15 great cottages and cabins for an autumn escape in the UK | Cottages
Pen Bonc
Moelfre, Ynys Môn (Anglesey)
As close to the sea as you can get without setting sail, this newly renovated cottage is moored up between a little shingle beach and the village of Moelfre, with its lifeboat station, pub, fish and chip shop, cafe and parlour serving locally made ice-cream. A former fisher’s cottage, it’s decorated in nautical blues and whites, their cool tones warmed by antique chests and an inglenook fireplace once used for smoking herring. An unusual circular garden spins out towards the sea; hop over its low stone wall and you’re right on the Anglesey Coastal Path, soaking up cinematic views of Puffin Island, and Eryri beyond.
Sleeps eight, two nights from £746, boltholesandhideaways.co.uk
Heronden Lodge
Eastry, Kent
This doll’s house-like, red-brick cottage sits sheltered by trees in a quiet corner of the Kent countryside, 10 minutes’ drive from Sandwich and 20 from Deal. Newly spruced up, it’s restfully low-key, with buttermilk walls and wooden floors. Upstairs are two bedrooms (one a king, the other a twin) and a bathroom with a tub: perfect for dunking mud-splattered children after days at the beach or trailing along footpaths. Downstairs, there’s a simple country kitchen, a double-windowed dining room and a sitting room with an open fireplace. Walks lead straight into the surrounding farmland and to the village pub, 20 minutes’ away. There are also two farm shops within 10 minutes’ drive.
Sleeps four, two nights from £472, keeperscottages.co.uk
Ty Bach
Beulah, Powys
Mid Wales is at its moody best in the autumn, the hillsides glowing auburn beneath squally skies. If your walking boots are calling, this recently launched holiday cottage just north of Llanwrtyd Wells is a good base for exploring the trails of the Cambrian Mountains or the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons). The smaller of two cottages on a site that was once a busy village school, it had been empty for more than three decades when the current owners took it on. It took them eight years to restore it, and now it’s a vision of flagstone-floored, putty-walled, slate-roofed comfort, cosied up with a plush raspberry sofa and copper kitchen appliances. This is a place for being rather than doing. Add-ons range from gourmet grazing boards to massage treatments.
Sleeps four, two nights from £260, tosholidayhomes.co.uk
Basecamp North Lakes
Troutbeck, Lake District
A few miles west of Penrith, this farm shop, cafe, community garden and wetland restoration site juggles more plates than a Barcelona tapas bar on a Saturday night. It’s also home to a charitable enterprise, Alpacaly Ever After, which rescues llamas and alpacas and offers meets, walks and even camping experiences with them, accessible to all. This summer it added one more item to the menu, launching seven smart new cabins beside the site’s lake. Kitted out with glossy green-tiled shower rooms, galley kitchens, wood-burning stoves and private outdoor baths, they each have one bedroom but can sleep two more on a sofa bed in the lounge.
Sleeps four, two nights from £300, basecampnorthlakes.co.uk
Peatlands Retreat
Ballybogey, County Antrim
Sitting in the countryside between Ballymoney and Portrush, the two restful shepherds’ huts here come with en suite shower rooms and king-size beds. You’re within easy reach of Old Bushmills Distillery, the Giant’s Causeway, Dunluce Castle and a string of some of the most stunning sandy beaches in the UK, but many guests don’t venture beyond the site’s gardens, meadow and woodland, staying to spot resident hares and light wood-burning stoves. The owners also run an artisan micro-bakery on site; Saturday sourdough workshops can be booked (£90pp), bakery breakfasts can be delivered to your door (£16pp) and twice a week there’s a hyper-local pizza-to-hut delivery service (£15 each).
Sleeps two, two nights from £320 (discounts for solo stays), peatlandscausewaycoast.com
Pippin Cottage
Bude, Cornwall
Run by a former Vogue producer, her chef partner and their farming family, Pippin is one of three cottages set on a working orchard outside Bude. Mixing heirloom pieces with Studio Ore taps and Hay lighting, it’s a lesson in understated, soulful style. Works by local artists cheer the walls (many are for sale) and in the kitchen you’ll find apple juice pressed straight from the orchard’s trees. This autumn, the site has opened a new custom-built sauna and cold plunge, and guests can book add-on wellness experiences such as yoga and sauna sessions that end with hot cocoa around a fire pit.
Sleeps four, two nights from £256, cannorchard.com
Montagu Cottage
Drumlanrig, Dumfries and Galloway
Built in the 19th-century as the laundry for the Queensberry estate, Montagu Cottage has been scrubbed up for modern-day guests. A peppermint cream colour scheme cosies up its lofty living area and three bedrooms, there’s a clawfoot bath for post-hike soaks and a double-aspect wood burner blazes in the cottage’s heart. Drumlanrig Castle is easily reached on foot (guests get free access to the gardens and adventure playground until the end of October); spectacular woodland and valley walks lead out from the door; and you’re close to the village of Thornhill for pubs, bakeries, shops, cafes and, if you time it right, a live gig or film screening at the Old School.
Sleeps six, three nights from £750, drumlanrigcastle.co.uk
Molly’s Cabin
Sutton Bonington, Nottinghamshire
Tucked into the field-woven gap between Nottingham and Leicester, beneath the approach to East Midlands airport, Bonington Farm’s four distinctive holiday cottages include a blackened timber cabin with sociable, dorm-style bedrooms, a circular grain store, a pretty brick farmhouse and a corrugated former hay barn. The latter, Molly’s Cabin, is a gallery-walled, salvage-speckled hideaway that’s about to undergo a gentle refurb. Single-night Sunday stays include a private movie night in the farm’s cute grain silo cinema. Or, stay for the whole weekend and go leaf-crunching along the trails of The Outwoods, a 110-acre woodland around 20 minutes’ drive away.
Sleeps two, one night from £200, boningtonfarm.com
Fjord
Ullapool, the Highlands
A minimalist counterpoint to the rugged maximalist scenery beyond, Fjord is one half of Corylus Retreats, the twin self-catering apartments opened just outside Ullapool in May. Conceived and run by the team behind nearby Ecotone Cabins, it was designed sustainably with stripped-back timber walls, and floor-to-ceiling windows maximise natural light and have views of neighbouring Loch Broom. On clement days, the pretty harbour and restaurants of Ullapool are easily reached, and there are craggy hikes around Assynt, Coigach and the Summer Isles. If it rains, hunker down inside, enjoying the luxury of underfloor heating or curling up on the covered deck to watch scudding clouds.
Sleeps four, three nights from £661, premiercottages.co.uk
Hafod Gwyllt
Cwmystwyth, Ceredigion
Its name translates as “wild summer dwelling” but this renovated cottage deep in the Cambrian mountains is equally good for an autumn escape. On the Hafod Estate, deep in the Ystwyth valley, it has no neighbours besides ponies, and has easy access to hiking and wild swimming. Newly available as a holiday rental, it’s stylishly understated inside, with whitewashed walls, slate and wood floors and a collection of ruffled lampshades, tapestry blankets and old pine dressers in soothingly subdued shades. Outside, there’s a wood-fired hot tub with rugged mountain views and the owners can arrange dark skies photography sessions or visits to local potters.
Sleeps four, three nights from £690, sandandstoneescapes.com
Cae’n y Bwlch
Talsarnau, Eryri (Snowdonia)
Getting away from it all is a given at this newly launched cottage in a secluded mountain setting north-east of Harlech. Owned by a ceramicist and an artist, its slate floors and limewashed walls are warmed by glowing fires and a colourful collection of antique dressers, jaunty art, textiles and carved wooden love spoons. While you could drive down the hillside for a windswept walk along the beach at Black Rock Sands, or to explore the legacy of Clough Williams-Ellis at Portmeirion and Plas Brondanw, it would also be tempting to arrive fully supplied and squirrel yourselves away, soaking up the views or hiking straight out into the rugged wilds of Eryri national park.
Sleeps six, three nights from £509, underthethatch.co.uk
Riders Lodge
Ballycastle, County Antrim
Stay Lagom is a small estate set around a Georgian rectory on the fringes of Ballycastle. With bike hire on site and a new programme of add-on wellness experiences (think yoga and seaside saunas), it’s popular with visitors coming to hike, surf or cycle the Causeway Coast. Hotel-style bedrooms and boutique dorms can be booked and there are two self-catering cottages, including Riders Lodge, where a sofa-bed stretches capacity to six. Popular with families and small groups of friends, it’s a sociable space with surfboards and bikes suspended on the walls, its own courtyard hot tub and a stash of board games for evenings around the wood burner.
Sleeps six, two nights from £524, staylagom.com
Hoolet Bothy
Beauly, the Highlands
If Mrs Tiggy-Winkle retrained as an architect, she might come up with something like Hoolet Bothy. A remote, off-grid farm cottage in the hills above Beauly, 12 miles west of Inverness, it’s the epitome of cosy, with timber-panelled walls, a log-burning stove, a double bed tucked into the eaves and a wood-fired Rayburn for cooking and supplying hot water to a small cast iron bath. Guests have access to a fridge and a charging point down at the farm, three minutes’ walk away, and a cool box is supplied for essentials, but there’s no electricity on site so hunker down for days of walking among deer-speckled hills and red kite-dotted skies, and evenings spent storytelling by candlelight.
Sleeps two, three nights from £477, airbnb.co.uk
Labour in Vain Cottage
West Bexington, Dorset
Set back from the 18-mile swoosh of shingle along Chesil Beach, this semi-detached rental (there’s another next door for holidaying apart together) has been newly renovated by the National Trust. Its name, like the lane beside it, is thought to refer to a year of crop failures in the middle ages – but there won’t be much labouring, in vain or otherwise, while staying here. Hike a stretch of the South West Coast Path, go swimming or fossil-hunting, watch the skies for migratory brent geese and head into nearby Bridport for shops, cafes and pubs. As well as a snug ground-floor lounge, the attic has been converted into a games room with a TV, telescope and space to spread out jigsaws or toys.
Sleeps four, two nights from £561, nationaltrust.org.uk
Thornfalcon Winery
Taunton, Somerset
One of two wooden cabins on a working vineyard (there’s also a more spacious barn conversion suitable for families), the Vine Hut blends rustic timber walls with apple green paintwork and a red gingham sofa to give a cheery, gingerbread cottage feel. It comes with its own outdoor copper bathtub and firepit, plus access to the neighbouring swimming lake and Finnish sauna (pictured). Earlier this year the owners of Thornfalcon renovated a barn on site and have launched a wine school there, plus a series of monthly supper clubs, pairing the vineyard’s wines and juices with seasonal menus; October’s is a culinary caper through the hedgerows, fields and waves via pheasant, hake, mussels, squash, radicchio, puntarelle and quince (from £65pp).
Sleeps two, two nights from £340, thornfalcon.com
Prices are for October-November and were correct at time of publication