Kirkconnel Hall Hotel

Seeing as you're staying in Scotland, you might want to wander around a whisky distillery while on your trip – and you should do so in Annan (15 minutes' drive), where you can have a little look round a museum documenting the town's past while you’re in the area. For more history in this region that’s rich with it, travel to Carlyle's Birthplace (five minutes) to peer at the childhood home of the writer, or hike up to Repentance Tower at Hoddom Castle (10 minutes) – a nine-hole golf course is here as well, if you just so happen to have the clubs in the boot… The ruins of another castle are in Lochmaben (15 minutes) and there’s yet another old building – the 16th-century Gilnockie Tower house – in Langholm (half an hour) if you’ve still more appetite for admiring age-old architecture.