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Bath provides the perfect English getaway. This is a genteel city soaked in history, which has kept its stiff upper lip but learned how to relax with a cocktail, too.
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If it’s good enough for the Queen, Berkshire’s good enough for us – with richly appointed hotels that even her Maj couldn’t refuse.
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Forget kiss-me-quick hats and candyfloss on Palace Pier – with its pretty, terraced squares, Brighton gives Bath a run for its Regency money.
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Bristol is a great metropolis without the stress. There are friendly bars, amazing restaurants, and a cleaned-up harbourside with art galleries and many a bar-with-a-view.
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With woodlands fit for a fairytale and country hideaways down almost every lane, Buckinghamshire’s an accessible escape from city life.
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A world-renowned academic powerhouse, an architectural history lesson in the shape of a scenic riverside city, and just an hour from London, Cambridge is the textbook weekend escape.
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Chester, a former Roman fort beside the wending River Dee, has a historic racecourse, plentiful shops and cafés and a crumbling cluster of antique monuments; both a living time capsule and the buzzy beating heart of Cheshire.
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With its soft sand beaches, hot summer sun and spectacularly noisy waves, Cornwall is the stuff of perfect childhood holidays.
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Humpback hills, honey-hued villages and leafy rural lanes – the Cotswolds more than earns its place as Britain’s biggest designated area of natural beauty.
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The mountainous county of Cumbria, which borders Scotland in the far north-west of England, is where you’ll find the UK’s most dramatic landscapes and a wealth of natural beauty spots.
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A classic example of the English countryside’s more rough-and-ready climes, Derbyshire is home to the craggy mountains of the Peak District, the serpentine River Derwent and acres of rolling farmland.
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Devon is the stuff of childhood dreams. Sun-kissed beaches and quiet little coves hark back to a time when all you needed for a day of unbridled pleasure was a bucket and spade, acres of sand and the promise of an ice-cream before bed.
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Dorset is a tale of two landscapes: the chalky downlands of Cranborne Chase and the Purbeck Hills, with their pretty villages and grand houses; and the wild, adventure-friendly Jurassic Coast, rebranded but untamed.
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The East Sussex coast has always attracted crowds; in the height of summer, you may have to fight your way onto the beaches, just as the Romans and Normans once did.
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Gloucestershire, with its picture-postcard English towns and countryside, is perfect for a romantic weekend.
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If it’s a stroll through the pastoral-patchwork landscape and the promise of a pub lunch that draws you to Hampshire, it’s the variety that will entice you to stay.
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Once very rural in character, the Isle of Wight went through something of a renaissance during the 19th century, making for a place that is full of juicy cultural tidbits.
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Ever since Caesar first came, saw and conquered it, the Garden of England has attracted visitors with its sandy beaches and fertile countryside.
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Cumbria’s dramatic, brooding landscape has inspired creative souls for centuries: poet William Wordsworth penned many of his most famous works in the Lake District, and it’s where Beatrix Potter settled with her beloved flock of Herdwick sheep.
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This stately old lady on the banks of the Mersey may have celebrated her 800th birthday, but she’s enjoying an invigorating shake-up these days…
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England's capital has got it all. And she flaunts it.
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Mancunians may be too down-to-earth to say it themselves, but the capital of the northwest has come over all Manhattanchester.
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The famous Broads, the wild and wonder-filled beaches, the huge skies: Norfolk is a remote and inspiring corner of England, just a couple of hours from London.
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Tradition and new ideas combine in Oxfordshire to create the best of all worlds.
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The sheer size and scale of the Peak District makes for much of its mystery. Stretched across northern Derbyshire and rolling into a handful of other counties, it comprises 555 square miles of moors and uplands, dramatic views and drystone walls, plus pubs and tearooms aplenty.
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A delicious combination of chocolate-box villages, undulating hills and elegant cities (Bath and Wells), Somerset is the sort of place where honey-laden bees buzz lazily through orchards, perhaps pausing on a fallen apple.
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Flat as a pint of Adnams left in the sun, evocative East Anglia has more in common, topographically at least, with just-across-the-North-Sea Netherlands than the hilly counties to the west.
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The leafy Surrey countryside swells with cosy pubs and Welly-welcoming hotels.
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This West Midlands’ gifts to the world include William Shakespeare, the Industrial Revolution, JRR Tolkien and Cadbury’s chocolate. Our favourite bits, though, are the natural-beauty hotspots of the Shropshire Hills, the Wye Valley and the northern Cotswo
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With the cathedral city of Chichester providing its meanest seaside streets, West Sussex is a green and pleasant county, where seasons and hills roll gently, all against the ever-shifting backdrop of the sea.
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Nothing falls flat in this gorgeous setting of sweeping hills and verdant vales, where folklore, myth and mystery lurk around every curve of the road.
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Sitting comfortably between the Cotswolds, Warwickshire and the Welsh Marches, Worcestershire is a preserved pocket of tumbling hills, riverside towns and a grand old cathedral city.
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Where wild moors and rolling dales form the backdrop to solid, greystone market towns and idyllic country villages, Yorkshire is the UK's ultimate antidote to urban life.