Cooking Christmas dinner somewhere that isn’t your own kitchen is entirely doable, and it goes considerably better with an hour of planning behind it. Our three-bedroom cottages sleep five or six, with an en-suite in the master bedroom and a generously sized kitchen and dining area. They’re set up for exactly this sort of stay: […]
Beamish at Christmas: planning the visit
There are two quite different ways to enjoy Christmas at Beamish Museum, and they’re booked separately. We’ve set out how they differ below, including which one your museum pass covers, so you can choose the visit that suits you. Here’s how it works this year, and what’s worth sorting out before you travel. Daytimes and […]
How to do Durham Christmas Festival without driving
Durham Christmas Festival runs from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 December 2026, with three markets across the city centre and festive entertainment spread between them. Christmas market weekends are a lovely time to be in Durham, and a little planning goes a long way. The city centre is medieval, compact and fairly hilly, with the […]
Why Self-Catering Works Better for Longer Durham Family Stays
A night or two in a hotel with children is manageable. You live out of bags, eat every meal out, and get through it. But stretch that to four, five or seven nights and the arithmetic changes completely in cost, in effort, and in how much the trip actually feels like a rest for the […]
A Quiet Base Near Durham (That Doesn’t Feel Like a Compromise)
Quiet and convenient don’t often appear in the same sentence when it comes to accommodation near a city. Usually you get one or the other: peaceful but remote, or well-located but noisy. Plawsworth Hall is genuinely both, and it’s worth explaining what that actually means in practice. The village Plawsworth is a small village, around […]
Which Plawsworth cottage or apartment suits your group?
When people ring us about availability, they almost always lead with how many of them there are. It’s a reasonable place to start and it’s rarely the thing that decides it. Who’s sharing with whom matters more. Four people can mean two adults and two children, or four adults who’d all quite like their own […]
