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Accomodation Guide from CADOGANGUIDES by Guy McDonald Confine yourself to the mustier guesthouses lining every A-road, and England seems a sad place. Seek out the abundance of charming places to stay and England warms up. On offer are a variety of places to stay, from medieval pilgrim inns and hospices to rustic cottages buried in wisteria, white-painted Victorian seafront hotels, elegant 18th century merchants’ houses, assorted barns, windmills, chapels, lighthouses and castles, country pubs and farmhouses, family homes full of clutter and home-cooking smells, and a mass of bay-windowed townhouses.
Of those approved by the Tourist Board, standards range from the functional – ‘here’s your key, breakfast at 8’ – to gorgeous and/or luxurious. The board, in common with the AA and RAC, uses a 1-5 rating scheme: stars for hotels and diamonds for guesthouses, inns, farmhouses and bed and breakfasts. They slap gold and silver awards on anywhere outstanding. Small 5-diamond guesthouses do not offer the same service as 5-star hotels – don not expect liveried flunkies and 24-hour room service in your B&B. The rating system works well with hotels, hostels, camping and caravan sites, but less well for guesthouses and B&Bs because it rewards facilities to the detriment of the charm that makes guests feel lucky. This partly explains the number of L-shaped bedrooms with the obligatory bathrooms squeezed into the corners. Not all properties put themselves up for inspection. Hotels  The luxury hotels are fabulous properties including country houses, castles and swanky city-centre hotels with beautifully furnished public rooms and bedrooms with character. Some are set in gorgeous gardens; all have leisure facilities. The dining is superb and the service all you could wish for.
As for the expensive hotels, in most cases, you will be won over by elegant rooms, high quality food and attractive furnishings. Not always, though. To stay in the centre of town, you may be forced to pay these prices.
The moderate places include delightful properties with an eye for home comforts and charm, from Victorian townhouses, Georgian rectories and old stone farmhouses to quaint seaside B&Bs. Remarkably, few places fall into the cheap category, generally the small B&Bs in the remote areas. The prices reflect a down-to-earth quality in their proprietors.
B&Bs, Guesthouses, Farms and Inns  At the top end where you might find a rambling country house with a walled garden or a mellow townhouse in a well-heeled provincial town, guest accommodation is close to hotel standard in its professionalism. The character of the smaller places, however, is determined by their owners, whose tastes, hobbies, interests, backgrounds, aspirations and housekeeping skills are all reflected in the décor, furnishings and atmosphere. If you want to know the real England, stick to diamond-graded properties as opposed to starred hotels. But be wary of five-diamond properties, where the level of care is misplaced in gift-wrapped chocolates on pink satin pillows, an en-suite Jacuzzis. In four-diamond places the comfort and care matches the informality of the service. Three-diamond houses might be a real treat – a beautiful old house with threadbare rugs – or merely well-maintained with the right choice of breakfast cereals. Two- and one-diamond properties are clean and comfortable and often take the form of delightful family homes, farmhouses or country pubs. You are unlikely to find en-suite bedrooms, but at least your room will have four-square proportions.
Working farmhouses are always memorable and welcoming, and remember what it is to be truly hospitable, perhaps knocking you up baked beans on toast with the children if you are too frazzled to go into town for dinner.
Best avoided in B&Bs is the temptation to stay awake all night glued to the television set on a high ledge in the corner of your room. It is no good feeling saturated with satellite TV the next morning, when you will need all your reserves to negotiate the indigestible ritual of social awkwardness that is the full English breakfast. The more impersonal inns can provide a welcome alternative to the awkward intimacies of B&Bs, but often the standard of the rooms is not all that high. ‘Functional’ is the word most often applied in this book to rooms above pubs.
Renting a House or Cottage  If there is more than one of you, it is worth exploring an area from a rented cottage or house. They are often the most attractive places to stay in the most enticing countryside, from remote moorland houses, seaside cottages and moth eaten rectories to converted windmills, castles, Martello towers, lighthouses and Victorian coastal fortresses. You can also enjoy the slower-paced domestic side of places: eating locally smoked fish or cooking vegetables from the farmers’ market, putting together picnics, reading the odd selection of books on the shelves and playing board games into the night.
Youth Hostels and Camping Barns  The YHA has more than 220 hostels in England and Wales ranging from the 1960s city-centre blocks to rustic cottages and semi-ruinous medieval castles in the middle of a forest. These are nonsense, cheap alternative to guest accommodation for rugged outdoorsy type. The bedrooms and bathrooms are communal, divided only between the sexes. In some of them you cater for yourself, in others breakfast, dinners and packed lunches are available. One-year membership of the international Youth Hostel Federation entitles you to stay in YHA hostels all over England and the world. There is no age limit for members in England, and only occasionally are you expected to pull your weight with domestic chores. There are discounts for under-18s and families. With your membership card you receive the YHA Go Accommodation Guide, which details all the hostels in England and Wales. You can also request brochures including Rent-a-Hostel and family breaks (children under five are not allowed to stay in the dormitories, and not all hostels have family rooms). You can take out membership in any YHA hostel, and get a bed on the same night. Hostels are cheap, again with discounts for under-18s and families. You don’t have to provide your own bedding.
There are also 50 camping barns or bunkhouses in the wilds of England, including the national parks of Dartmoor, the Peak District and the Lake District. These converted farm buildings are owned and operated by farmers. Communal bunk beds, showers, rudimentary cookers and fridges combine with remote rural locations to make these some of the more adventurous places to stay. You don’t need to be a YHA member to stay, and dogs are often welcome. Ask for the YHA brochure Camping Barns in England. YHA, Trevelyan House, Dimple Road, Matlock, Derbyshire DE43 3YH.
Camping and Caravanning  There is no longer such a thing in England as a charming patch of grass for you to pitch your tent on without getting into trouble. Ask the farmer in advance of pitching your tent in his field; he may well be pleased to help you, and might even point you in the direction of clean water and fresh produce. It also saves a lot of nervousness about getting rumbled in the morning. Otherwise you might just as well book into a campsite where there are washing facilities and toilets. Campsite are graded by VisitBritain from one to five star according to the standard and range of services – showers, toilets and convenience store rank high in the ratings. VisitBritain produces Camping and Caravanning guides. The National Trust also has around 50 camping and caravan sites around England, listed on www.nationaltrust.org.uk and in a brochure. The Caravan Club, 01342 326 944, has more than 200 sites around the country for members and non-members, with grass and all-weathered pitches, waste disposal points, showers and laundry facilities.
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