Lockdown No. 2 shows off improvements in digital socialising

 We’re back in national lockdown. 

Things were starting to feel normal again. Bars and restaurants were thriving, museums had opened, people were going into offices. Hotels were welcoming visitors, though the overwhelming majority of travellers were staying inside national borders. We were meeting friends in restaurants, in groups of no more than six, and getting our hair and nails done regularly.

But as cold and flu season arrived, all negative indicators started a steady climb. England had attempted to keep the economy open with a regional scheme, restricting bits of the country where things were worst. The approach didn't work, and a return to full national lockdown started on the 5th of November. So much for the communal joys of Bonfire Night.

We were all better prepared this time. Homeowners rushed to purchase paint, wallpaper and other DIY supplies for weekend projects. Restaurants, nail salons, hair dressers and spas were in touch to suggest rescheduled bookings on a rota system from the day lockdown lifts (currently projected to be 2 December). 

At work and at home, people have marshalled the online socialising skills they've developed this year to fill diaries with virtual events. In the shared fear that anyone might feel lonely, we've packed digital diaries fuller than the live action versions usually are. In my non-working hours in the two and a half weeks since lockdown I've hosted two virtual games nights; attended three online book club sessions; taken two Zoom-based drawing classes; one live cocktail making class; one live cooking class; an online wedding shower; and an executive education session from my alma mater. My human interaction may be restricted to my husband, but my virtual connections have been in the hundreds.

The cooking, bartending and wedding showering all came through work. Many employers are sincerely worried about the mental health of their people, laying on fun activities that capture some of the fellowship and stress relief that naturally happens when we spill into the pub after work. We also have the spectre of a partyless Christmas party season looming ahead. Fortunately, that need seems to be matched by entrepreneurial types upping their virtual events game. 

I was particularly impressed by Firebird Events' cocktail class. This is a premium experience, with supplies sent out in advance. Their beautifully packed box had clear instructions for what you'd need to add from your own home (ice, glasses, shaker) and all the alcohol and mixers for two cocktails  (a porn star martini and a berry smash). In fact, if your house was well-stocked with alcohol the mixers went on to fuel additional cocktails throughout the weekend.

Bartender and drinks coach Ben had all the attributes now required of a virtual meetings host: half TV broadcaster, half radio call-in show host eliciting public responses. Plus, of course, a deep knowledge of alcohol. In between following his instructions and showing off our efforts to our colleagues through the Zoom mosaic (top), we competed at cocktail-themed trivia. The Bencard household fared ... predictably or distressingly? ... extremely well.

On the cooking front, management treated us to a private audience with Asma Khan, regular guest on Saturday Kitchen and No. 1 on Business Insider's list of the 100 coolest people in food and drink in the UK. She'd perched her device above her shiny new range and demonstrated three different Indian takes on the humble potato, followed by a lively Q&A. We're all used to live cooking demos, of course, but this had the added frisson of wondering if her iPad was going to go crashing into the curry. The latest  lockdown had postponed the opening of her new restaurant, the Darjeeling Express, so our virtual presence made us her first guests. Khan's swift transition from restaurant boss to corporate event host is an admirable example of the flexibility people are showing this year to push on despite 2020's complications.

Artist Dean Rossiter has been similarly creative, even if he doesn't have quite the profile of a celebrity chef. Dean's a proper artist, exhibiting in galleries on three continents, but like any sensible person making a living in the arts, he has other strings to his professional bow. That includes teaching. I'd joined the class in our local community centre and was a bit sceptical about the virtual session, but it works remarkably well. Dean sends out whatever we'll be drawing in advance, then we all hook up on Zoom and he deploys some fancy camera work to give us close-ups when he demonstrates various steps. Surprisingly, the online classes are much more sociable. In a room sat at our own socially-distanced tables, nobody spoke. Online, that physical distance disappears and conversation flows as we sketch.

Naturally, I couldn't resist trying my own production. We've hosted two board games nights, with one camera on us, another broadcasting the board and us moving the pieces. Trivial Pursuit was easier to broadcast but can get quite boring in the virtual distance if one team is on a long run of correct answers. The pace of Risk, and the fact that two teams are engaged in battles at any one time, made it more engaging, but visibility of the board was a bigger challenge. Given our household's professional ties to secure digital networks (Zoom is banned by both of our employers) we hosted both through Microsoft Teams. The process is clunkier, with no easy guest access from laptops (but fine on tablets and phones) and a frustrating difference in experience if you're using a work account and your employer hasn't upgraded to the latest version. I find it incredibly frustrating that the owners of Skype, who should have been the market leaders in this pandemic, have fallen so far behind. But we soldiered on, and none of our Risk generals would have been endangered by their battle plans crossing servers in China. Yet another thing I wouldn't have considered before 2020.

 

This is the first year since we've met that Piers and I haven't entertained at scale, so games night filled a gap in our lives. And, we had to admit, it was nice to host a party on Saturday night and get up on Sunday without a houseful of guests and hours of kitchen and dining room clean up to do. That's not to say we won't return to gourmet weekend parties when life returns to normal. Like everyone else, we're just trying to make the most of the options available to us.

St. Mawes is an idyllic bolthole, designed for quiet lingering

If you asked Disney's "imagineers" to design the perfect Cornish holiday village, they'd probably come up with St. Mawes. 

Regular readers will know that I prefer my beaches with warm waters and coral reefs. But if you can't manage the trek to palm trees and pina coladas, this tiny enclave on the southern tip of the Roseland peninsula is rather special.

I've already described the charm of the location in my earlier story on places to stay. I didn't recommend the village's most famous hotel, Tresanton, but I'd happily return and give other options a try. The pure visual appeal of the place is the main reason why. 

Look seaward for a sheltered bay bracketed by a lighthouse and a castle, with a busy channel beyond it dotted with an unceasing passage of sail and motorboat. Look inland for a ring of tidy, colourful houses climbing the encircling hill like well-dressed glitterati packing an amphitheatre. The village centre boasts a tiny harbour, which is mostly employed with ferries to Falmouth and other points on the Fal estuary, though piles of lobster pots and a fresh seafood stand attest that a few fishing boats still call this home. There are two traditional pubs and a wealth of independent boutiques, small galleries, hotels and restaurants that belie the resident population of just over 700. The reason, of course, is the holiday trade.

Much of Cornwall is dependant on tourism. But famous spots like St. Ives, Padstow and Penzance are on main roads, bustling with both residents and visitors, and can feel practically urban in high season. St. Mawes' position is more isolated. It's a solid 40 minutes by road from anything that wouldn't qualify as rural. (Don’t drive too fast on those roads or the local cops may catch you speeding. Trust me on this one.) A satnav's favoured route in may well take you by way of the King Harry Ferry. It's picturesque, but adds even more time as you're likely to have to wait for a crossing. St. Mawes' relative isolation gives it a calm, quiet, rural appeal. It's a destination to linger, not a base for extensive sightseeing. 

Which is exactly what we did.

We didn’t move the car once in our three days there. You could easily while away a couple of weeks without straying far. Low tide exposes properly sandy beaches and I suspect the bay is shallow enough, and cut off enough from the main channel, to have the chance of warming to something above bone chilling in summer. There were actually wild swimmers in the bay during our late October visit, sans wetsuits. The surrounding Roseland peninsula is rich with countryside for walking. Some of England’s most famous sub-tropical gardens are nearby; a ferry in the harbour will take you up the river to the renown house and garden at Trelissick. If you want more urban excitement, Falmouth is just a 20-minute ferry ride across the estuary.

Here are our highlights. 

THE CASTLE

Henry VIII worried constantly about French invasion, so invested in a chain of defensive castles along England’s east and south coasts. No self-respecting Renaissance monarch built anything ugly or unadorned, of course, and the “Henrician” castles prove the point. St. Mawes is a typical example, built of round towers intersecting each other. From the air they can look like a Venn diagramme, a cloverleaf or a flower, depending on your viewpoint. 

Some have been adapted and turned into residences, like the wonderful Walmer Castle (which I wrote about here). St. Mawes’ Castle is mostly an empty shell. Though its English Heritage caretakers have ensured a sound roof over the central tower, the rooms inside are empty. The most picturesque bits are outside, anyway. Despite centuries of battering by salt-laden winds, some of the gargoyles and decorative accents remain, including part of a lavish inscription surrounded by angels celebrating Henry’s son, the future Edward VI.

The castle faces its sister fortification, Pendennis, in Falmouth. Between them, their firepower was designed to prevent any invading navy from getting up the River Fal. Something that, fortunately, no hostile force ever tried. The grounds are strewn with cannon. Military buffs will find both them and the earthworks interesting, and there’s loads of history here including chapters in the Civil War and World War II. But most visitors will simply appreciate taking in spectacular views from within the frame of magnificent architecture. 

FALMOUTH

Town planners wringing their hands over the death of the high street should make a study of Falmouth, where a bustling stretch of pedestrianised high street is almost devoid of big chains. There are, instead, one-of-a-kind galleries, toy stores, clothing boutiques, home decorating emporiums and gift shops. Dining and drinking options are equally local, with family owned pubs, independent restaurants, gin emporiums and coffee shops. This being Cornwall there are, naturally, tea shops, chippies and pasty sellers, none of which we had a chance to sample during our time in the county because we never had room between our late, hearty breakfasts and our plentiful three-course dinners. We did spend some time drinking, however. The Stable, located in the historic Old Customs House, has a bewildering range of 50 ciders, many from small producers unavailable outside of the West Country.

Falmouth's affluent, independent high street no doubt owes much to the fact it's adjacent to a yacht harbour. Unsurprisingly, it reminds me a lot of the main drag in Cowes. Falmouth itself extends much further, and even without the traffic-blocking bollards it was obvious where the tourist area ended and "real" town began. Cue Boots, M&S and mobile network shops. But the picturesque heart near the harbour is a delight not to be missed, and just 20 minutes from St. Mawes on the ferry.

ST. JUST IN ROSELAND

We found this gem thanks to a hot tip from a regular visitor to the area. The church of St. Just is a small, 13th century building with a 15th century tower sitting in splendid isolation next to a tiny inlet where the St. Just creek flows into the Fal estuary. A deep quiet covers the scene, broken only by the cry of seagulls and the drip of various tiny streams ... including a holy well ... trickling toward the larger body of water. It  would be easy to imagine yourself a Medieval pilgrim were it not for a few modern sailboats at anchor and a sprawling Victorian house across the water. 

Such a pretty church in such a serene setting would be enough of a reason to visit, but St. Just's real glory is its churchyard. A steep slope rears up behind the building, thick with moss-covered tombstones and heavily planted with a dazzling mix of woodland and sub-tropical plants. most of the graves near the church are Georgian or Victorian, showing off a variety of sculptural styles and well covered by mosses. It astonishes me that none of the major Vampire movie franchises have found this place. It's a Gothic delight; like a miniature version of Highgrove Cemetery, with palm trees and ferns.

The car park and an adjacent tea shop are well out of sight of the prettiest scenes. A variety of hikes stretch out from here for those with more time than we had.

PUBS: THE VICTORY, THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN

Both of the pubs at the centre of St. Mawes are classics. 

The Victory lies a short walk up a steep street running up from the harbour and is the simpler of the two. There's no fancy decor, the tables are simple wooden slabs and the photos on the wall aren't put there by a designer, but because they show the locals busy around the neighbourhood. Don't let the simplicity fool you; the people next to me were talking about how their Aga was fairing in their kitchen renovation and whether or not they were going to dry dock their yacht for the winter. The service here is fantastic; the publican remembered not only me, but my drink order, from my first visit and asked if I wanted another before I'd reached the table on my return.

The House of The Rising Sun is much bigger, and also a stone's throw from the harbour. Designers have staged this one a bit more, with a variety of rooms all sharing a jolly nautical theme. There's a large conservatory across the front of the building which is perfect for a blustery day. Thanks to the new pandemic-friendly ordering app, we could sit at our leisure, watch the weather turn from sun to rain and back again, and hit a few buttons on a phone to summon another round. Dangerous.

THE WATCH HOUSE

So good we ate there twice, this restaurant is one of our favourite memories of St. Mawes. A tremendously genial staff, local and seasonal produce, a small but surprisingly good wine list and a view of the water from which much of the menu came. Though there were meaty options, we all chose seafood both nights. Flavours ranged from the traditional ... fish and chips, fresh oysters, prawn cocktail ... to the slightly exotic ... Oriental-spiced fried squid with sriracha mayonnaise, Asian-inspired hake on a bed of spicy Dal. Locally made ice creams made a simple but appropriate ending. It's a shame that pandemic regulations demanded a 10 o'clock close at the time. This is the kind of place we would have loved to linger at for hours.

Devon Crafts Guild finds inspiration in pandemic

There's widespread agreement that the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for the arts. A show at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen offers hope that it may have at least provided some creative inspiration for individual artists.

The Guild's shop in Bovey Tracey has been a favourite of mine since I first fell in love with Dartmoor in the early 2000s. It's always featured an approachable range of hand-crafted masterpieces from its members, from inexpensive greeting cards and small gifts up to significant investments in painting and sculpture. The gallery's ceramics, jewellery and textiles have been favourites and I've accumulated some of each over the visits.

It had been eight years since my last trip this way, and I was delighted to discover that my old favourite had expanded significantly. Not only is the shop probably double its former size, but there's now a large and well-lit exhibition space that shows off the best of its members' work. 

Under normal circumstances the space hosts a juried "Summer Exhibition". This year, it's simply called "2020" and focuses on how recent traumas have inspired and changed the artists and their work. Fittingly, visitors have to figure out and follow a one-way system to take it all in. Even our viewing patterns have had to change to cope with these strange times.

Each exhibiting artist has space to explain the impact of the year. Though COVID-19 doesn't show up obviously in all the work, a clear theme appears across their experiences. In story after story, artists dealt with difficulty and depression by trying new things. For some, it was a slight twist on existing styles. Others leapt to entirely new media. Across the board, the results were fascinating and often very beautiful.

Jewellery-maker Anne Farag challenged herself to mix metal elements without heat, coming up with a new range that looks part clockwork and part Arts and Crafts movement. Stoneware sculptor Malcolm Law credits his lockdown survival to his work "Skimbleshanks", an intricate melange of an egg, steam trains, machinery and an oversized moggie taken from one of T.S. Eliot's cat poems. Paper artist Megan Stallworthy got closer to nature in her isolation, pressing tiny flowers into more of her work. Glass artist Penny Carter, freed from a busy schedule of craft fairs and exhibitions, felt released to be totally self indulgent and started designing what she thought of as jewellery for the garden ... the closest I came to buying one of the exhibition pieces.

Wood carver Sarah Viggars started lockdown in intense distress, as circumstances found her shut out of her studio space. Not unlike many office workers, she had to figure out how to fashion a viable working space out of her home, getting by with much less room than usual. The trauma sparked her to expand her interest in puppetry and launch a range of woodcarving craft kits. Her new puppets ... exquisitely realised birds ... were both functional and real works of art, not only to look at in themselves but in the shadows they cast behind them.

The most striking evocation of current times, and the item easiest to see moving from "craft" to proper "art" worthy of a museum, was Isabella Whitworth's Doctor Denim - The Plague Doctor. Unsurprisingly, the fabric artist had started lockdown making face masks. That piqued her curiosity about masks as medical protection, which led her to research the history of the plague doctor's distinctive, long-nosed version. She's created a plague doctor for the modern world, mask repurposed from blue jeans and hung about with charms and amulets capturing the protections of the modern world. Twitter and Instagram logos jostle with medieval remedies, bubble packs of pills and Donald Trump's remedy book.  

None of us emerged with The Plague Doctor, but we did head home with a variety of pottery, cards and jewellery. And an excellent reminder that though the unique pressures of this year might have sparked creativity, they've also removed most of the channels craftspeople use to sell their wonderful wares. Check out the Devon Guild online, explore the digital shop that's going to take the place of Olympia's Spirit of Christmas Fair or find unique gifts on maker's marketing platforms like Not On The High Street. This year, more than ever, it seems important to channel your Christmas shopping towards the local, unique and hand-made.

World’s best for autumn colour? Stourhead has a claim.

The English class system has done a lot of damage over the centuries, but we can also bless it for its impact on architecture and interior design. In the success-obsessed United States, new money has tended to splash out on bling-drenched conspicuous consumption. In England, while the consumption might be equally prodigious, self-made fortunes seek the best in establishment tastes and bend over backwards to rub off any taint of the new.

In just the past few months, the trend has shown up on this blog in articles about Harewood House and Bovey Castle. And here, on a crisp autumnal day en route to the West Country, the glorious Georgian mansion and landscape garden at Stourhead.

Stourhead was the country pile of the unfortunately-named Hoare banking family. They never quite washed the taint of trade off their hands. Though they kitted out a lavish bedroom for Queen Victoria she never visited, thinking the family too far beneath her. Presumably the Hoare’s had the last laugh, since they’re still in charge of the oldest private bank in the country and Victoria’s kingdom is now heavily dependant on financial services to survive. Had the queen lowered herself to a visit she would have discovered not only a house very much to her husband’s Italianate tatstes, but one of the two best examples of a classical landscape garden in the country. (The other is Stowe, bigger but, IMHO, not as dramatically beautiful.)

Wealthy tourists in the 18th century would return from the continent ... usually Italy ... laden with treasures that showed off what they'd seen, and fired with a passion to re-create some of the magic at home. Most houses of the time will feature Roman statuary in the gardens, or showy pieces of furniture inlaid with semi-precious stones (called pietra dura) from Florence, or a few paintings of Venice by Canaletto. That balanced approach wasn't enough for Henry Hoare, who was obviously obsessed to something bordering madness by all things Italian. 

The house is a stately Palladian cube, rather small as grand country houses go, packed to the gunnels with paintings of classical stories and Italian landscapes, plaster ceilings and decorations taken from Roman temples and Italian style furniture. Obelisks, classical statuary, collections of Roman seals and lofty gods and goddesses run amok. There are few masterpieces on the walls, but the theme is clear. Hoare was re-creating Italy in the England.

But the house wasn't enough. He went on to re-create the countryside itself. Ironically it was three Frenchmen of the time ... Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin and Gaspard Dughet ... who became most famous for painting imagined scenes of Italian antiquity. Gods, heroes and historic figures play out their adventures in deep, romantically-wooded valleys dotted with classical temples. There's almost always a lake to reflect the architecture and the action. Many English tourists decided they'd try to re-engineer their gardens to evoke this look, but nobody did it as thoroughly as Hoare.

This Lorrain painting in Stourhead’s collection is thought to be a direct inspiration for the garden

He was lucky enough to have the wooded valley beneath his house as a foundation, but no lake. So he dammed a stream and time did the work for him. Once the valley floor was appropriately flooded, the temple building began.  There's a miniature pantheon, an ancient and stolid temple of Flora and a magnificently bonkers domed and columned temple of Apollo on a hillside. 

A gracious Palladian bridge links the two, purely for visual effect since it's bridging an inlet you could walk around in three minutes. 

Each is designed to look out over at least one of the others, all set in a carefully chosen mix of trees. The lake is a mirror to add another dimension to your views. 

At one point, the path brings you into a dark cave where the sound of dripping water beckons you to a grotto where a water nymph and river god lounge in alcoves while carefully planned gaps in the wall conjure more artistic views across the lake to other temples. 

A towering obelisk adds to the classical antiquity, not near the lake but at the top of the hill with a long grassy avenue cleared through the trees to allow an impressive vista. In modern terminology the place is, as one of my friends proclaimed, top Instagram porn.

Despite the Hoare family’s obsession with the classical world, they couldn’t resist a few other passions of the time. There’s a sweet little cottage called The Hermitage with gothic windows and a thatched roof, playing on the passion for hermits and dark mysteries that came with the rise of gothic literature. A little over two miles from the lake stands King Alfred’s Tower, a 161-foot construction that looks rather strangely Germanic with its crenellations and pepper pot roof. It marks the spot where King Alfred was supposed to have mustered his troops in 878 before his success at Edington. Love of the gothic also led the family to rescue Bristol’s market cross, a glorious spire that was unloved and would have been destroyed by the town’s improvers had it not found a second life as a garden ornament. 

The cross marks the transition between the garden and what’s left of Stourhead village. A picturesque row of cottages, a parish church, a Georgian pub and an aristocratic stable block now mostly cater to tourists’ needs, with the cottages all B&B or holiday rental and space in the stables let out to shops and snack bars. The Spread Eagle Inn also offers accommodation, with its ground floor given over to picture-postcard pubbage. On the sunny afternoon we visited, the pub had extended service to tables in the stable courtyard and had a full menu from light pub classics to full three-course meals. I gave high marks to my ploughman’s but three of us all envied the fourth’s towering Waldorf salad, studded with local, seasonal apples, walnuts and cheddar.

I have been to Stourhead many times, in all seasons, but there’s no question in my mind it’s at its best in the autumn. And we couldn’t have timed our visit better. Oaks, maples, alders and chestnuts were blazing in a merry range of yellows, oranges and vivid scarlets, bearing miraculous testimony to the people who designed this planting scheme but wouldn’t live to see it mature. These trees weren’t put in haphazardly, but purposely placed so their autumnal foliage would create a living painting. It is, with blue skies in late October, quite simply one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

You’ve missed this year’s autumn show but the garden is open all year and the local National Trust managers do a fine job of programming special events for all ages. Winter illuminations run from 27 November to 3rd January. You can get tickets here.

The focus shifts to luxury hotels as the annual Girls’ Trip stays home

 I should have been reporting from Krakow.

Over the years my annual girls’ trip, now in its 19th year with the original trio of Northwestern University friends at its core, has brought this blog to some of Europe’s most intriguing vineyards, historic townscapes and magnificent dining experiences. We’ve even stretched to the beaches of Florida and the vast drama of Iceland. Not this year.

Once our flights to Poland cancelled, we decided that the combination of shifting COVID-19 regulations with the scheduling pressures of (now) four intensely busy professional women made foreign travel impractical. It was time for a staycation. Devon and Cornwall beckoned. Fortunately, though diagnosed illnesses were rising across the UK and much of the country was heightening restrictions as the trip approached, the infection rate in the West Country remained low. And with the money we’d save on that cancelled travel, we could splash out on some properly luxurious hotels.

Our destinations: two nights at the Bovey Castle Hotel in the windswept drama of Dartmoor National Park and three at British hotelier and designer Olga Polizzi’s famed Tresanton in the achingly charming Cornish fishing village of St. Mawes. The first was a triumph on every front, including an unexpectedly lavish seven-course tasting menu. The second, though a tour de force of location and exquisite interior design, fell down on enough basic service points to leave me questioning the value I got for my money. I’d happily return to Bovey Castle, but another trip to St. Mawes would see me trying other options in the village.

BOVEY CASTLE

Arts and Crafts designer Detmar Blow created the neo-Jacobean pile for the W. H. Smith family in 1907. Though it looks a thoroughly aristocratic establishment, the architecture doth protest too much. Blow’s traditional designs were countering the very new money that came from the owner’s stationery business. The property’s old-world scale quickly proved impractical and by 1930 it was already being run as a hotel, a status the castle has retained ever since through a procession of owners. 

The original country house is still very much at the heart of the experience. Guests have the run of a variety of aristocratic settings for genteel relaxation, from a dark-panelled bar that could be a Shakespearean stage set to a towering great hall with minstrels gallery and enormous oriel window taking in the moor. 

There’s a whole sitting room’s worth of overstuffed sofas beneath the grand staircase with its hunting lodge-style chandelier of stag’s antlers, a library that feels like Jeeves and Wooster just popped out, and a brighter, more delicate Georgian-inspired drawing room no doubt designed for the ladies to withdraw into after dinner. We lounged in front of at least three live fires across our two-night stay, with tweed-clad staff members regularly nipping by to add logs and see if we needed more drinks. 

Our rooms were all on the first floor of the main house with high ceilings and atmospheric leaded window frames, but the lower key decor that went for a more modern elegance. Extensions and subsidiary buildings bring the number of rooms to 60. There are also self-catering lodges in the grounds, which include beautiful gardens and an award-winning golf course. Even though the place seemed to be operating at or near full capacity, we never felt crowded by others and could always make enough space not to hear other group’s conversations. That’s always a bonus but feels particularly relevant when trying to holiday during a pandemic.

Dartmoor is one of the few places that feel like real wilderness in England. The landscape is vast, rugged and sparsely inhabited. This is Hound of the Baskervilles country. Storms crash across the moors with little to stop them and the few roads that traverse the national park are either lonely ribbons disappearing into miles of fern- and heather-covered grazing land, or narrow tracks sunk between hedgerows with limited visibility. In short: it’s not the kind of place you want to go driving around in at night. We ate both dinners in.  

There’s a modern brasserie at one end of the main building and a warren of more formal, inter-connected dining rooms forming the Great Western restaurant at the other. Limited pandemic options mean pre-booking is essential and fine dining is only available Friday and Saturday nights, limited to a seven-course tasting menu. This was no sacrifice, dear reader. We could have easily grazed across the brasserie’s menu multiple nights, and the culinary extravaganza on Friday was on par with any of the fancy nights out we’ve enjoyed over years of Girls’ Trip culinary excess. The hotel had only recently re-opened the Great Western so the staff was positively giddy with enthusiasm. By the end of the evening we were on first-name terms with our sommelier Richard, whose wine flights were well judged and inventive, and our lead server Emma. We were delighted by the local sourcing of the food and the time the team took to tell us about it. Autumnal liver and mushroom pate, a creamy artichoke veloute, and the estate’s own venison in a velvety red wine sauce are, frankly, exactly the kinds of things you should be eating in a firelit castle while the wind howls outside.

The weather isn’t always frightening on Dartmoor and there’s a wealth of things to do here, including hiking across dramatic views, villages with a high proportion of interesting gift shops and galleries and a vast number of tourist attractions from worthy National Trust houses to child-pleasers like Pixieland and the House of Marbles. We ventured out briefly but spent most of our visit simply enjoying the facilities. This includes a beautiful Art Deco-style pool with deep blue tiles, a built-in jacuzzi and a glass wall taking in more of that sweep of moorland. Access to that and the gym is included with your room, though these days must be pre-booked. The castle also has a range of country activities including shooting, archery, fishing and carriage rides that can be booked for an additional fee.

We were all sorry to leave, but the promise of an even more lavish experience lay ahead.

TRESANTON

Hotel Tresanton is one of those places that’s acquired the status of legend amongst affluent London executives. Spoken of with the same reverence people lavish on the Soho House properties, the members’ club at Skibo or the Ivy’s private dining room back when there was only one “The Ivy” in the UK, designer and hotelier Olga Polizzi’s laid-back beach club in Cornwall has been a go-to choice for the great and the good’s seaside holidays since it opened in the late ‘90s. Its exquisite interiors have probably featured in every British design magazine and it regularly turns up in the luxury escapes features of publications like the Financial Times’ “How to Spend It” or Country Life’s travel supplements. 

We were expecting a lot. 

We were disappointed.

Tresanton is nearly 40% more expensive than Bovey Castle and yet the Dartmoor hotel beat it on every front; most particularly on service and on pandemic management that made us feel safe. Tresanton has the feeling of a place resting on its laurels, so sure of the adulation of fashionable London that it doesn’t have to try very hard. That may be the case at the moment, when pandemic-constrained people are dying to get back to familiar places, foreign travel is curtailed and executive home workers are flush with the cash they haven’t spent on commuting and foreign holidays. But it’s a dangerous strategy for a travel industry in crisis. All four of us left with the same conclusion: we’d return to St. Mawes but not to Tresanton, and we’d warn people away from repeating our mistake.

Let me start with the positives. Location. Location. Location. St. Mawes is the kind of adorable fishing village that feels like it’s been cooked up to stage an Agatha Christie detective story or charming little film scripted by Richard Curtis. It snakes around a small, peaceful inlet like an inverted question mark near the entrance to the Fal estuary. A Tudor castle guards one side of the inlet, a lighthouse the other. A jumble of houses ring the harbour and run up the hills behind it, almost all of architectural merit and as pristine as a Disney park. Pastel walls are freshly painted, thatch roofs fairly new, pristine pots spill over with flowers and clean windows sparkle. Tresanton’s windows, balconies and terraces take all of this in. At the edge of the village by the castle, the hotel is far enough away from the centre of things to enjoy the quiet, but a 10 minute stroll will take you to the bustling little harbour with two excellent pubs, a wind-sheltered beach, gift shops and a regular ferry service to Falmouth. There’s loads to do in the surrounding area but you can easily sink into the local scene and abandon your vehicle in the hotel’s hidden car park until it’s time to leave.

Tresanton lives up to its design icon status. Polizzi won plaudits for mixing casual and formal, antique and modern, print with pattern. Most of the place feels like an eclectic and tasteful private home assembled over generations rather than a commercial establishment. There are sisal carpets, slouchy overstuffed down sofas and chairs, piles of intriguing holiday reading and eclectic mixes of art, from African tribal masks to local legend Barbara Hepworth's prints. The restaurants is a cheery blend of blues and whites with aquatic mosaics on the floor and sea shell shaped lighting giving the room a grotto feel. Polizzi arguably established what’s now the standard for high-end boutique hotels. Alnwick’s Cookie Jar, my favourite boutique hotel of recent years, is a direct descendant of what started here. 

The design ethos wasn't uniform, however. Though our twin-bedded room had a glorious bathroom with marble tub and glass shower cube, the girls in the singles reported "identikit Hilton bathrooms with cheesy plastic shower curtains." Loos off public spaces had high end toiletries to wash your hands but cheap paper towels to dry them. Rooms had toilet paper but no tissue. A wall unit in a downstairs hall offered Wellington boots to borrow for tramps along the beach, but some had been put away muddy so were hardly enticing. The longer we stayed, the more we noticed these little gaps in attention to detail.

Our biggest problem with the hotel came from the lack of indoor space, however, exacerbated by a cavalier attitude toward the pandemic. Tresanton is a complex of multiple buildings climbing a hill, with exquisite courtyard gardens and balconies framed by sub-tropical gardens. There was only one indoor sitting room available for 30 guest rooms. Bovey Castle has double the rooms but probably 10 times the indoor lounge space. Tresanton's sitting room (below) is clustered tightly with sofas and chairs and fully packed at meal times when the restaurant adds outside diners to residents. Though staff wear masks the guests can remove theirs as soon as they order drinks. None of us had been with this many strangers in such close proximity since the pandemic started, and we were distinctly uncomfortable. 

The dining room was also packed tight without any of the now-standard Perspex screens to offer some protection when tables are too close for comfort. The food is certainly not worth the sacrifice. Though pleasant, it was inferior to, and more expensive than, meals we had in the village.

The crowding sent a clear message: making money took priority over guest safety.

Even without a pandemic, at this lofty price point you expect more public space to lounge. There was an additional function room behind the lounge and a secondary bar at beach level that could have made extra room, but they were shut tight. Tresanton hadn't adapted any of the outdoor spaces to inclement weather use. No marquees, no canopies. We saw heaters and umbrellas but they weren't deployed. Excusable if we were in Greece but this is Cornwall, where changeable weather should be factored into any plan.

Service was average to indifferent, an impression exacerbated by just how exceptional it had been at Bovey Castle. Interaction was pleasant but perfunctory. There seemed to be no real interest in how we were enjoying our stay (until we checked out) and no desire to chat with us to discover our plans and suggest recommendations. An offer of drinks once settled in the only lounge could take up to an hour. There were no tea and coffee making facilities in the room and a delivery of the request took 40 minutes one morning. When assembled as a foursome we'd ask for water or coffee and it would come with a drinking vessel only for the requestor unless we specified for all of us. Little things, but things that a top boutique hotel hosting our group in the past would figure out after the first interaction. 

We were also intrigued that other than the front desk staff most of the service team seemed to have originated from either Eastern or Southern Europe. While we're used to that in London, it seemed odd in a distant county where employment is so heavily dependant on tourism. Boutique hotels usually put local staff front and centre to show off the nature of the place and provide those insider tips only the natives know. You'll get none of that here.

In reflection, I realise that what bothered me most about Tresanton was the feel it wasn't Cornish at all, but a seaside-themed bubble transported intact from Knightsbridge with all the capital's quirks. The not-quite-on-their-game-yet staff of young immigrants, the crowding, the aloof urban attitude. 

At a lower price point we could have let the irritations ... other than feeling unsafe ... slide in favour of enjoying the views. But let's lay it on the line here: our spacious double with a sea view was £370 per night.  In any circumstance I expect a flawless experience for that price. These days, I also want excessive care of my health and a feeling that the establishment isn't resting on its laurels, but finding ways to innovate and excel through changing times. 

 

Crowd-limited British Museum is a rare treat for advance bookers

Under normal circumstances, it's hard to get a good look at the Rosetta Stone. Sure, admission to the British Museum is free and it stands in its own display case in a prominent location. But the tourists are usually 10 deep. School children block the way with notebooks they hold before them to complete class assignments. Group tours are shepherded around it by guides. Aggressive photographers elbow you out of the way to get the right shot. It's been years since I've bothered to take a good look at this monumental bit of history. The crush just wasn't worth it.

No longer.

One of the silver linings of Covid-19's cloud is the visitor experience at cultural attractions. Though pre-booking is a hassle and the limited numbers are killing institutional finances, the situation has created an idyllic environment for the thoughtful visitor.  The British Museum is a case in point. 

The limited number of tickets per time slot ensures plenty of distance between you and other visitors, meaning galleries are sparsely populated and ... since the UK's "rule of six" eliminates the possibility of school groups ... remarkably quiet. Though I'm a British Museum member and know the place well, the circumstances revealed new wonders. I usually push through the ground floor Egyptian galleries on my way somewhere else; they're always too noisy and crowded to enjoy. This time, I could stand alone in pools of dappled sunlight, look into the faces of long-dead pharaohs and have space to contemplate. 

I lingered with the Elgin marbles appreciating the nuances of drapery over the human form. I took time in the Enlightenment Gallery to peer onto shelves and read labels. I still moves fast through the Aztec section, where bloodthirsty gods in dim lighting are even creepier when you're alone with them.

The real genius of the current situation, however, may be the enforced one-way system, which drives traffic through some galleries that most visitors usually race through in their determination to cover the star sights, or skip altogether. (Detail-oriented readers may remember I've raged against set museum routes in the past, particularly at the Uffizi, but in the current circumstances this works.) The route includes the oft-missed early Greek galleries, where a massive and rare terracotta sarcophagus deserves more fame, the never-missed Elgin marbles, and the stately Neried monument. Sitting in front of the last is a fascinating modern work by Grayson Perry called the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, which imagines a ceremonial burial ship for all of the nameless artisans who made the treasures in the collections here. The ship is clad with plaster casts that echo masterpieces from around the museum, bringing every artistic tradition together in the celebration of the act of creation itself. It's spectacular.

On the other side of the building you can explore the Americas gallery where you can see an array of Native American costumes and artefacts that many museums in the "Wild West" would envy. There are those spooky Aztecs, and the Enlightenment Galleries which were originally built for George III and represent the museum's collections in miniature. 

But the greatest triumph of the enforced route will be increased traffic through the African galleries, often missed because of their basement location. 

These rooms bring together art, furniture and textiles from across the continent, though they're light on Egypt and Islamic North Africa since those cultures are amply represented in their own galleries. The greatest masterpieces here are the Benin Bronzes, gorgeous casts of human heads, animals and ceremonial scenes created in the 1500s. The most remarkable are a set of plaques showing palace life and ritual that once decorated the palace of the king. They're also probably the most contentious of all objects in the museum as, unlike the legally purchased Elgin Marbles, these were undeniably the legacy of an aggressive campaign of looting at the end of violent conflicts in the late 19th century. 

More than 80 museums around the world ... but outside Nigeria ... now own treasures removed in those wars. An organisation called the Benin Dialogue Group, in which the British Museum plays an active role, is working with the government of Nigeria to care for the treasures, raise their profile and knowledge of the culture that produced them and discuss repatriation. However you feel about how the bronzes got here, and where they should live today, if you live in London and haven't seen them you're doing yourself a real disservice. 

I find the clothing and textiles particularly beautiful. The workmanship is exquisite and the patterns remind you of just how much traditional African patterns have influenced Western design. I'm particularly fond of a display of hats and headgear which is not only enormously fun in the way they seem to float in their glass case, but show off in a very tangible way just how diverse the cultures of the continent are. There's no shying away from the historic conflicts that have, and still do, rip those cultures apart, but there are some good news stories here. One of my favourite pieces is The Tree of Life a sculpture of a tree brimming with wildlife made completely from decommissioned arms turned in at the end of Mozambique's civil war.

There's more than history down here. Unlike most of the rest of the museum, these galleries feature modern craftsmanship that rotates through on a regular basis, so you're never sure what you're going to find. There's currently a display of some of the most spectacular masquerade costumes I've ever seen, combining venerable traditions with modern metalwork to give us something I suspect most humans born before 1700 might have mistaken as gods. 

There's also an abstract stone sculpture of a woman that's reminiscent of the African artist's booth at the annual Hampton Court Flower show. For a bit of an investment, you too could have something worthy of a museum gallery.

The big drawback of the current pre-defined route is that it takes you through just a tiny percentage of the collection. The entire first floor and the whole northern building, with the exception of an exit route, are closed off, as are side galleries on the ground floor. You won't see anything from the European collections. No palace walls from Ninevah. The Sutton Hoo treasure remains in splendid isolation, as do the recently renovated Arabic galleries and all the Chinese and Japanese collections. Most important to note, should you be contemplating a visit with the younger generation, is that the galleries of child-enchanting mummies are out of bounds.

Don't let any of that dissuade you from reserving tickets. Your visit may be limited, but the quality of the viewing experience more than makes up for the quantity of sights available. And if it encourages you to spend some time in those African galleries, you will have found a real silver lining to this pandemic's cloud.

A famous gardener and a now-exotic London outing make this birthday/anniversary special

My husband is not typically a creative gift giver. Like many men, he likes the safety of working off a list provided by the recipient, and loved the efficiency of having something delivered direct from Amazon ... not minding if it’s sans card or gift wrapping. Thus it was quite a shock this year when, for my birthday and our anniversary ... which happen on the same day ... he came through with a customised surprise to make the most romantic gesture seem trivial: a 45-minute private garden consultation by Zoom with Alan Titchmarsh.

American readers may need some context here. Imagine hanging out with Martha Stewart to get home style tips, receiving batting coaching from Albert Pujols, or rap instruction from Lin Manuel-Miranda. Titchmarsh is the UK's favourite gardener, a humble, working-class lad from Yorkshire who went from flower beds to horticultural journalist to TV star. When I moved to the UK in the late '90s he was omnipresent, hosting the annual Chelsea Flower Show coverage, running a wildly-popular garden makeover show called Ground Force and hosting the weekly broadcast (and national institution) of Gardeners' World. Now 71, Titchmarsh has moved solidly into national treasure territory, and is in theory semi-retired though he still hosts a radio show on ClassicFM, writes garden columns, produces the occasional novel, pops up on TV and promotes charitable causes.

It's the combination of charity and ClassicFM that provided the opportunity for my birthday present. He'd donated the consultation to the station's charity auction and my husband spotted his opportunity to procure a gift to make his wife swoon.

My call was far more than just a brush with fame. Titchmarsh's experience is abundant and he delivers it with the skills of a master consultant. He manages to tell you what's wrong without implying an ounce of criticism to your gardening skills. In fact, his praise of my efforts thus far made me bloom with pride at the same time he was able to tell me exactly what I'd done wrong and how to fix it. It was all terribly appropriate, since much of the knowledge I used to design and take care of my garden has come from his broadcasts and columns over the years. He also radiates a genial kindness that marks him out as one of the true good guys in this world, a hunch confirmed by a friend who used to work with him at the BBC.

So what's wrong with my garden? The same thing I've been hired to fix at work. Too many things competing for attention. I need to do more with less. It's ironic that I can see and attack the problem so clearly in my professional life, but didn't spot it in my own herbaceous borders. But, as my new best friend and horticultural coach consoled me, when you truly love plants and don't have a lot of room, you try to pack in everything possible. 

This autumn will see me stripping out about a third of my plants and making a few tweaks to create bigger blocks of colour. The same applies to my pond, which already looks better after sending armloads of reeds, water lilies and oxygenating plants to the compost heap. My least successful bed (pictured below) lacks a strong focal point; I'll be digging the whole thing out, investing in the recommended Japanese maple and planting around it. And while there's no rescuing my espaliered apple tree (planted in too shady a spot and now too established to move), the west-facing wall I've ignored until now could support three carefully-chosen fruit trees.

My date with Alan Titchmarsh took place several weeks before my birthday, leaving the day itself for other treats. I went up to London for the first time since the world shut down in March to meet a friend for lunch (in a nice parallel, the same one who used to work with him at the BBC). The experience was a bit surreal, at once both familiar and alien. I long ago lost count of the number of times I’ve gone from Basingstoke to Green Park station, and the Wolseley is one of London’s most comforting, long-running, establishment venues for a business lunch. And yet the trains running 1/3 full, the empty, echoing corridors of Underground stations, the blank advertising spaces and the closed up shops felt like I was walking through the zombie apocalypse. London without foreign tourists is an oddly alien place and, frankly, glorious. But not economically sustainable; at least not as it was at the year’s opening.

The Wolseley, always a favourite with a traditional English crowd, was having no issues. Every table was packed, with a time limit to prepare for the flip to afternoon tea. They might have moved the tables a bit further apart, but one of the advantages of the Wolseley for business meetings has always been the generous space between tables so it was hard to tell. The most obvious signs of these plague times were an airport-security style contraption you had to face off to have your temperature taken before preceding to your table, and the individual portion of hand sanitiser waiting atop the crisp linen napkin. 

This is one of the grandest dining rooms in London. A glorious testimony to the madness of boom and bust cycles in the 1920s, it was originally built as a car showroom. The opulent Venetian/Florentine palazzo inspiration is a reminder that motor cars were originally the preserve of the super-rich. The black-and-white marble floors, black marble columns, white vaulted ceilings, shining brass railings and grand chandeliers are properly palatial. Wolseley Motors went bankrupt in five years, however, so Barclays took the building on as its Mayfair branch. The original architect returned to update the decor with Japanese lacquer and other Oriental gewgaws that were high fashion by the late ‘20s. It’s a bizarre but merry combination that works particularly well in the afternoon when the place is functioning as a high class tea room. 

Food here is inspired by the grand cafes of Europe, with a menu very similar to that of sister restaurant The Delauney. They’re particularly known for their oyster and shellfish bar and for having breakfast favourites like eggs benedict and kedgeree on the menu 24/7. My friend swears by their chopped salads (hers did look tempting), while I opted for a classic steak tartare. Schnitzel is always on the menu as is a proper baked cheesecake. 

One of the reasons the Wolseley has remained so popular with punters since it opened in 2003 is its pricing. The prix-fixe menu is only £19.95 for two courses and £24 for three, and main courses tend to be in the mid £20s. Sure, you can have a blow out with lobster, chateaubriand and champagne, but you can also enjoy grand elegance and feel like you’ve had proper value for your money with most choices. Which is actually far truer to the English establishment who once dominated Mayfair than the Ritz across the street, which has pumped up the gold gilt, escalated prices to the stratosphere and targets cash-splashing conspicuous consumers. Who are rarely English, and seldom old establishment.

Back home, my husband celebrated our anniversary by cooking dinner ... the next night. The breakfast bar in the kitchen where we normally eat might fall short of the Wolseley’s decor and our plating is too generous to be called fine dining, but I think our black and white granite counters are a bit grand and Mr. B’s salmon en croute with a lemon cream sauce wouldn’t be out of place in a grand European cafe. 

Yes, he’s a keeper. Even before the Titchmarsh consultation. Maybe I should take him to the Wolseley.