British hotels that are perfect for a winter weekend by train

Mini breaks need not mean hours stuck in traffic. Laura Fowler picks the best cosy country boltholes with a railway station nearby

Years ago I happened to take the Hope Valley line from Manchester to Sheffield, unprepared, as we dawdled through wintry grey suburbs, for the journey that unfurled. As though riding some magical polar express, we entered the snow-frosted, undulating Peak District. At the barely-there stations of Edale, Hope and Bamford, the occasional passenger would alight in their sturdy boots, and I fancied they were setting off on the Pennine Way, walking from inn to inn.

The Victorians laid tracks into our furthest-flung reaches, and those that remain can transport us into what are now Britain’s spectacular national parks, nature reserves and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Through the mountainous heart of Snowdonia or the North York Moors. Around the fringes of Dartmoor. Then there is the wild romance of Scotland’s scenic railways (scotrail.co.uk), their names full of promise: the Far North Line, the

Caledonian Sleeper, the West Highland Line. These are routes that skirt dark pine forests, bracken-russet slopes and purple-heathered moors, lochs reflecting tumultuous skies.

Into these middles-of-nowhere you can simply step off with your overnight bag, as travellers have been doing since long before cars were invented, when the grandest country houses and Scottish castles had their own request stations. Some still do, or are well placed near stations for guests arriving by train. And just as the trains themselves have come a long way since the industrial revolution, so country houses and inns have been spruced up over the years, once-draughty bedrooms now cosy and inviting, the cooking ever more accomplished.

So here is exactly where to step off to find Britain’s finest country hotels you can escape to by train. All are within roughly a 10-minute taxi ride of a station, or even close enough to stroll to – sturdy boots not required.

g‘Family-run and family-friendly’: Gilpin Hotel & Lake House, Cumbria h The Pig at Combe, Devon, is ‘a beauty inside and out’