Media Reviews
Six of the best holiday homes in Britain
Comfy cottages with a touch of class are setting new standards in self-catering luxury. Times writers seek out some outstanding examples. Introduced by Tom Chessyre
Holiday cottages in the UK are getting classier as better quality homes become available and customers demand ever-improving quality.
Judges in this year’s Excellence in England awards say that many entrants in the self-catering category have been finished to four and five-star hotel standards.
England's Best Cottage
Self-catering holidays have moved on since Laura Barton was a child. Here she tries out this year's Excellence in England Awards winner
By the time we arrive it is dark. We are silent and sullen and dog-eared after a four-hour drive from London in our rented car. We have weathered the evening rush hour traffic, service station coffee, and the broken CD player which has forced us to listen to the relentless gabbling of Westwood's Friday night Radio 1 show, all the long way to Devon. Now we emerge into the crisp evening air and the hum of quiet that hovers over the slumbering village of East Budleigh, to find our tub of Waitrose olives has leaked in the boot. It is a bourgeois nightmare writ large, and my toes scrunch with the fear of what is to come on our self-catering weekend.
