Luxury Hotels|Restaurants|Resorts
The Priory Wareham was the final stop on our Porsche Cayenne GTS tour of Devon and Cornwall, and if you're going to end a drive through some of England's finest countryside, ending it beside the River Frome with a 16th-century monastery waiting at the door is doing it properly.
A Porsche a Peninsula and a Hotel That Perches Above the Waves
Driving a Porsche on a Devon beach, arriving by sea tractor, and staying in a 1930s Art Deco palace on its own tidal island near Bigbury-on-Sea turns a weekend into a genuine adventure, with historic suites, exceptional dining, and Atlantic drama that lingers long after you leave.
Arrival: The Theatre Begins Before You Step on the Island
There’s something rather amazing, it has to be said, in a few hours to be air-lifted from one season to another, to override providence, to jump 20 degrees in temperature, to swap a dull, grim cloudy rain-sodden day for a bright, sun-drenched, wonderfully warm climate. How good to sleep deeply to the sound of waves with their own rhythmic heartbeat crashing or lapping and the gentle tinkering from a forest of masts.
A pine-scented Italian mountain refuge beneath Monte Bianco where folklore, food, skiing, and serious pleasure converge, and where leaving feels faintly disloyal
Courmayeur sits at the foot of Mont Blanc with the quiet confidence of a place that knows exactly who it is. It has no need to shout. Unlike many Alpine resorts engineered for throughput and spectacle, this is a real town with a proper centre, cobbled streets, stone houses, and a rhythm dictated as much by weather and tradition as by ski lifts and restaurant bookings.
They do it so well. The Italians that is. Such imagination and such refinement in best utilising their impossible precipices and improbable shapes and angles.
For I had come to Lake Iseo, an hour from Milan’s Linate airport and called Sebino from the Latin for ‘double-hooked’ and divided between Bergamo and Brescia. It’s wonderfully punctuated with a dozen towns, some medieval.
The Thurlestone Hotel boasts a rich and fascinating history, one that elegantly interweaves a celebrated local dynasty, the Grose family, with the golden age of the British seaside holiday.
Bovey Castle boasts a rich and fascinating history, one that elegantly interweaves a celebrated British retail dynasty, W.H. Smith, with the golden age of railway travel and vital service during two World Wars. Originally conceived as a private country bolthole, it has blossomed into one of the UK's most prominent luxury hotels.
Luxury takes many forms, yet Villa Nai 3.3 reshapes the very idea of indulgence until it feels impossibly richer, deeper, and more intoxicating than you imagined. Perched on the edge of Dugi Otok like a superbly hidden hobbit house of luxury, tucked into the hills with secret terraces, sun-drenched stone, and olive groves that seem to whisper ancient secrets, it offers a view so arresting even the most discerning Middle-earth residents might consider relocating.
Our visit to Eccleston Square Hotel formed part of International Excellence Magazine’s BMW Z4 M40i Grand Christmas Tour of London, which is an excellent excuse to indulge in refined hotel comforts while sweeping through the city’s most elegant neighbourhoods in a machine that encourages irresponsible levels of enthusiasm.
