Places to celebrate life’s special moments with Sawday’s
Sawday’s are specialists in places to stay with warmth and soul. As well as launching our exciting competition collaboration, we asked them for their pick of places to celebrate.
Life’s special moments should pop, froth, and fizz with champagne, stunning views and joyous moments surrounded by the people you love most in the world. To make that happen, you need to set the scene, with a place to stay that’s worthy of the occasion.
We personally inspect every place we work with, looking for touches of magic that you’ll remember forever. Whether you’re celebrating a big birthday, marking an anniversary or just gathering friends and family together, there’s a Sawday’s place that’ll make the perfect backdrop.
A Romantic Getaway
Gilpin Lake House
You can’t fail to wow the one you woo if you take them to Gilpin Lake House. The woodland and waterside setting is spectacular, with the jetty covered in fairy lights a perfect place to sit with a glass of wine at the end of a day spent being pampered in the spa. There’s even a standalone boathouse right on the water, where you can have breakfast delivered and eat with the sounds of the shore drifting up to you.
Sesta Terra Resort
It seems odd to call a stunning trip to the Italian coast, “simple” but this is exactly where the beauty of Sesta Terra lies, in its laid-back, unadorned embrace of nature. Choose from a canvas lodge or cabin and find yourselves cocooned in billowing white cloth or calming, pale wood. The clean design leaves the views to do the talking and you to enjoy them, strolling among the olive trees or down to the beach before coming home to bed.
Torel Palace Porto
If you head for this hotel in Porto, you’ll want to pack some of your more stylish clothes, as well as your finest Claudia Bradby jewellery, naturally. A wave of moody opulence hits you from the first step into the lobby and floats you through the bar, into rooms of monochrome majesty. You’re only ten minutes from the cobbled charm of the Ribeira quarter too, so you can fill your stay with the finest Porto has in music, food and romance.
A FAMILY GET TOGETHER
The Barn at Larcombe Farm
This versatile barn is tucked down a private drive and sits by a lake deep in beautiful South Hams farmland. The restoration has turned a lofty farmyard space into a design palace, but one with warmth and charm. There are big tables indoors and out for noisy, sociable meals, plenty of sofa space for everyone to stretch out on and, for the kid in all of us,
Chateau de Carsac
When you arrive at this 1700s chateau, you’ll find a gift from each neighbouring winery waiting in the welcome hamper, starting an inimitably indulgent holiday off with a pop. You can all head out kayaking or paddle boarding on the nearby lakes, or stay home and let the kids splash in the pool while you lounge in front of spectacular Dordogne views.
Ty Coch
With a circle of stone benches round the firepit at the bottom of the garden and a private beach just beyond, this is a place the kids will mythologise for years to come. That’s before you’ve even got the pizza oven going and dined under the strings of lights that criss-cross the terrace. There are ancient villages and forts, Michelin-starred restaurants and the winding coastal path all on your doorstep, but with so much at Ty Coch itself, you won’t want to leave.
THREE PLACES FOR A PARTY
Treveddoe Farmhouse
Acres of space, dramatic views and bright, stylish rooms; Treveddoe Farmhouse is ideal for a group to get together and catch up, whether it’s on long walks straight onto Bodmin Moor from the end of the garden, or sessions in the hot tub with one group playing waiters while the others steam. There are no neighbours around, so you can let your hair down and unwind, but the peace of the place is such that you might want to have a yoga session run in the garden or an on-site spa treatment rather than raise the roof.
The Freeth
The Freeth, originally a hunting lodge on the edge of a medieval deer park, is a big, warm house, found down a mile-long track on the 1,500-acre Netherwood Estate. There’s an indoor heated pool, and cooks will love the Aga and magazine-worthy kitchen. If you don’t fancy cooking there’s a Michelin starred, award-winning restaurant, Pensons, on the estate – great for a big family meal after a bracing walk through countryside unspoilt by civilisation for miles around.
Mas des Gardies
Convince 14 of your closest friends to head for this lovely stone pile in the south of France and they will thank you for it for years to come. The house and pool, reached down a dusty, tree-lined road, have more than a touch of glamour to them, but the surrounding area offers an experience of the wilder side of France. The nearby Cévennes National Park is a fascinating mix of hills, caves, gorges and, the steam train from Anduze to St-Jean-du-Gard takes you to great river swimming and you can wander under the incredible stalactites of the caves of Trabuc.
