Chaffinch

Reached by a three-mile forestry track that climbs steadily into the Northumberland National Park, Chaffinch sits at fourteen hundred feet above the sea, on the Kidlandlee estate above Harbottle. This is some of the emptiest, most beautiful country in England: big-sky uplands of heather and forest where the loudest sound is the wind, and the nearest pub, the Star Inn at Harbottle, is a four-mile drive back down the hill.

The cottage itself is a nineteenth-century stone building, sympathetically restored and quietly self-sufficient, running off its own solar and wind power yet wanting for nothing: granite kitchen surfaces and a dining table for four, a sitting room gathered around a wood-burning stove with wind-felled logs left ready in the basket, LPG central heating, and, improbably, gloriously, fibre broadband and a 4G signal. Two bedrooms, one double and one twin, sleep four; a private enclosed garden to the rear catches the afternoon and looks out over miles of nothing.

It is a place that earns the journey. By day there is never-ending walking and cycling straight from the doorstep; by night the cottage sits within a designated dark-sky park, where the Milky Way arcs overhead and a hired stargazing kit turns the garden into an observatory. Dogs are welcome, an on-site spa cabin waits for tired legs, and the only real obligation is to slow down.