A Country Break — four self-catering cottages on the Worcestershire and Herefordshire border

Four cottages on the Worcestershire and Herefordshire border, in two places about twenty miles apart.

Three of them stand together at Fishpools, at the top of a farm track outside Kyre, where the ground drops away towards the Teme and Kyre valleys. Long Cover was a stable once and still has the beams, the stone fireplace and the stained glass to show for it. The Coach House and Ebony Cottage sit in the grounds of a timber-framed house that has been there since the sixteenth century, and both are built for two.

The fourth, Foxhill House, is twenty miles south in Herefordshire. Stone, south-facing, Georgian across the front, at the end of a drive lined with daisies and wildflowers, looking out over old countryside that nobody has tidied up. You let yourself in with a key from the safe, and the rest of the week is yours.

Ellie has been hosting for eight years. She answers the phone herself, and confirms every booking herself.

People come for two or three nights, usually driving up from a city less than three hours away. Two of the kitchens have an Aga. Dogs are welcome in all four. And if you sit outside at Kyre after supper and stay still long enough, badgers work their way up through the grass at the edge of the light.