A Country Break

About

Ellie, and two places twenty miles apart

The four cottages are not one estate. Three stand together at Kyre in Worcestershire; the fourth is twenty miles south, in Herefordshire.

Who answers the phone

Ellie has been letting these cottages for eight years. She takes the enquiries, answers the telephone and confirms every booking herself. There is nobody else to be put through to.

What is around them

The cottages sit on the borders of three counties — Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire — and no more than three hours of motorway from most of England.

Walks

The Kyre cottages sit beside ancient unspoilt wood, full of wildlife and wild flowers, and an extensive network of footpaths and bridleways leads directly out from them. Offa’s Dyke and the Golden Valley are within reach, and the Malvern Hills have some of the widest views in the country.

Architecture and history

The medieval ruins of Ludlow Castle, and Stokesay Castle, a thirteenth-century manor house with a moat. Hereford Cathedral holds a chained library and the Mappa Mundi, a map of the world drawn on carved skin around 1300. Witley Court is a seventeenth-century ruined Italianate mansion. Herefordshire is known for its black and white villages trail on the Welsh Marches.

Towns

Ludlow, a fine Georgian town with markets nearly every day, is a gastronomic centre and holds an internationally known food festival in the castle grounds. Hay-on-Wye is famous for its bookshops and its festival. Leominster is full of small antique shops. Tenbury Wells, the spa and market town Queen Victoria called “my little town in the orchard”, is four miles from Kyre.

Days out

The Severn Valley Railway runs sixteen miles of heritage line from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster along the river. Eastnor Castle, the West Midlands Safari Park and the Brecon Beacons are all a drive away, and there are racecourses at Ludlow, Hereford and Worcester.

The four cottages