Glamping Thorpe

Prime picnicking, decent gastropubs and glorious walks are all around the countryside surrounding Glamping Thorpe – Anna and Paul will happily point you in the right directions – but urban exploits in Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick and Leamington Spa are only half an hour’s drive away.

Banbury, the town of Ride a Cock Horse nursery rhyme fame, is a good starting point to see the noted Cross (rebuilt in Victorian times since Puritans destroyed the original, alas) and to have a pint or two in the seventeenth century Whateley Hall Hotel, once the famous Three Tuns which put up many old-style celebs in its day including Jonathan Swift.

If you’d like to leave the car at Banbury, you can pick up trains or coaches to Oxford, Warwick and Reading as well as further afield to London Paddington and Birmingham; otherwise there’s fairly easy access from Glamping Thorpe as it’s five miles from of the M40 (Junction 11). Or race around the local circuit instead: Banbury and its surroundings are renowned for their motor racing history and Silverstone Circuit is about twenty miles away at Towcester. (More old-fashioned racing can be seen at Towcester Racecourse which hosts National Hunt meets from October to May.)

No old-style hol would be complete without a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick for the Bard’s old haunts and the spooks of Warwick Castle respectively; there are racecourses at both too if Towcester has tickled your fluttering fancy. While you’re in the vicinity, the ancient town of Royal Leamington Spa just outside Warwick is well worth a look: sadly there are no longer healing waters to bath in like the Romans, but the Royal Pump Rooms have a spa museum and art gallery, and spa water can still be sampled outside. Other watery pursuits around the region include punting on the River Avon (a bit of a must, say we) and casting off for coarse fishing at nearby Boddington Reservoir where bags of 100lb+ are relatively common (the record so far is a 630lb bag over six hours).

South from Glamping Thorpe and heading towards Oxford you’ll reach the old market town of Bicester and its thoroughly modern shopping village for always enjoyable till ringing, and Woodstock with Churchill’s old pad Blenheim Palace, one of our faves. The home of the ancestors belonging to another glorious leader, George Washington, is at Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire.