The drive up to Tewkesbury Park Hotel in the Cotswolds is utterly fabulous, a welcoming gateway that winds half a mile up through the gorgeous greens of the golf course leading to the main building.
There is plenty of parking and electric charge points, not needed this time as we were touring the Jaguar F-Type with its powerful V8 engine.
Our last stop on the Audi R8 V10 Tour was the Great Fosters, a Tudor estate just outside Windsor in Surrey.
Great Fosters is the quintessential historic English Manor estate, offering exquisite dining under new head chef Alex Payne. Plus indulgent pampering with massages, afternoon tea packages and luxury suites frequented by kings and queens set in ornate gardens filled with outstanding and immense topiary (hedges sculpted into a variety of forms).
As we drove the rather superb Audi R8 noisily (V10 engine) over the Clopton Bridge across the River Avon we could see the white walls and red clay roofs of the Arden Hotel behind the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
The Arden Hotel in Stratford is set in the most perfect location, right on the river across the street from the RSC and the Swan Theatre. You are bang centre in the middle of the richest history in England.
William Shakespeare's last home and the church where he is buried are a hundred yards away through parkland and quaint narrow streets.
Our welcome was personable and friendly, something the de Savary hotels do extremely well. After leaving the Bentley GTC in the free parking at the rear of the hotel, we were shown to the Rosemary Suite (all rooms are named after herbs they grow), a private bungalow at the bottom of the walled garden. The room was utterly delightful, an ivy-covered Victorian Garden Potting Shed, down a lovely path, just a stone’s throw from the spa.
Adventure beckons the moment you arrive at The Cary Arms in the positively tropical Babbacombe Bay. A gentle cruise along the cliff-top coast road in the new Bentley GTC brought us to a small single-lane track. So steep that you wonder if the car will make it. Of course, it's a Bentley so it's a breeze. Though anything without four-wheel drive will struggle.
1300 years ago the Maldives was called "Dvipa Laksham" or a hundred thousand islands. It was later referred to as Treasure Island by Arab and Persian traders who came for the pearls, agate, spices, fish and coconuts. For me, these names conjure up visions of islands drifting in such clear water that they appear to float in the sky. Start with that image in your mind's eye to visualise this paradise.
Still wearing his lid and his thigh muscles glistening impressively under the Provencal sunshine, Romain pointed to all points of the compass and indulged in some proudly Gallic long-distance celebrity spotting.
“You’ve got Russell Crowe over there and John Malkovich that way. That's where Richard Mayle used to live. Ridley Scott has a place in Bonnieux and Pierre Cardin owns most of Lacoste, including the chateau which was the Marquis de Sade’s old home.”
Not being much of a Welsh nationalist, Dylan Thomas wouldn’t have minded that the tableware in the Dylan Coastal Resort is Scottish slate and the balms in west Wales’ new Milk Wood Spa are made by Ishaga in Stornoway.
Our final stop on the McLaren 720S International Excellence Magazine Tour was The Roseate Hotel in Edinburgh. They have free parking so we pulled the supercar around the back of the imposing detached Jacobean manor and ambled into reception.
The Torridon Hotel is set on Upper Loch Torridon with spectacular views in the northwest of Scotland opposite the Isle of Skye. Driving to the Torridon is a visual feast of soft rolling orange fern-covered hills peppered with scintillating streams and lakes. It is an area of outstanding beauty and the hotel is the ideal place from which to explore. This is one for the romantics, the perfect venue for a spring, summer or winter weekend.
