The Porch House, Cotswolds

Of the many exquisite towns and villages in the Cotswolds, Stow on the Wold is one of my favourites. Its hilltop location, while famously a little chilly in winter months, affords stunning views of rolling Gloucestershire countryside which, on my brief visit last week, was enveloped in one of those magical mists that gives way to autumnal blues skies and golden sunshine.
While unashamedly and understandably proud of both its history and its good looks, Stow has done a fine job of reinventing itself for the modern world - there are numerous boutique food shops selling local meat, cheese, chocolates and bread; then there are the tea rooms and coffee bars, antiques and interior design outlets and one of the best kitchenware shops (The Crock Shop) I have ever encountered. If the town appeared sleepily quaint at 9am on a Friday morning, by midday it felt like the busy market town of old, buzzing with locals and tourists alike, some of whom were passing through, others who were stopping over in Stow's surprisingly extensive array of hotels, inns and B&Bs.

My own base was the Porch House, a coaching inn I guess you'd call it, with 13 bedrooms, a bar, a restaurant, a private dining room, a snug and a pretty rear garden. The fact that it claims to be the oldest inn in England is neither here nor there - interesting though some may find it that a few bricks have been carbon dated back to the 10^th century. No, what's more important is the here and now. As you would expect, the Porch House has all the crucial features of a Cotswold inn - wonky floors, nooks and crannies, low-slung ceilings, ancient beams, old stone fireplaces, narrow, crooked staircases and heaps of charm. It positively oozes the kind of warmth and character that makes you feel cosseted and at home.

Brakspear, the brewery which runs this establishment, is clever in its management of inns like these, offering its tenants an interior design service to refurbish the bedrooms and public spaces. Thus it was that the Royalist Hotel and Eagle & Child Inn underwent just such a makeover last year, reopening in September 2013 as the newly decked-out Porch House.

While the cheaper rooms are in a wing at the back, the best rooms are in the original, higgledy-piggledy Grade II-listed building. Decoration is classic English 21^st century style, by which I mean well-sourced fabrics and wallpapers, comfy beds dressed in proper bedlinen, freestanding clawfoot baths, good coffee machines and wifi. Quirky touches include vintage pieces like the Singer sewing machine tables refashioned into desks, Bakelite phones, Roberts' radios and hot water bottles in cosy knitted jackets. You couldn't really ask for more. The three 'feature' rooms (numbers 1, 8 and 9) are considered the pick of the bunch, but the 'superiors' I saw were good too.

The quintessential Englishness of the place extends to the food, too. The bar offers robust pub regulars - fish and chips, shepherd's pie, sausage and mash -and the dining room is a fraction more formal. Like so many restaurants these days the approach here is distinctly one of local is best. The menu changes regularly according to the seasonal  availability of produce, and while it appears straightforward and familiar - cheese soufflé, pork chops, partridge, lamb, treacle tart and hedgerow crumble - there is sophistication to its delivery. Furthermore, a good selection of wine is on offer at an average price of £22 per bottle. It was rather heart-warming to hear one non-resident couple re-book for dinner the following night.

A hearty sausage sandwich felt a bit gratuitous the following morning, particularly with a long car journey ahead. How I longed to have a couple of days to spare to tootle round the Cotswolds by bicycle, to explore the multitude of nearby shops, markets, houses and gardens or to take the Porch House up on its offer of a picnic lunch and a map and head off into that beautiful countryside on foot.
The Porch House, Digbeth Street, Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire tel: 01451 870048; porch-house.co.uk. Standard rooms cost from £99-£129; superiors from £129-£159; and feature rooms from £159-£219 (prices vary according to weekday or weekend stays and include breakfast and a newspaper).