Travel Talk With Jeremy Wayne: Late-summer idylls at U.K. country houses

Planning a late summer getaway? Then look no further, or farther, than the United Kingdom, which unlike many parts of Europe has been enjoying a mild, temperate summer. As for being famously rainy at least in the eyes of Hollywood and the popular U.S. press  forget all you’ve ever been told. London, for instance, has an annual rainfall of 23 inches, compared to Paris’s 25 inches or Amsterdam’s 32. (As for New York, which has been reclassified as the northernmost humid subtropical city, the average annual precipitation for Central Park is 40-odd inches, and yes, you read that right.) 

Leave New York late evening and a short overnight flight of six hours can have you sitting down to lunch at Cliveden’s Astor Grill by 1 p.m. the following day. Cliveden, sitting on 376 acres of formal National Trust gardens only 30 minutes from Heathrow Airport, was the magnificent, stately home of the second Duke of Sutherland, built in 1851 by architect Charles Barry. (The original house, destroyed by fire, was built by the second Duke of Buckingham in 1666 as a gift for his mistress. Nice work if you can get it, as they say in the classics.)  

At the turn of the last century, Cliveden became the home of American-born Viscount Waldorf Astor and his American wife, the Nazi-sympathizer Nancy Astor, who entered British politics and became the the first woman to sit in the British Parliament. More recently still, in the 1960s, the house and estate became the scene of a sex scandal known as the Profumo affair that eventually led to the downfall of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government. (You can watch a fictionalized account in the 1989 movie “Scandal.) 

But you don’t just come to Cliveden for its deliciously checkered history. You come for its grand, art-filled public rooms, its vast, sumptuous guest rooms in the main house, its two superb restaurants, its gorgeous swimming pool and its magnificent gardens. The River Thames, utterly beguiling at this point, is at the end of the gardens and a morning or afternoon private boat trip in one of the hotel’s slipper boats (elegant Thames pleasure boats) say upstream to Henley or downstream to Windsor Castle, with a Champagne picnic on board is not something any guest is likely to forget. 

Alternately, a two-hour drive west of Heathrow will bring you to the glorious county of Somerset, a land of myth and mystery, with impossibly green rolling hills, captivating small villages, historic cities and the best cider in England. This utterly lovely place has rewritten the book on the country house hotel. Out have gone the heavy brocades and chintzes, in have come lean, elegant public rooms in ravishing pastel shades hung with gorgeous portraits and guest rooms that run the gamut from traditional in The Newt’s Hadspen House to fun and frivolous in its Llamrei Stableyard which gives a whole new meaning to hitting the hay. 

Wonderful, too, is The Newts spa, with its atmospheric indoor pool evoking appropriately the Roman Baths in the nearby city of Bath a compelling excursion while you are in the vicinity. And like Cliveden, The Newt’s gardens have been shaped over centuries and are some of the most beautiful and ornate in England’s West Country. Influenced by thousands of years of horticultural history, the gardens grow everything from produce for The Newt’s restaurants to giant 70-foot hornbeams. The produce garden alone is home to 350 varieties of fruit, vegetables and herbs. 

The relatively short transatlantic flight certainly makes England an attractive prospect for a quick break. But you can now fly directly to Scotland from New York in the same amount of time, or even a shade less, with Delta Air Lines, making a weekend’s golf, exploration or relaxation perfectly feasible.  

Since opening its doors in 1924, Gleneagles, Scotland’s grandest resort hotel about a 90-minute drive from both Glasgow and Edinburgh airports is a sporting and gastronomic paradise. Sitting on 850 acres beneath the ravishing Ochil Hills in the heart of Perthshire, the hotel has been the must-go destination for travelers for nearly a century. Its spa is the most comprehensive in Scotland. 

Yet Gleneagles enduring appeal isn’t down to its impressive size or stunning location but to its never resting on its laurels. Its 205 guest rooms and 28 suites are always immaculate, furnished with the finest fabrics and linens, the highest-end products and the most spoiling amenities, everything spectacularly well-maintained. And its bars and restaurants nine at the last count are run with flair and imagination, from Andrew Fairlie’s eponymous two Michelin-starred restaurant, one of Europe’s finest, to its sumptuous Jazz Age American Bar, with a tearoom, a garden caf and even, Lord love us, a place for pizza along the way.  

Yes, Gleneagles is an extremely sophisticated resort, with international guests who return year after year, but there’s also a family aspect to it. Multiple generations love the place for its comfort and myriad activities to choose from, including 50 outdoors alone. If you want to spend quality time with loved ones and garner a taste of Scotland in a relatively short amount of time, there can’t be a finer address in the British Isles to do so. 

For more, visit clivedenhouse.co.uk., thenewtinsomerest.com and Gleneagles.com. 

Travel Talk’s Jeremy Wayne is a luxury travel adviser with Superior Travel of New York. Contact him at jeremy@superiortravel.com.