There is something wise about staying during a palace in Northumberland.
My delusions of loftiness aside, a immeasurable retirement of a limit country, divided from vast centres of race – that is smashing when we need to mangle giveaway of a close conurbation – means we crave a solid, comforting haven.
It contingency be instinctive. Being holed-up behind a 7ft-thick walls of a genuine 14th century outpost authorised me to nap really soundly, notwithstanding a wild, northern breeze outside. But maybe a hearty, Michelin-standard plate might have been a factor, too.
I’d spent a day conference tales of a land where dispute is stained red in a history. There are some-more castles in Northumberland than in any other English county – a product of a aroused past of bloody limit wars and merciless, raiding reivers.
Langley Castle was built in 1350 during a energy of Edward III to waken a eminent family from those robbery Scots. It fell into hurt before being easy in a early 19th century and renovated wholly from 1985 into a oppulance hotel.
But a beginning justification of Northumberland’s aroused past is The Wall.
Whether Rome’s Hadrian built it to keep out heavy Celts or only as a look-at-how-big-my-empire-is standing pitch is still debated, though it is an considerable attainment of 2nd century engineering.
The wall stretched seashore to coast, 6ft-high in places, and a forts along a 80-mile track were multicultural outposts during a corner of a Roman frontier.
The alley to one of these remote forts, Housesteads, gives an suspicion of how visitor a landscape – definitely pleasing though imperishable and revengeful – contingency have been to a mercenary from Liguria.
The site is a pleasant reduction of excavated remains, monumental views and a centre with displayed finds and ominous CGI film of Roman life. It is a many finish Roman installation in Britain with a stays of barracks, a hospital, granaries and latrines still visible.
You contingency also travel a wall for a 3 miles from Housesteads to Once Brewed National Park Centre, past a much-photographed Sycamore Gap, a mark done famous in a film, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. It is one of a many scenic tools of a wall to travel and we can lapse around another fort, Roman Vindolanda or, in summer, get a AD122 train behind to a Housesteads Visitor Centre.
From a Wall, we suspicion we could make out Langley Castle, nestled in a 10-acre woodland estate in a shaggy South Tyne valley, on a categorical highway between Haydon Bridge and Alston. And it was good to get behind to a commanding nonetheless cosy palace and a GT in a tapestry-draped sketch room.
‘I kicked myself that I’d left my lute behind in Manchester’
Award-winning Langley has 27 guest rooms, with 9 being underline rooms, including a one, a Derwentwater.
There was a four-poster, super aristocrat distance bed, grand grate and a Gothic lifted window chair set where we can watch peacocks nervously strut around a sprouting grounds. we kicked myself that I’d left my lute behind in Manchester.
But during Langley, we are not totally stranded in a 14th century, there’s a prosaic shade TV and a oppulance lavatory too.
Manager Anton Phillips is ardent about a four-star hotel and has built it adult into one of Northumberland’s premier destinations – and not only for accommodation and service, a food in a dual AA Rosette Josephine grill was artistic and we can see because Anton has hopes of capturing a Michelin star.
We also paid additional for a relating wines and were blissful we did. They ideally complemented a thespian cuisine of executive cook Dan Grigg served in a wealthy restaurant.
Dan has Michelin star knowledge – including as conduct cook during Windermere’s The Samling – and his extensive starter of Liver, Bacon and Onions is featured in a 2015 book of a Great British Cookbook, with his furious sea fish with morels, langoustine, crispy grapes and verjus syrup, set to seem in a next.
I chose a Liver, Bacon and Onions, a medium pretension for such a marvellous plate of iberico ham, onion textures and foie gras ganache, while opposite a list was mushrooms on toast: cepe partait, artichoke persillade and wafts of fungus aromas – a fungi foraged by Dan in a woods around a castle.
There was a categorical of Herdwick mutton with lobster wonton, H2O chestnuts and miso gas and my furious turbot, with Jacobs ladder and Jerusalem artichoke. There is a good cheeseboard too.
One tip: don’t leave though experiencing a giveaway guided debate of palace – with a good perspective of a Sycamore Gap on a skyline.
Northumberland has an enviable repute for food, and not only during Langley Castle.
We stopped off during ancestral Battlesteads Hotel and Restaurant (battlesteads.com/, 01434 230209 ) for lunch as I’d listened about a ‘green’ credentials, with veg, salad and spices entrance from a two-acre gardens and carbon-neutral power.
It also has an look-out for guest during a hotel and new eco-lodges, that advantages from a remote, ‘dark sky’ plcae in a National Park.
There seems to be a micro-climate in Wark, as Battlesteads’ walled drink garden was alive with bees and butterflies in a pleasing arrangement of flowers, where we had a integrate of cask ales before streamer into a grill for a plate of furious sea fish and delayed baked beef cheek.
Farmer’s markets are dotted by a exhausted villages though there are some-more estimable places to stop off and suffer a cuisine of a north country, including Vallum Farm, on a Military Road nearby Matfen (vallumfarm.co.uk); Brocksbushes Farm Shop and Tea Room, during Corbridge (brocksbushes.co.uk) and a Northumberland Cheese Company, in Blagdon (northumberland cheese.co.uk)
We eventually finished adult during St Mary’s Inn (stmarysinn.co.uk, 01670 293293), a newly-built pub and BB, nearby Morpeth, that has such good ales we were blissful we’d requisitioned in to stay a night in one of a cosy rooms.
The pub’s food is grill customary and we enjoyed starters of Latimer’s North Sea potted crab and smoked haddock and clam chowder laced with Laphroaig whisky, and mains of Northumberland venison haunch and red booze braised shoulder of beef.
They do a good breakfast, too – don’t pass adult a Craster smoked salmon or grilled kippers.
Langley Castle Hotel, Langley-On-Tyne, Hexham, Northumberland, NE47 5LU. T: 01434 688888 / E: manager@langleycastle.com / W: www.langleycastle.com.
There is a customary cost of £378 cooking bed and breakfast for dual for a one-night stay in a underline room or an offer cost of £329 per night for dual (if staying dual nights or more) cooking bed and breakfast (available until a finish of June, 2016, by quoting a formula ‘Choice’).
General traveller information: visithadrianswall.co.uk, visitnorthumberland.com, norumberlandnationalpark.org.uk