The hottest place to eat, though — in every sense of the word — is the new Indian Amaya (020 7823 1166, www.realindianfood.com; dinner about £60) in Motcomb Street. Its grazing menu of gourmet morsels, such as tandoori broccoli and Punjabi chicken-wing lollipops, has caused a feeding frenzy among food critics. Last month, it pipped dining rooms from the likes of Tom Aikens and Gordon Ramsay to be voted London’s best in the prestigious Tio Pepe awards.

We’re less faddish when it comes to heroes. The original British bulldog has long been our favourite Briton and he now has his very own exhibition. Spend one of your finest hours at The Churchill Museum (020 7930 6961, www.iwm.org.uk; opening times 9.30am-6pm, adults £10, children free), which offers 9,000 square feet of intimate insights into the public statesman and the private man. The displays include everything from newsreel of his intervention in the notorious Sidney Street Siege in 1911 to his Harrow school reports (he was caned for breaking into school premises).

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NEW CELTIC MANOR

Scotland is renowned for grand country estates such as Gleneagles and Turnberry, but there’s always room for another. Mar Hall (0141 812 9999, www.marhall.com; doubles from £175, room-only), a 20-minute drive from Glasgow, has recently opened after spending £15m to turn its 53 bedrooms into four-postered havens that are as luscious as the sweeping views over the gently rolling Kilpatrick Hills. In March, our favourite antipodean, Kylie Minogue, put Mar Hall firmly on the radar when she chose the gorgeous gothic masterpiece for some last-minute R’n’R before starting her Showgirl tour. Kylie no doubt appreciated that the cocoon of 250 acres of fountain-filled gardens comes with canny cosmopolitan touches. If you can’t face the crowds, personal shoppers will organise a rail of designer labels from the city’s best store to be wheeled to your room. Better still, last month, it opened a superexclusive Aveda spa. Aveda is extraordinarily picky about its hotels — there are only 15 worldwide, in A-list properties such as Strawberry Hill in Jamaica. Treatments are endearingly hippy-dippy (you fill in an elemental nature questionnaire to establish if you are in an earth, wind or fire mood that day, and oils are selected accordingly).

NEW NEWCASTLE

The Greystreethotel (0870 412 5100, www.greystreethotel.com; doubles from £129), which opened in Newcastle in January, seeks to capitalise on Geordieland’s increasingly glamorous image by creating what it claims is the city’s first independent boutique property.

Plan a lazy lie-in in one of the 49 rooms in this stylishly converted, Grade II-listed former bank. They are a study in understated urban chic, with a palette of low-key creams, chocolate browns and aubergine, split-level suites and elevated glass-walled bathrooms. By the way, it’s Grey after the Earl — there’s a statue of him outside — and considering it was voted Best Street in Britain by Radio 4 listeners in 2004, it should be your cup of tea. Just across the blinking-eye bridge, Gateshead continues to get groovier. It already has the iconic Angel of the North and the fantastic Baltic art gallery and, in December, it added to the cultural mix yet again with the opening of the Sage (0870 703 4555, www.thesagegateshead.org). This spectacular £70m music centre is the latest offering from Sir Norman Foster (for the geeks, it contains 3,858 tonnes of steel — that’s more than it takes to build a warship and six Chieftain tanks) and will host everybody from the Northern Sinfonia to the Ornette Coleman Jazz Quartet — it can even get a bit rock’n’roll at times.

NEW TRENDY TREKKING

Herefordshire and trendy are two words that have rarely appeared in the same sentence ... until now. Latte cafes and designer boutiques stocking Orla Kiely wellies are springing up everywhere, and the area also boasts the UK’s newest long-distance walk. The Herefordshire Trail (01432 260623, www.herefordshiretrail.co.uk) opened in February and takes the booted and backpacked on a 150-mile circular route through grand market towns such as Leominster and Ledbury and the drama of the Black Mountains, as well as endless woodlands speckled with wild flowers.

Sounds lovely, but if you prefer a gentle ramble to a stout-shoed yomp, the trail is broken down into manageable chunks of between 12 and 19 miles. When choosing your sector, remember that The Stagg Inn (01544 230221, www.thestagg.co.uk; doubles from £70), in Kington, has an award-winning restaurant, and Ford Abbey (01568 760700, www.fordabbey.co.uk; doubles from £125) is a stylish B&B in a former Benedictine monastery near Leominster that has just been given a bronze award in the Enjoy England Excellence Awards.

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