From Cotswolds Villages to the Cornish Coast

Highlights

• Enjoy afternoon tea and pastries at Highclere Castle — the real Downton Abbey, home to the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, set in a thousand acres of Hampshire parkland

• Settle in for four nights at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, where a two-acre kitchen garden — ninety varieties of vegetables, seventy herbs, and a heritage orchard — supplies an extraordinary restaurant that has held two Michelin stars for more than forty years

• Spend a morning in Le Manoir's celebrated gardens with the team who tend them — the potager, the herb beds, the heritage orchard — followed by a flower-arranging session using flowers and foliage you collected

• Cook alongside professional chefs in a private class at Le Manoir's Cookery School, working with seasonal English ingredients, then sit down to the dinner you've helped prepare

• Wander the charming villages of the Cotswolds at their most picturesque in early autumn: Broadway's honey-stone High Street, the mill streams of Upper and Lower Slaughter, and the market square at Stow-on-the-Wold

• Tour the magnificent State Rooms and parkland of Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill and the only non-royal country house in England to hold the title of palace

• An optional shopping excursion to Bicester Village, renowned for its exceptional collection of luxury designer boutiques and exclusive finds

• Base yourself for three nights at The Headland, standing above Fistral Beach with the Atlantic on three sides — family-run since 1979, with a Cornish sea salt steam room and the £10 million Aqua Club

• Walk the footbridge to the legendary Tintagel Castle, the thirteenth-century ruin on a headland above the Atlantic, forever linked to the King Arthur legend

• Dine at Ugly Butterfly, Adam Handling's Michelin-starred restaurant, where the menu is built almost entirely from the Cornish coast and countryside

• Cross to St Michael's Mount at Marazion, where a medieval church and castle rise dramatically out of the sea — on foot across the causeway at low tide, by boat at high — held by the St Aubyn family since 1650

• Browse the boutiques and galleries of St Ives, the harbour town that's drawn painters for a century — Barbara Hepworth's studio and sculpture garden remain just as she left them

• Stay two nights at Cliveden House — run for decades by Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons — and take a private trip down the Thames aboard one of the estate's restored vintage launches

• Unwind at spas built around their settings: The Headland's Cornish sea salt steam room and Aqua Club with pools facing the Atlantic, and Cliveden's Pavilion Spa, set around a magnificent outdoor pool inside the walled garden

And while these highlights promise to be memorable, we've also reserved a few special moments that will unfold along the way, making your English adventure truly unforgettable...