If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD119.40), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Come snow or shine, Wylder Windham holds the key to a cockles-warming Catskills getaway. This historic country retreat has winter hibernation down pat, with slopes on your doorstep and an après-ski set-up of saunas and soul-soothing comfort food. But the thaw brings poolside cocktails, bike rides with picnic-stuffed panniers and hammock-strung afternoons by the creek. And your back-to-nature exploits might shift with the seasons, but the bookends of a day here – the waft of home-baked pies in the morning, star-freckled evenings around the firepit – you can set your watch to.
11am. Check-in is at 3pm, but both are flexible for an extra fee, subject to availability.
Prices
Double rooms from £103.26 ($129), including tax at 8 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional resort fee of $40.00 per room per night on check-out.
More details
Rates at Wylder Windham are room-only, but hearty breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal, pastries and more are available at Babblers Bakery.
Also
Wylder Windham has seven rooms that have been adapted for guests with limited mobility.
At the hotel
Barrel saunas, fire pits, bicycles to rent, games room, pickleball courts, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV with Chromecast, tablet, free bottled water and Bamford bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Cash in on the Catskills’ natural beauty with a private balcony gazing out over Windham Mountain or the babbling Batavia Kill creek. For a whole-gang gallivant, the Evergreen Suite has space for up to 10.
Poolside
The heated outdoor pool is open from April to November. Post-splash, stretch out on a parasol-shaded lounger with the season’s it-girl accessory – a watermelon margarita, courtesy of the cute poolside bar stand.
Spa
When some cosseting is in order, squirrel yourself away in one of the hotel’s wood-fired barrel saunas, set in the mountain-framed grounds.
Packing tips
No need to lug all your winter-sports kit with you – the hotel has a stash. In summer, you’ll be all set with cycling gear and something to bribe the bakers with for their strawberry and rhubarb pie recipe.
Also
When you’re ready to hit the slopes, the hotel’s vintage Land Rover Defender will whisk you straight to the mountain.
Pet‐friendly
Pups are welcome for an extra $50 nightly fee for each dog. They’ll need to stay on the leash in communal areas, but there’s a private dog run for them to stretch their legs in. See more pet-friendly hotels in Catskills.
Children
Little Smiths are welcome – when they’re not Moonrise Kingdom-ing around the Catskills, there are arcade games, table football and the Babblers’ children’s menu to keep them happy. Foldaway cots can be added to any room free of charge.
Dinner out on the prettily painted patio is the move in summer, but after a day on the slopes, defrost at a cozy fireside table.
Dress Code
Worn-in denim and a windswept ’do.
Hotel restaurant
Babblers is a laidback, local-loved joint serving elevated comfort food by the creek. The steak frites and tender beef stew are house specialties, but you’ll find seasonal plant-based options here, too.
And first thing, follow the nostalgia-stirring scent to the bakery for pastries, breakfast rolls and a rotation of all-American pies, freshly baked just like Mama used to make them (or how you imagine she might have, if you hail from across the pond).
Hotel bar
The Babblers bar serves seasonal menus of mood-setting craft cocktails, with pimped-up hot toddies for winter and tropical tipples when things hot up, but for a year-round crowd-pleaser plump for a martini – espresso or extra dirty is dealer’s choice.
Last orders
Babblers restaurant serves lunch from noon to 4pm and dinner from 4pm to 9pm, Wednesday to Saturday. Stop by between 10am and 4pm on Sunday for brunch. The bakery is open Wednesday to Sunday, 7am to noon, and the bar pours from 4pm till 10pm.
Wylder Windham is in the Great Northern Catskills, framed by storybook countryside and the ski-crowd-pleasing slopes of Windham Mountain – yet not three hours from NYC.
Planes
Albany International Airport is around an hour-and-a-half away by car. You can get there direct from domestic cities, but if you’re jetting in from Europe you’ll need to catch a connection from one of the East Coast’s hubs. Alternatively, it’s just a three-hour road trip from JFK. The hotel can arrange transfers from Albany’s airport from $130 each way.
Trains
Cruise Upstate on the daily Amtrak service from New York’s Penn Station to Hudson. From there, it’s a 40-minute drive – the hotel can arrange transfers for $90–115 each way.
Automobiles
The hotel has a shuttle service to take you to the slopes, so if you’re sticking to skiing you shouldn’t need a car. If scenic jaunts through the Catskills appeal, though, bring your own wheels. There’s free parking at the hotel.
Worth getting out of bed for
At Wylder Windham, you’re in easy reach of Windham Mountain’s slopes. Skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing and tubing are all on the cards in ski season (generally from November to April). Come spring, the Catskills have 500 miles of hiking and biking trails to explore – start with the Windham Path, a mile-and-a-half-long loop taking in open meadows, forests and creek-traversing covered bridges. Or saddle up for a horse-back trail ride at Mountain Brook Farm. And when you return, congratulate yourself on your hard work with a crisp riesling, courtesy of the Vineyard at Windham.
Local restaurants
Millrock is a Main Street institution serving hearty plates of pasta and thin-crust pizza, all spotlighting seasonal local produce and paired with an oenophile-pleasing wine list.
And handily just a hop across the bridge from the hotel, Union and Post is a friendly, fire-warmed spot where the gastropub-style fare is fuelled by ingredients from local farms.
Local bars
The folks at West Kill Brewing infuse locally sourced ingredients like maple sap, foraged thyme and honey from their own hives into their craft ales, lagers and IPAs. Stop by their tap room for a tasting and a food-truck lunch.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this mountain-hugged hotel in Windham and unpacked their salopettes and Salomon boots, a full account of their upstate break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Wylder Windham in the Catskills…
Maybe the wholesome Catskills scenery has gone to our heads, but if Wylder Windham were a scout – stick with us – it would have all the classic badges sewn up. Skiing, hiking, mountain-biking… all the rugged, rosy-cheeked ones would be a shoe-in, short of pitching a tent (the quaint farmhouse-style rooms happily make that a moot point). Marshmallow toasting and fireside storytelling would be in the bag, as would baking the perfect apple pie, thanks to the restaurant’s resident pastry pros. But after 140 years of all-American adventuring, this heritage retreat has added some surprising strings to its bow, too. These days, outdoorsy antics range from cross-country snowshoeing to barrel-sauna stints. When you’ve mastered trout fishing, you can take on pickleball and Pac-Man. And ‘be prepared’ means keeping your poolside margarita topped up just as much as being able to parse a trail map.
Windham has long been an upstate sanctuary for nature-craving New Yorkers, and Wylder delivers the traditional dose of grass-stained-knees nostalgia. But make this your basecamp and you’ll see the Catskills’ off-piste side, too. Scout’s honor.
