There's nothing quite like a British adventure – sprawling landscapes, bracing weather and wonderful wildlife spotting can be found right here on our isles. Plus, of course, some smart places to stay and delicious places to eat. These are our favourite staycations right now.
On a curious early summer weekend, when Glasgow is somehow hotter than Madrid , I find myself waking in a bell tent on Jura’s wild northeast, going for a morning dip in mirror-like water among yawning grey seals – and wondering why I’ve spent all these years escaping my home country. I’m on a short version of the Hebridean Sea Safari run by Glenapp Castle, a place of turreted grandeur on a magical but oft-missed stretch of the Ayrshire coast, best known as the birthplace of Robert Burns. While the sea safari is bookended by nights in the grand but not impersonal old hotel – with its croquet lawn, Victorian glasshouse and resident bagpiper – the Jura setup is off-grid safari-style, in an idyllic spot not far from the Barnhill house where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eight-Four.
Getting there on the hotel’s little 12-seater boat is an adventure, via Ailsa Craig, the volcanic plug island known for its 40,000 seabirds and the unique granite used curling stones. Knowledgeable local skipper Sandy Campbell navigates us to picnics on lonely islets, drams at Islay’s lovely whitewashed Ardbeg distillery, and a trip to a 6th-century chapel on the haunting island of Eilean Mor MacCormick. Pods of porpoises frolic, and a playful minke whale shimmers in the afternoon sun.
We’re too late for the usual activity of fishing mackerel for our supper, but a three-course dinner with a sublime local rack of lamb is remarkable given that electricity comes from a generator. Afterwards, we get philosophical with drinks round the fire, our little group including Paul Szkiler, Glenapp’s energetic Yorkshire -born owner, a born-again Christian who is also a social impact-driven equity investor in West Africa, especially Sierra Leone. The chat stays with me for a night of deep baby-sleep in my cosy tent, lit by a candelabra of tea lights; and over a full Scottish breakfast (English plus haggis and black pudding) after my swim the next day.
The seals are impassive as we leave for the mainland via the Corryvreckan whirlpool and a sighting of nesting sea eagles – but I feel as if a soulful reset has been pressed. Toby Skinner Four-night adventures, including two nights on Jura, start at £15,950 for two guests; glenappcastle.com The water and sky are a gunmetal grey – with only the white tips of the waves distinguishing the two.
Yet here I am, dressed in a dry suit, pulling on my snorkel mask, readying to make a giant leap into the North Sea. I’m near the Farne Islands, a little archipelago off the coast of Bamburgh, in Northumberland , which might have seen more hermits than divers over the centuries. “Ready?” says James Learwood, the co-founder of Fifth Point Diving, the only PADI-certified eco-dive centre in Britain, and one of only 11 in the entire world.
I nod and step off the boat, emerging into a world of streaming kelp forests that glisten gold; rocks coated with red-tipped dahlia anemones and grey seals that follow my fins inquisitively, trying to make me play with them like Labrador puppies. My experience with this forward-thinking Northumberland team began the day before at their HQ in Blyth where, courtesy of their onsite tank, I learn how to improve my buoyancy and “trim” so that I don’t unwittingly damage coral when we explore the outdoor waters the next day. Everything about their set-up produces responsible divers: open water courses come with a PADI Aware add-on that teaches environmental protection; advanced courses pair with a Dive Against Debris course that qualifies how to remove and log rubbish found beneath the waves; dive gear is made from recycled ocean plastic; and prices include a donation to the Tynemouth Seal Hospital.
Afterwards, in Bamburgh, I feast on panhaggerty pie (potatoes, cheese, and onion) at The Copper Kettle pub and enjoy locally and sustainably sourced seafood at The Potted Lobster. My adventures end each night at Trees at Tughall, in one of three Scandi-style wooden cabins whose huge picture windows make the outside feel part of the room, warming me every bit as much as the log burner that glows as red as the setting sun. Phoebe Smith Fifth Point Diving offers seal dives from £175 and snorkels from £65; fifthpointdiving.
com . Cabins at Trees at Tughall from £300 for two nights; treesattughall.com A few miles from Wells-next-the-Sea, I step off the world.
On board the 30-foot Salford sailing whelk yacht, there’s silence except for the creak of ropes and gurgle of our wake. I turn off my phone – nothing on land now seems important – and let time unspool. On overnight trips with Norfolk’s Coastal Exploration Company, your clock becomes tidal.
“Tides are driven by the sun and moon, so far bigger than us,” skipper-owner Henry Chamberlain says. “They put your own problems into perspective.” For an ex-Royal Marine officer, Henry is good at this soulful stuff.
Before we anchor behind the uninhabited Stolt Island, he talks about how a boat reframes a coastline of subtle beauty. When we dive overboard it’s into water like silver silk. Such moments distinguish these trips.
If a boat is the end point for most sailing trips, for Henry it’s the means to an end. His are unscripted micro-adventures, guided by tides and weather; 24-hour exercises in living in the moment. We drift through creeks in wetsuits as the tide fills and brew tea in the salt-marsh while geese honk in huge skies.
We chat and catnap on board and, at low water, squelch across mudbanks to pick samphire. The day seems to stretch. Onboard accommodation is basic: hammocks or camping mats beneath a canvas canopy; a thunderbox in the bow.
Yet with a woodburner lit, we eat fish stew in a golden creek at dusk as seals sing. Henry tells me about lives changed out here. I can believe it.
His trips press pause on busy schedules, revealing the stillness and beauty in slowing to the rhythm of the tides. James Stewart Overnight trips for up to six, including food, from £1,500; coastalexplorationcompany.co.
uk Driving down green-cloistered lanes, across heather-ruffled heathland, North Somerset is unknown territory for me – the coastal part you rarely hear about, Quantock Hills rising to the east, high cliffs rearing above the Bristol Channel. Village names stir memories of A-level English Lit – Coleridge’s Nether Stowey and Porlock – while others sound like characters in an Ealing comedy: Brompton Ralph, Huish Champflower. I’m navigating while my friend Rufus steers the Land Rover Defender, Cherry Belle , our two teenage sons in the back.
Pheasants skittle cartoonishly ahead, disappearing into hedgerows at the last minute. The Defender is our home for the next two nights, but our itinerary has been designed by Wild With Consent, which matches campers to farmers with empty fields. There aren’t any frills – the luxury is having the field to yourselves for a night or two; we reach the first, Tripps Farm, as night falls, headlights bumping over tussocks as we drive through the gate.
Our Landrover is kitted out with everything we need – table, chairs, lamps, camp kitchen, even books and playing cards, all packed away as neatly as my dad’s old metal toolbox (food and sleeping bags we bring ourselves). But the highlight is the ingenious rooftop tent, which cantilevers out and up in minutes; inside, I’m enveloped by the warm nostalgia of top-bunk memories from childhood. Next morning I’m up early and out into the sunlight, seeing the view for the first time from our high field encampment – mist smudging the Brendon Hills below, birdsong from old oaks, not a soul in sight.
The vanlife independence our rugged Defender gives us kicks in fully on our second day, and we drive in and out of Exmoor then down to seaside Watchet, eating fish’n’chips below a mournful statue of the Ancient Mariner. There’s time for a hike up to the cairn at Dunkery Beacon, the highest point in Somerset, the water far below us glittering across to Wales, before we make camp at Stockham Farm near Dulverton, foraging for firewood and cooking over our camp stove, watching red deer skip in the woods below. Rick Jordan A two-night self-drive experience staying at Tripp Farm and Stockham Farm, including 4X4 hire with Defender Campers, can be booked through Wild With Consent from £330; wildwithconsent.
com While the snow drifts and Arctic blasts of the UK in January won’t see many rushing for their trunks, such conditions are nirvana for swim coach Gilly McArthur. “Cold water calms my mind and body and allows me to connect with myself in a deep way – just like meditation,” she says on the wind-whipped northern shore of Lake Windermere (water temperature five degrees) as I tentatively strip to my shorts. With the sun setting over the snow-capped Langdales, I tiptoe into frigid depths that force expletives onto trembling lips.
Gripped by determination and guided by McArthur, I focus on my exhalation and submerge myself, managing a few minutes of shaky breast-stroke before racing for my dryrobe and thermos. Growing interest in cold-water swimming since lockdown has dovetailed with extensive research extolling its eye-catching virtues – reducing anxiety, depression and inflammation; boosting mood, metabolism and mental clarity – helping explain a near-evangelical following. Here, the contours of the Lake District form the dramatic backdrop for a three-day retreat run by a trio of cold-water experts at the elegant Rothay Manor country house hotel in Ambleside, where, after disrobing in the cosy boot room, the post-dip thaw continues with a fireside debrief and film screenings accompanied by tea and cake.
Over subsequent outings – to an ice-covered Rydal Water and a rain-lashed Lough Rigg, I learn to control my breathing and start to revel in the hormone-induced euphoria gained from extended submersion – as well as the beauty of the surrounding fells. “There’s a fast learning curve where your body understands what’s happening and you’re better able to use your breath and acclimatise,” says McArthur, noting its ability to increase resilience in other areas of our life. “The cold can be a great teacher – the more difficult things you try, the more you feel you might feel able to do.
” Ben Olsen Rothay Manor’s cold-water retreat is £650 for two nights on a B&B basis, including three guided open-water swims, robes, reading material, high tea and pop-up cinema. rothaymanor.co.
uk It’s a scene I’ve seen countless times in Westerns – a herd of wild horses sweeping down a prairie plain, hooves kicking up clods of turf. Instead of the big skies of Montana, though, this is the wide-open grassland of west Norfolk, just east of King’s Lynn. Watching intently alongside me is a lurcher called Derek, and his owner, Ollie Birkbeck; green fedora jammed on tight, hands on the wheel of the Land Rover.
Birkbeck is the co-founder of WildEast, a rewilding project that aims to return 20 per cent of East Anglia to nature by asking everyone to pledge a fifth of any available land – whether that’s disused industrial estates, farm fields or household window boxes. Recently, they’ve won funding for landscape recovery on a grand scale, with a group of like-minded farmers joining together to create 130,000 acres linked by corridors of scrubland that will encourage native bird species. “It’s going to create a radically different landscape; this is farming with nature,” says Birkbeck, an eloquent champion for the cause.
“Scrub is the great missing link in our habitat. It’s home to species such as turtle doves, stone curlew and nightingales, which have almost vanished from the UK. And birds are the visual representation of an ecosystem – if you don’t see them, then something’s not right.
” At Little Massingham, though, there is birdsong in the air, including the clear, high notes of the nightingale; setting ponies, goats and Tamworth pigs to cultivate old farmland has had remarkable results, with insects quadrupling in number. It’s the sort of landscape you want to fling yourself down on, lying back on a grassy bank and letting your ears slowly tune in to the natural soundtrack. I’m dropped back off on another part of Birkbeck’s estate set aside to be cultivated by glamping, with bell tents rooted in the glades, heated by wood-burning stoves, and two 1940s railway carriages refurbished with double beds in a field of their own.
There’s a barn with an inglenook fireplace for rainy days, a plunge pool for hot ones. This is an accessible and very personal way of seeing rewilding in motion. Rick Jordan Contact Ollie Birkbeck for guided tours of the Little Massingham estate; littlemassinghamhouse.
com . Enquire about glamping stays at Amber's Bell tents at ambersbelltents.co.
uk.
