the beginning of April. 'There's a path near our home and everyone stops to talk to Beau – it's like the old days when you'd chat to people over the fence,' Jeff says. 'A lot of people here are like-minded. It's not cheap to live here, but it's worth it.' House first, location second Downsizing usually has a practical impetus – wanting to reduce cost, hassle and maintenance, or free up equity for later life or to give to children or grandchildren. Yet Jeff and Sheena Evans are not the only ones seeking a complete change of scenery by moving somewhere they don't know, with research by Hamptons estate agency showing that downsizers move 40pc further than average buyers. 'In the country house market, we often find that buyers choose the house first and the location second – especially when downsizing later in life when proximity to schools and the workplace become less important,' says Claire Carter, of John D Wood & Co estate agency. 'Often the move is dictated by being a certain distance from family and grandchildren, but there's definitely an element of people seeking a shift in lifestyle and something different.' Last year, Carter sold a house to a British couple who had recently returned from 25 years working in pharmaceuticals in America and living in a Boston 'brownstone' (a 19th-century townhouse). Looking for a new start, they wanted to relocate to the UK and, with family spread between Kent and the north of England, they decided to settle somewhere in the south-east to allow their children to visit easily. 'They ended up in a chocolate-box cottage with a lake in the garden in Hadlow Down, a rural East Sussex village they had never heard of before they came to view the property,' says Carter. 'They visited on a day of horizontal rain, but the setting – and the house – completely won them over.' The sale went through in only six weeks and when she handed over the keys, Carter wrote out a full list of everything the couple might need in the area – from the nearest butcher to Waitrose and the farmers' market. 'They really had no clue where anything was,' she says. For the first few weeks, they'd text her every couple of days with questions. Look before you leap While many of those who have leapt feet-first into an area love their new neighbourhood, some inevitably don't. So research is key for those thinking of downsizing somewhere they don't know, advises Harry Gladwin of buying agency The Buying Solution. 'Local insight becomes absolutely critical,' says Gladwin, who works in the Cotswolds. 'When it's done well, downsizing can be hugely liberating. But without the right support, it's very easy to get wrong – and hard and costly to undo.' Going against the tide and moving away from most people's downsizing dream, Dave Fenwick, 77, and his wife, Rita, 71, upped sticks from Cornwall after moving there from Shropshire eight years ago. The couple have come to realise how far their 'forever home' – a three-bedroom, three-storey townhouse in Truro – was from their family, who live across Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. 'While we loved living close to the coast, we had placed over 200 miles between us and our children and grandchildren,' Dave says. The couple began researching areas further east, aiming to find somewhere a maximum of two hours from family. They looked everywhere from Bath to Telford and Devizes to Coventry. They ended up settling on a three-bedroom semi at City & Country's Burderop Park development, a collection of 58 homes near Swindon in Wiltshire. Despite not knowing the area at all well, they moved there last year. 'Living in Cornwall, once you've done places like Newquay, Padstow and St Ives, you feel as if you've pretty much seen all there is to be seen down the coast,' Dave explains. 'We're now close to so many places – we've been to Bath, Oxford and Cheltenham... We also have the North Wessex Downs on our doorstep. We can be doing something totally different each weekend.' 'It's our time in the sun' Happily, Zenos and Lynne Christodoulides have no regrets about their seaside move. For the past 13 years, the couple have lived in north Manchester with their three children and two dogs. 'We thought it would be a great place for teenagers, with lots of life and culture, plus a hippie scene – everyone's vegan,' says Zenos, 58, a teacher who is retiring this summer. However, now that the children have grown up and left home, the couple found they were 'rattling around in a four-bedroom detached house,' he explains. 'One daughter is in London, the other is in Bristol and our son is starting his career in Manchester – but he could be moved anywhere so there is nothing keeping us [there]. As we reached the stage where we stopped working full-time, we thought: wouldn't it be nice to live by the sea?' They started looking for homes in Cornwall and found one they liked but the legal report said it was built on a tin mine. That necessitated further costly reports, remedial work or both. So they did more research. 'Devon is next to Cornwall and we found a town called Brixham – not Brixton, as my mother initially thought – and fell in love with the place.' The couple, who had no mortgage on their Manchester house, bought a two-bedroom bungalow into which they moved in June. 'We have released some equity that will partially fund our retirement,' says Zenos, who has a physics technician job starting in Torquay in September. 'It's mornings-only but I couldn't retire from teaching and do nothing, so this will be perfect. I'd like to learn to surf and can do that in the afternoons.' While it's early days, the couple have found the neighbours to be 'lovely'. 'We visited in February half term and, unlike many other seaside towns in winter, it was bustling,' Zenos says. 'It's a fishing town so doesn't rely only on tourists. Everything feels like it's slotted into place and after many years of work and ferrying children around, we feel it's our time in the sun. Moving from Manchester to Devon is the best thing we've ever done.'
The Sun
4 hours ago
- The Sun
A fictional UK train route that featured in a TV show could soon become real
BACK in the 1970s and 80, a TV series called 'End of Part One' featured a tube station that existed in Lewisham, alongside tube stops in Ladywell, Catford and one called the 'Edge of the World.' There has never been a tube station in Lewisham - the train station only serves the DLR and National Rail, but fiction could soon become reality with Bakerloo Line extension plans stretching to the London borough. 3 Win one of 8 incredible holidays to the Caribbean, Mexico and Greece by voting in The Sun's Travel Awards - enter to win here An extension of London's Bakerloo Line has been considered since 2014, but a lack of government funding has prevented it from taking place. But now th extension could actually happen thanks to a newly submitted planning permission, alongside several other new tube stations in South London. Burgess Park and Old Kent Road would be built from scratch, and New Cross Gate and Lewisham - which both currently don't have a Underground station - would each have one added. While the project has not fully been given the go ahead, the route has been planned, and it was safeguarded by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander in February. According to Time Out, if the extension went ahead, it would allow 27 trains to run per hour on the line, which would mean a train every two minutes. The project is costly and a lack of funding is preventing it from getting under way, but TfL and the Mayor of London are in discussions about how to fund it. According to TfL, the plans include extending the Bakerloo Line from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham and building a new Bakerloo line ticket hall at Elephant & Castle. The route would then run from Elephant & Castle along the Old Kent Road and at New Cross Gate. If the plans were approved, TfL has projected that work could begin in 2030 and be complete by 2040. European sleeper train with private cabins 3 The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway originally opened in 1906 but was quickly renamed after a journalist nicknamed it the Bakerloo Line and the name stuck. There have already been a number of extensions to the line over the decades, including at Elephant & Castle, Queen's Park and Watford Junction. Today, the line is often known for its 1972 Mark Two tube trains that feature brown and grey retro interiors. If the extension was built, then it could connect Lewisham to central London in 15 minutes. Three scenic train journeys you can take in the UK Cornish Coast - One trip that rail enthusiasts seem to love is along a stretch of the Cornish coast and takes just 10 minutes to complete. The route from St Erth to St Ives only stops at Carbis Bay en route to its final destination, but the views out the window for the whole journey are pretty spectacular. Another highlight of the journey is that St Ives station is situated right next to Porthminster beach, meaning the sand and sea can be accessed almost immediately. Meanwhile, the station is less than a ten minute walk into town, where the harbour, shops, galleries and pubs can be explored. Durham to Edinburgh - Another train route that people in the UK love is the East Coast train line between Durham and Edinburgh, with coastal views and city landscapes among the sights that can be seen out the window. Newcastle, Berwick, Lindisfarne and Durham Cathedral are all among the highlights on that route. Scotland's West Highland Line - While Scotland is home to plenty of famous landmarks and top attractions, it also has one of the most breathtaking train routes in the world. Scotland's West Highland Line has previously been dubbed the best rail journey in the world by Wanderlust - and it's easy to see why. The journey from Glasgow to Fort William is one of my favourite train routes - and I've interrailed through mainland Europe. With mountain landscapes, serene lochs, wistful moors, and wildlife all visible through the train window, it's certainly a route all holidaymakers should consider doing at least once. Next month, there is also the chance to hop onboard a London Underground vintage train on a secret railway line that isn't on tube maps. Plus, this is the incredible train journey that'll 'ruin every other railway trip you take'. 3
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
M20 in Kent to close overnight for Operation Brock removal
A stretch of the M20 in Kent is to close overnight for the Operation Brock contraflow system to be traffic-holding measure for lorries queueing to cross the English Channel was set to be deactivated between 20:00 on Sunday and 06:00 BST on road will be closed between junctions eight and nine, heading towards London, and junctions seven and nine heading towards the coast.A Kent and Medway Resilience Forum (KMRF) spokesperson said the removal of Operation Brock, which was deployed on 16 July, was due to a decrease in expected tourist traffic. Once the system, between Maidstone and Ashford, has been dismantled, the motorway will reopen with three carriages on each side of the road and the national speed limit back in place.A spokesperson for National Highways said: "These times have been chosen to minimise disruption to road users and ensure the roads are suitable for the traffic."Drivers are being advised to follow diversion signs over their SatNav management plans will remain in place in Dover to deal with any unexpected disruption, the KMRF added. Longer-term solutions The contraflow system is used to hold freight traffic heading towards LeShuttle in Folkestone and the Port of is is funded by the Department for Transport (DfT), with decisions on its use made by the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum (KMRF).A BBC Freedom of Information (FoI) request to National Highways revealed Operation Brock cost more than £2.7m to roll out across 10 occasions between Howe, highways and transport strategic resilience manager at the KMRF, previously said tourist traffic was "causing huge chaos" in DfT said it was looking at longer-term solutions, which could include off-road sites. A KMRF spokesperson said it was "committed" to removing the system "as soon as the data showed that would be possible and we are pleased to deliver on that promise".It said its work with central government to identify a better traffic management solution would continue.
