Genteel giant

Published on Tuesday 5 February 2008 13:39

NOT MANY PEOPLE GO to Cheltenham for a romantic escape – and I shouldn't think many folk visit outside the racing season or the literary festival either. But then we have always been contrary types.

We traded the usual jokes about colonels on the way to the Regency Cotswold town only to find that the first elderly gent we asked for directions was indeed a retired military man with a clipped moustache. He said: "What, what?" and asked my slightly tanned husband if he was a foreigner, adding quite sweetly: "Not that it matters: met some fine foreigners. You sure you're English?"

It also has the grandest stuccoed villas I have seen outside the most prosperous parts of southern Germany. There is something remarkably extravagant about the sheer amount of lovely houses and green spaces – ideal for city slickers prone to property-porn.

We walked up an appetite (or, in my case, shopped up an appetite) in the bijou Montpelier district, dreaming of buying antique jewellery and settling instead for supplies from the many posh underwear shops.To judge by the amount of racy bras and stockings on offer, the colonels are far from dead yet.

The Hotel du Vin Cheltenham nestles in the residential quarter on the edge of town, a huge Georgian house, trendily made over. Bedrooms are fashionably neutral (will we soon grow tired of beige on beige?), but well designed, laundry crisp and Narnia white with a proper bathroom and prompt room service. Georgian houses lend themselves readily to cosy sitting rooms and this one had an honesty bar, roaring fire and all the papers: the basic requirements of relaxation. Downstairs, the spa is well designed and the massages better than average.

There's a nearby gym (if you must) but a session of gentle beautifying and a hot stone and back-rub treatment is more in keeping with the place.

Ready to discover the vin in the hotel, we headed for dinner. The brasserie restaurant is cosy and inviting – but do book, as it's also a local favourite. It has one of those menus from which you would happily eat anything: Jerusalem artichoke veloute with truffle oil (for a fiver) and roast pumpkin and crab ravioli soup were among the starters.

Pot-roasted farm chicken, lardonaise potatoes and wild mushrooms made a country basic into a feast: there's local game and lamb and all the side orders the most picky (or greedy) could want.

The wine list should please even the demanding city dweller. We went for a Domaine de Montcalms 2004 to oblige my fussy husband after long consultation with the sommelier. Naturally, he then found it "like all Languedoc wines" and damned it as cloying and too sweet, but there is so much choice that he really has only himself to blame – either that or apply for a sommelier's job and be done with it.

Once this level of torpor has set in, you start to look forward to breakfast. But, oh dear me, they really got this wrong: eggs Benedict swimming in fat – indeed, everything swimming in heart-stopping amounts of butter, way past the point where it is appetising or tasty. Even the smoked salmon oozed fat. It remains a mystery to me how they could get dinner so right and breakfast so wrong – do gremlins come in during the night?

Other guests had made the same comments in the visitors' book so it isn't a one-off and should be remedied: the only black mark in the stay.

Cheltenham is changing fast, moving from being the colonels' Valhalla into a rather buzzy place inhabited by people who enjoy the good life. We did a last wander to the pump room, fitted in a set lunch at the Daffodil restaurant in the old cinema and staggered back to the train laden with organic fare from the market feeling very well nurtured. "You went where?" was the reaction of my more trendy colleagues.

The fools. Cheltenham is a treat. What, what.

Factfile

How to get there

Rail travel starts from 18 each way from Edinburgh and 19 from Glasgow, both for a Value Advance Single from.thetrainline.com

Where to Stay

Hotel du Vin, Parabola Road, Cheltenham (tel: [phone], www.hotelduvin.com). Doubles from 135 per night room only.

And There's More

A three-course meal in the brasserie costs around 30.

Scotsman Reader Holidays has a three-day trip to the Cheltenham Festival, departing 12 March, from 169. Tel: [phone] or visit www.holidays.scotsman.com