British Travel Journal | Autumn/Winter 2023
There’s so much variety throughout this issue, bursting with breathtaking travel destinations, new hotels and extraordinary one-of-a-kind experiences. We cycle around Rutland’s 23-mile perimeter on a gourmet foodie trail, sleep under the stars in a wigwam surrounded by leopards at Port Lympne Safari Park in Kent, join an early morning meadowland wildlife walk and meet the resident bees of Calcot Manor in the Cotswolds, and spend a day enjoying magnificent gardens and cyder-making at The Newt in Somerset. Our journalists uncover the hottest new hotels while partaking in a nature-inspired pottery session at the Birch Selsdon and enjoying flower arranging at Cromlix with tennis star Andy Murray's wife Kim. My own travel highlights include walking across the Rhossili Downs, visiting the exquisite region of the Gower Peninsula and taking a dip in Tinker Bunny’s Bathing Pool during a luxury stay at Atlanta Trevone in North Cornwall. With so much to both see and do, it's time to get creative with our travel trips!
There’s so much variety throughout this issue, bursting with breathtaking travel destinations, new hotels and extraordinary one-of-a-kind experiences.
We cycle around Rutland’s 23-mile perimeter on a gourmet foodie trail, sleep under the stars in a wigwam surrounded by leopards at Port Lympne Safari Park in Kent, join an early morning meadowland wildlife walk and meet the resident bees of Calcot Manor in the Cotswolds, and spend a day enjoying magnificent gardens and cyder-making at The Newt in Somerset. Our journalists uncover the hottest new hotels while partaking in a nature-inspired pottery session at the Birch Selsdon and enjoying flower arranging at Cromlix with tennis star Andy Murray's wife Kim. My own travel highlights include walking across the Rhossili Downs, visiting the exquisite region of the Gower Peninsula and taking a dip in Tinker Bunny’s Bathing Pool during a luxury stay at Atlanta Trevone in North Cornwall. With so much to both see and do, it's time to get creative with our travel trips!
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Driving through the blink-and-you-miss-it village<br />
of Whitwell, population 41, I wonder if I read<br />
the street sign correctly. ‘Twinned with Paris’,<br />
it announces proudly. Whitwell might have a<br />
handful of pretty, stone cottages, possibly more ducks<br />
than residents and an appealing-looking pub called The<br />
Noel, but Paris? Really?<br />
It’s not until we sit down to lunch later at the Olive<br />
Branch at Clipsham that the co-owner Ben Jones throws<br />
some light on it.<br />
“One night some of the locals in the pub decided it was<br />
a good idea,” he chuckles. “It’s pretty tongue in cheek.”<br />
It was apparently in 1980 that pub regulars decided to<br />
write to the then mayor of Paris, a certain Jacques Chirac,<br />
proposing the ambitious twinning. They added that if they<br />
didn’t receive a response, they would assume that Paris<br />
had accepted the offer. When no RSVP was received, a<br />
farcical ceremony was held, and the sign has been there<br />
ever since.<br />
It’s just one of the quirky things my son and I discover<br />
during a trip to Rutland, England’s smallest historic county<br />
(and yes, the Isle of Wight may be a smidgeon smaller, but<br />
it’s a ceremonial county). This is the place with the largest<br />
collection of horseshoes in a Norman castle, where legend<br />
has it that Guy Fawkes et al plotted to blow up James I in<br />
parliament and which even has its own version of the pork<br />
pie – the Rutland Pippin, shaped like an apple. <br />
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK<br />
<strong>British</strong><strong>Travel</strong><strong>Journal</strong>.com 35
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