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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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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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The smallest home county is often overlooked in the get-away-from-London league tables, but green-fringed Hertfordshire is heritage- and history-packed.
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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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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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Northamptonshire’s sprawling country estates and wildflower-carpeted ancient forests make it easy to see how the Rose of the Shires got its nickname. Hike the rural back roads to see this most typically English of counties in full bloom.
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For film-set-worthy views, historic architectural gems and bucolic English charm, Northumberland is a one-stop-farm-shop for a country break. Explore ancient castles and sweeping coasts, and bring your walking boots for hikes in the majestic Pennines.
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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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Fabulous food, history-rich regions, and an array of outdoor pursuits: Shropshire is something of a crowd-pleaser.
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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.