Five pricey country staycations ACTUALLY worth forking out for
From reimagined Victorian coaching inns in Scotland to botanically-inclined weekenders in the Cotswolds...
You’re easily numbed to the small matter of room rates as a travel journalist – particularly when luxury hotel hopping around the Med, trading Frette linen kips and Michelin starred suppers for a midnight scribble (fourth week and counting). But even the rustic-luxe Noto masserie are no match for Blighty’s farm-to-fork country pile hotels, stripping visitors of their weekly salary before they’ve even quaffed their first glass of £32 English sparkling wine.
It’s a woeful tale.
Most of the hoteliers I speak to are struggling with staff retention. Bills have gone up, taxes have gone up, and narrowing profit margins are making them question whether the sweat’s really worth it.
Of course, the billionaire vanity projects are ticking along nicely – armies of gardeners, money potholes plugged as feverishly as the wall space with Lichtensteins and Picassos (art deserves an audience). But when friends earning almost ten times my salary complain about the bill at the end of a weekend staycation, it makes me question whether the entire model needs a rethink.
Here’s my theory/recommended strategy having reviewed hundreds of hotels and most well-known British staycations.
Either you find some charming pub-with-rooms or airbnb and hunker down there, exploring the area and cracking on with whatever activity or treasure hunt you had in mind. Or, you lean into the pampering hotel life, stay in its walls for days, and that’s when it’s worth forking out a little (lot) more to be wrapped in somewhere pretty with great food and something that gives it its edge – superb spa/ an extensive cellar with tastings/ a cooking school/a niche whisky bar.
You can end up pottering around a hotel for £890 a night, having achieved very little except a bath and afternoon tea (additional charge, obvs) if you don’t do your homework. Maybe that’s what some people need. But the notion of a swanky staycation feels flawed and the prices are wildly out of touch.
There are, however, a few smart British staycations where the bill wouldn’t leave a bitter taste in my mouth. Quite the opposite, I’d toil away to fund a return.
I’ve recommended these to friends for minimoons, romantic escapes, getaways with your best friends and mother-daughter weekends. Enjoy…
Thyme, The Cotswolds: for the spa, kitchen garden grub and the gardens






Forming a good chunk of the pretty village of Southrop, Thyme is spread across various honey-stone houses, barns and cottages, all renovated in step with the bucolic idyll. It’s not overly polished, but neither is it by any stretch scruffy – it’s lavishly loyal to its rural location, and to a long history of country house design – note the botanical wallpaper (illustrated by Thyme’s matriarch, Caryn Hibbert), and the claw-footed heritage baths parked next to mullioned windows with views of the garden topiary.
Everything is choreographed around the pretty English gardens and courtyards dotted with fountains. Their herbs infuse cocktails in the Baa (go for the Rhubarb Royale), their veg garden bounty guides the daily menus, and their scent can be found in the bathroom soaps, the spa oils, the candles. It’s pure botanical reverie and you leave, smelling of an English garden in spring.
Thyme started as a cooking school, and the food here at the Ox Barn is worth pootling across the Cotswolds for alone (think nettle veloute and asparagus, or plump roast chicken with wild garlic), or you can book a table at the Swan Inn – a cosy, low-beamed Cotswolds old timer smothered in wisteria.
The Meadow Spa is a little sanctuary of calm - no cringe yogi music or clinical looking rooms where they perform botox and deep tissue in one afternoon. You’ll hear real birds, smell the garden herbs lathered onto your back and most likely fall fast asleep. The pool is a glorious spot to linger in for an entire afternoon (they serve cocktails in the pool house), and the walking routes allow you to really drop your bags and bed in for an entire weekend.
The Fife Arms, Braemar: for the landscape, the art, and the photogenic four posters






The drive through the Cairngorms to this old Victorian coaching inn is an experience in itself – a mesmerising wiggle through wrinkly glens and snow-capped peaks, and not a soul in sight. Braemar, where the Fife Arms sits, was close enough to Balmoral for Queen Victoria to spruce up its architecture, leaving it a prince among a few frogs in this part of Scotland. Then its sprawling Victorian coaching inn had the good fortune of falling into Hauser & Wirth’s hands, the art power couple behind Art Farm. This will explain the mix of Picassos and Freuds lining the walls, and the drawing room’s psychedelic ceiling, but merely layered onto Victoriana quirk – a taxidermy trophy wall, four poster mahogany beds in some rooms, trinkets and treasures.
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