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The picturesque village has been named the “prettiest in England” and it’ll make you feel like you’re stepping into a place that’s “frozen in time” with ancient stone cottages

A village named one of the “prettiest in England” will transport you to somewhere that feels “frozen in time”. Whether it’s a place for hiking or seeking the finest coffee spots around town, we all crave a touch of adventure.

Now one travel account dedicated to “explore the UK’s ‘secret’ spots” has unearthed the “prettiest village in the Peak District”. It’s a settlement that’s wonderfully photogenic and brimming with attractions. According to the account, it resembles somewhere “frozen in time”. The location receiving countless glowing tributes is Tissington.

This charming village sits within the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire, close to Ashbourne on the park’s southern boundary.

In the TikTok post, the page’s description stated: “I spent some mornings wandering through a place that feels completely frozen in time.

“Walking past these ancient stone cottages and visiting the local tea room felt like stepping into a classic British storybook.

“There’s a unique stillness here – no modern street lights, just the sounds of the countryside and centuries of history in every stone.

“It’s the perfect ‘hidden gem’ for anyone looking to escape the 21st century for a few hours.”

Top attractions in Tissington:

The storybook settlement showcases stunning cottages arranged around an historic hall, impressive church and duck pond.

Should you explore Tissington Hall, this welcomes guests during specific periods featuring tearooms, gift boutiques and craft outlets.

The tradition of Well Dressing is believed to have originated here, and each Ascension Day five wells are adorned with floral displays as a tribute to God for the gift of water.

Tissington is equally celebrated for its 13-mile traffic-free trail, which is perfectly suited to both walking and cycling, whatever takes your fancy.

Top activities in the village include cycling, exploring the centre, visiting the tea rooms, and touring the hall.

For those feeling a touch creative, the One a Wick and a Prayer Candle Workshop is a much-loved candle-making destination within the village.

While the village itself has no pub, The Bluebell Inn can be found on the A52 near Tissington Gates.

How to get to Tissington:

If you’re coming from London, this is a 153 mile car journey via the M1 which takes around 3 hours.

Public transport is a lot quicker, taking 1 hour and 25 minutes with East Midlands Railway.

Meanwhile if you live more north, it takes around 1 hour and a half from Manchester, or 50 minutes from Stoke.

If you’re coming from Birmingham, this is around 1 hour and 22 minutes by car, while you’re looking at nearly 2 hours drive from Liverpool.

CATCHING fish has never been top of my holiday to-do list.

But from the moment my six-year-old son Alex spotted a boat offering fishing trips in the Cretan harbour of Panormos, he pleaded to go on one.

And when he offered to pay with his pocket money, I knew he was serious.

With three-hour excursions starting at 50 euros a head, I buckled under the pressure and am so glad I did.

Panormos is a village in the Rethymno area of the Greek island, 45 minutes from Heraklion Airport in the north and where Eva’s Fishing is based.

The owner, unsurprisingly called Eva, spent years fishing for a living before welcoming tourists.

WAIL OF A TIME

I drove Irish Route 66 with deserted golden beaches and pirate-like islands

ISLE GO

One of Greece’s most beautiful islands with £2.60 wine & Caribbean-like beaches

After taking us through stunning caves, with crystal-clear water, she put bait on to our poles and insisted: “You will find it the most relaxing thing you ever do.”

She wasn’t wrong. And now, pardon the pun, I am hooked. We caught fish after fish and it was relaxing, but also exciting and fun.

Back on land, Eva has an agreement with a lovely restaurant, Agkyra, to grill her customers’ catch and they served ours with roasted vegetables and lemon butter.

Although Alex had seen her gut and descale the fish, my husband Chris and I watched in amazement as he tucked in enthusiastically — even picking his way through the bones and asking for more.

I opted for tzatziki and a Greek salad.

With wine, complimentary orange cake and a shot of raki, it cost less than 25 euros for all three of us.

The boat fun was the highlight of our holiday —  but not the first exciting trip.

On our flight from Manchester, with Tui, Alex got to visit the cockpit — then the fancy ceiling lights of our airport taxi made us feel like we were in a limo.

Our hotel, The Royal Senses Resort & Spa, which is part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, was also pretty fancy — and not least its reception, with floor-to-ceiling gleaming glass doors and the smartest- looking staff you have ever seen.

By the way, those staff were also the kindest of teams, ensuring each guest felt like a VIP.

Like Yorgos, who ushered us into a golf buggy to whisk us to our room — and let Alex help with the driving.

Along the way, Yorgos pointed out the kids’ club, as well as the main pool, a waterslides zone, adult pool, gym, spa, bar and four restaurants.

There are 178 rooms, ranging from doubles to villas, and spread out up a hill so that each has a sea view.

A cable car-style glass lift travels up and down the hill, lest you have to work too hard.

We were upgraded to a room with, joy of joy, a private plunge pool.

Our room had a kingsize bed plus sofa-bed for Alex, plenty of storage, a coffee machine, free bottled water, fluffy white towels and locally made toiletries crafted from olive oil and mandarin.

But we didn’t get to relax in our room for long.

At 5am, Alex was up, trunks on, goggles ready and raring to go. And breakfast only added to his giddiness.

Although he tucked into fresh pineapple and watermelon, I struggled to divert him from the temptaion of fresh cookies, pancakes, cakes and waffles.

I loved the Cretan breakfast with rusks, fresh tomato, olive oil and feta cheese while Chris struggled to resist the free- flowing fizz.

The hotel isn’t bang on the beach but its sister, The Royal Blue, is and guests share facilities.

There is a free shuttle bus but we walked.

It took five minutes and there’s a supermarket en route.

Although the city of Rethymno, with an old Venetian harbour, is just 30 minutes and 25 euros away in a taxi, we loved the relaxed vibe in Panormos.

It is six minutes from the hotel by taxi, £7 each way.

Or the green and yellow Magic Train travels by road to and from the village several times a day. It’s £2.60 for kids over five and £4.35 for adults.

It felt like an easy funfair ride and Alex loved it.

Panormos has a sandy beach, church, bakery, supermarket, taxi office and a few tourist shops.

We bought olive oil from a man whose family have farmed locally for hundreds of years.

There are several restaurants, too.

Our No1 was the Locus Deli, on a cobbled pedestrian street where local musicians played Greek music and Alex ran around, danced and played with the local cats.

It served Greek food with a modern twist.

We had chicken with pistachios and a fava-bean dip with fresh basil oil.

Even the child pasta was made with chopped local tomatoes.

With drinks, our bill came to less than £50.

The hotel also offered great dining options.

The evening buffet had amazing variety, plus homemade pizzas that could have come from Italy.

Other treats included a restaurant with Michelin-starred chef — which welcomed kids and offered adult mains from £30 — as well as wine-tasting evenings.

Musicians played of an evening, and the hotel even invited loom weavers to demonstrate their art — we crammed a new bath mat into our suitcase, which was already bulging with pottery after a Tui trip to Margarites.

The mountain town stands on rich clay, and pottery has been made there since 3000BC, during the Minoan period.

But my best trip was to the hotel spa. It’s the largest on Crete, with therapeutic thalassotherapy seawater pool.

I celebrated my birthday on holiday so also had some pocket money.

And during an hour-long massage for £58, chiropractor Costos rid me of longstanding shoulder knots.

We spent our last night at Geropotamos Beach’s Old River taverna, 1km from the hotel.

As Alex played on the beach and the sun set, we had some very drinkable local wine and reminisced.

We agreed few places could beat Crete, for its warm hospitality, fab food, glorious beauty — and modes of transport.

On paper, the case is easy to make. The world’s largest proven oil reserves, a sector being reopened to private capital, sanctions that are no longer absolute but conditional, negotiable. There are new laws, new guarantees, new language around arbitration and contract security. For the first time in years, there is something that looks like a framework, perhaps even a government that exercises absolute power over the country while operating under US tutelage.

And yet, the expected cash tsunami remains elusive. This is because the people who would actually have to write the checks are not asking whether the opportunity is real, but whether it will still exist by the time it matters. No amount of lobbying or PR trips can compensate for almost 30 years of arbitrary abuses. After all, Delcy Rodríguez is not the first chavista “president” to court the private sector or offer guarantees.

The problem is not political risk in the abstract. It is that the legal environment investors are being asked to trust has not meaningfully changed. Judges remain largely unchecked, and contracts are still only as strong as the political relationships behind them. The closest thing to a guarantee is not an institution, but proximity: “I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows Delcy.”

That may be enough to get a deal signed. It is not enough to guarantee the kind of long-term, multibillion-dollar investment Delcy needs.

Retroactive illegitimacy

There is also the question of who is actually making those commitments. The current governing arrangement, even with partial recognition from Washington, remains the residue of a deeply contested and improvised system. Its authority may be tolerated, even engaged with, but it is not settled. That matters, because any agreement reached today carries the risk of being revisited tomorrow, not necessarily by a hostile regime, but by future jurists attempting to unwind the ambiguities of the present. In other words, the risk is not just expropriation, but retroactive illegitimacy.

And then there is the country itself. The initial shock of alignment with the United States has created a perception of stabilization, but that perception rests on thin ground. Discontent is not ideological, it is material. Power rationing continues to shape daily life. The bolívar remains structurally weak, its periodic stabilizations undone by recurring cycles of depreciation. For most Venezuelans, the promised improvement in living conditions, expected to follow from these inflows, has yet to materialize in any meaningful way.

What investors are being asked to underwrite, then, is not just a country in transition, but a society that has not yet felt that transition in any tangible sense. That gap matters, because it is in that gap where pressure builds.

Contingency is not change

And even if one is willing to accept all of that, there is the question few are prepared to answer directly: what happens in two years?

The current opening in Venezuela is not just tied to internal dynamics. It is deeply contingent on a specific political configuration in Washington. A different administration, with different priorities, could decide that Venezuela no longer warrants the same level of attention, resources, or political cover. The approach taken by Donald Trump has been unusually direct. There is no guarantee that what follows will resemble it.

That matters more than investors tend to admit. Because what is being built today is not a self-sustaining system, but a politically supported one.

Under those conditions, the risk is not simply policy reversal. It is systemic drift. The incentives that currently bind the government to external actors can weaken, and with them, the logic that sustains the present arrangement. That does not require a dramatic rupture. Only time.

There is a way to make sense of this, and it requires going back, not forward. In structural terms, Venezuela today resembles 2017. Not in its specifics, but in the nature of the moment. Back then, the country hovered between sustained pressure that could force an opening, and a system learning in real time how to absorb that pressure and consolidate power instead. For a time, it was not clear which way it would go.

Until it became clear that the system had adapted faster than the pressure could escalate. What looked like a moment of transition became, instead, a lesson in survival. That is the part of 2017 that tends to be forgotten, not the protests, but the outcome.

What makes the current moment difficult to read is that it carries a similar ambiguity. There is an opening, but it is partial. There is pressure, but it is uneven. There are signals that point in different directions at once. Engagement with external actors, selective liberalization, a degree of flexibility that did not exist a few years ago. But none of that resolves the underlying question.

Is this the beginning of a transition, or another iteration of adaptation?

For investors, that distinction is more than academic. It determines whether the current opening represents a structural shift, or simply a temporary configuration that will be absorbed, reworked, and eventually reversed. Venezuela has already shown that it can look like it is about to change, while in fact learning how not to. Ultimately, this question is likely to be the one that holds meaningful investment back.

Unchecked power

There is, underlying many of these conversations, a quieter assumption that rarely gets stated outright. That under the right conditions, a system like Venezuela’s can be made to work. That a centralized authority, aligned with external actors and supported by technocratic management, can deliver stability without resolving deeper political contradictions. The long-held fantasy of the benevolent strongman.

It is an attractive idea. It is also one that Venezuela has consistently disproven.

The problem is not simply that power is concentrated, but that it is unconstrained. In such a system, predictability does not come from strength, but from rules. When those rules are absent, even proximity to power stops being a reliable safeguard.

The recent arrest of Wilmer Ruperti is a reminder of that. Ruperti was not an outsider testing the limits of the system. He was deeply embedded within it. If anything, he represents the kind of relationship many investors assume can mitigate risk.

And yet, under conditions of unchecked authority, those relationships can be redefined overnight.

In practice, this often produces the opposite of what investors expect, a system where decisions are centralized but not necessarily stable, and where alliances are strong until they are not.

Under these conditions, Venezuela does not favor all investors equally. It favors those who can operate within political constraints, tolerate legal ambiguity, and adjust quickly if those constraints shift. It is less hospitable to actors whose models depend on enforceable contracts, long time horizons, and institutional continuity.

Venezuela is not uninvestable, but it is not becoming normal either.

What is taking shape is something more ambiguous. It is open enough to transact and stable enough to operate in the short term, but uncertain in ways that are harder to measure. The legal framework remains contingent, the political authority behind it is still contested, and the external backing that sustains it is, by definition, temporary.

That does not eliminate opportunity, it defines it. Under those conditions, the question is not whether Venezuela works, but for whom, for how long, and under what assumptions about continuity that may not survive the life of the investment.

In that sense, the risk is not only that things go wrong, but that the terms under which they work are never fully settled.