Looking for a unique holiday gift? The Royal Oak Foundation, the American affiliate of Britain's National Trust, has a deal for you. For a $55 membership fee, you can give someone free admission to all the castles, manors, parks, and gardens administered by the National Trust of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland for an entire year. And if you'd like to stay in a historic property as well visit one, the Royal Oak Foundation also offers 25% off three historic hotels that are members of the Trust: Hartwell House and Spa in Buckinghamshire, England; Middlethorpe Hall
and Spa in York, England; and Bodysgallen Hotel and Spa in North Wales, now through October 31, 2009. Each of the properties is at least 300 years old, and each has been meticulously restored to historically accurate standards. Bodygsallen Hotel, for example, has a 13th-century tower with a view of the mountains of Snowdonia National Park, and sits on a hillside amid 200 acres of its own parkland, two miles from the Victorian seaside resort of Llandudno. You can stay in the elegant Main Hall, or in one of the cottages on the estate: Pineapple Lodge, Castle View, or Gingerbread House (pictured above). To get to the spa, walk through the formal gardens, which include a walled rose garden and a parterre herb garden bordered with 17th-century boxwood hedges. And lest you feel guilty from the pampering, it's nice to know that all profits go to benefit the house and the National Trust.
As Henry James said: "Of all the great things that the English have invented and made a part of the credit of the national character, the most perfect, the most characteristic, the one they have mastered most completely in all its details, so that it has become a compendious illustration of their social genius and their manners, is the well-appointed, well-administered, well-filled country-house."
Thanks to Susan Derby at the L.A. Times Daily Travel & Deal blog for the tip!
Photo courtesy of Bodysgallen Hotel, The National Trust
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This is an excellent deal -- as is the UK in general right now, what with the pound's seemingly relentless slide against the dollar.
I live at Land's End in Cornwall, on the southwest tip of Britain. One thing that you didn't mention is that the National Trust owns much of the Cornish coastline for preservation reasons, and often charges a fee -- sometimes up to five pounds -- for the use of their car parks. My family and I find that we recoup the cost of a year's membership in about six months of getting out and about the beautiful Cornish countryside.
--John at http://voyagers.typepad.com