OS Explorer map 141. The Wookey Hole Inn (01749 676677, www.wookeyholeinn.com) has lamb burgers for £9; doubles start at £90,B&B

3 SHIPWRIGHT’S ARMS

It’s hard to believe that the Ship-wright’s Arms is in modern-day Kent – it looks as if it has drifted up the Swale from Dickensian England and been stranded on the banks of Oare Creek. Inside, there’s a trio of tiny, firelit rooms, hung with boating pennants and prowled by the 300-year-old ghosts of sailors and smugglers. The stoutly Kentish beer is tapped straight from the barrel.

The walk: a four-mile loop on the Saxon Shore Way tiptoes out from the Shipwright’s Arms right beside Faversham Creek – a wilderness of marsh grass and dykes, busy with winter-holidaying wildfowl. Follow it into the cracking little market town of Faversham, and maybe take a tour of England’s oldest brewery (www.shepherdneame.co.uk), before departing along West Street. Turn right on Davington Hill and keep going until you reach the head of Oare Creek. Bear right along the wharf, where the ropes of the vintage fishing smacks slap happily in the wind.

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OS Explorer map 149. The Shipwright’s Arms (01795 590088) has homemade fish pie for £10. Brenley Farm (01227 751203, www.brenley-farm.co.uk), in Boughton, has classy doubles from £70, B&B Continued on page 8

4 BULL AND BUTCHER Turville, Buckinghamshire

Look familiar? The cute-as-kittens Chilterns hamlet of Turville has played Dibley and Midsomer on television, and the salt-pot windmill up on the ridge is the one from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bull and Butcher fits in beautifully, a black-and-white timbered job with lashings of log fires. Winter nosh might include homemade rabbit and pheasant pie.

The walk: for a place with Britain’s highest incidence of preposterous murders, Turville is surprisingly somnolent, its crooked brick-and-flint cottages couched in classic Chilterns downland. Take the church-side lane past Sleepy Cottage and on along the Chiltern Way, branching left to cross a lane into trees.

Keep left into Great Wood, where you may see red kites roosting, bright in winter against bare-branched beeches and oaks. The path curves down into Skirmett; turn left along the road and, after Watery Lane, take a path left across fields to a road junction. About 100yd on, the Chiltern Way heads back to Turville. Three truly scrumptious miles.

OS Explorer map 171. The Bull and Butcher (01491 638283, www.thebullandbutcher.com) has pies for £12. The Frog at Skirmett (01491 638996, www.thefrogatskirmett.co.uk) has doubles from £80, B&B

5 THE DRUIDSTONE Broad Haven, Pembrokeshire

It’s been 36 years since Rod and Jane Bell opened their clifftop mansion to visitors, and they’re still at it, in a homely, vaguely hippie manner that’s just right for winter. You have to book ahead and eat if you want a drink here – but that’s a boon, not a brickbat. Beware their Celtic vegetable and pearl-barley stew, however: it’s good enough to convert you to vegetarianism.

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