THE FACTS ABOUT COWLEY MANOR

England

Cowley Manor is that rare thing: a contemporary and stylish English country-house hotel. The interiors of the 1885 Italianate manor near Cheltenham have been irreverently reworked by young architects De Matos Storey Ryan, while retaining the generous proportions of the original rooms. The public areas include a billiard room with a purple-felt table. There are splashes of aubergine, lime-green and hot-pink on the walls and slick bathrooms with 'rain showers' enclosed by opaque aqua-blue glass screens. The beds are enormous and the flat-screen TVs are in precisely the right place for settling in with room service (more of the organic comfort food you find on the restaurant menu: bangers and mash, serious chocolate puddings). One caveat: every room-service order comes with a £5 surcharge. Prices in the spa are also steep, but the treatments are excellent and the building, a separate, glass-walled modernist structure, is possibly the best piece of contemporary hotel design you'll see outside London or Manchester. There are two swimming pools: one indoor heated and one outdoor heated, flanked by sleek white loungers. WHEN TO GO Summer, to make the most of the outdoor pool. But avoid school holidays if you don't have children WHICH ROOM TO BOOK Room 12 (a so-called 'Exceptional Room') in the stable block with floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the rolling Cotswold hills through an 18th-century half-moon arch. If you want to splash out, try spacious Room 17, with its stunning views of the lake CONTACT Cowley Manor, Cowley, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (01242 870900; fax: 870901; www.cowleymanor.com). Doubles £220-£445