Pulling a wheelie case along the stone streets of Bath, I feel I may as well be wearing a sign reading “tourist on a mini-break”. But when we check in to the Roseate Villa – a 15-minute trundle from the station – and the man who greets us asks for our car registration, I get a virtuous glow from saying we’ve come by train (causing less than a third of the carbon emissions as well as less congestion in the Georgian city, though I don’t point that out).
This is our first stop on a wholly car-free foodie tour arranged through Sawday’s and sustainable travel platform Byway. After Bath, we’ll head further south in Somerset to Frome, then take in Bradford-on-Avon and Lacock in Wiltshire, with train times and tickets all sorted for us.
The hotel faces elegant Henrietta Park and was created from a pair of large mid-Victorian houses, built after the arrival of the railway in 1840. There is still much that is spacious and gracious about the Roseate Villa. I can’t imagine even Persuasion’s vain Sir Walter Elliott, who removed to Bath at the beginning of the Jane Austen book, thinking it beneath his dignity.
The houses’ twin open staircases were retained in the conversion, giving a fun MC Escher effect. Our room is on the top floor, with views of the park, and like children we take separate routes down, meeting on successive landings.
The hotel began offering dinner in the ground floor bar/dining room only in May, but it deserves a wide audience. We enjoy starters of asparagus with scallops and cauliflower puree, and burrata salad with chicory. Husband picks sole with chorizo crumbs and spinach – a great combination. I fancy the chicken, leek and mushroom pie and am cheered to find it light and tasty, with real care taken over the accompanying vegetables.
Bath’s main sights are a short walk away, via Laura Place, where, again in Persuasion, Viscountess Dalrymple has a house. Even that proud harridan would not be affronted by the look of modern Bath, with well-heeled people strolling along elegant streets, and jewellery with four-figure price tags in the windows of shops on Pulteney Bridge.
Which makes the contrast with our next stop all the more notable. Frome, 40 minutes away by train, was a big deal until the Industrial Revolution, and known for its textile mills. Subsequent obscurity meant its streets of 200- and 300-year-old houses – less grand than Bath’s, but still remarkable – remained intact.
And obscure it stayed until this century, when low house prices attracted artists and independent entrepreneurs, and Frome became a hipster spot – the Hebden Bridge of the south-west perhaps. The 20-minute walk from the station takes us along stone-paved Catherine Hill and its array of shops selling antiques, vintage clothes, arts and crafts, flowers and plants, books, vinyl and organic foods. Since 2015 freethinking Frome has rejected party politics and elected only independent councillors. A community noticeboard bristles with adverts for yoga classes, homeschooling groups, performance poetry sessions and a drum circle.
Perhaps only here could the Hung Drawn Quoted gift shop thrive, where artist Kate Talbot sells prints, cards and gifts with a radical edge. Trump, Starmer and more appear as crocheted dolls in the window, with Truss, Sunak and Rees-Mogg squashed into a pedal bin.
A little further on is Bistro Lotte, a neighbourhood restaurant with six rooms above, all in restful, muted hues. The panelled, hop-festooned dining room is a buzz of happy diners on a Friday night, and while the menu is French-inspired, the portions are far from nouvelle cuisine. Starters of gruyère and chive soufflé and chicken liver parfait are gorgeous but generous, as are mains, served with perfect skin-on fries. This is a shame as we have no room for classic French puds of clafoutis or profiteroles. A Channel-straddling breakfast next day offers ham, cheese and boiled egg with sourdough bread, plus warm croissants and fruit compote.
Our next hotel is a short trundle from Bradford-on-Avon’s cute stone station. Having done Georgian England and hip 21st-century England, we’re back in the middle ages here. There’s a 13th-century bridge and a Saxon church in one direction and a medieval tithe barn in the other. Timbrell’s Yard inn is not so old: the Grade-II listed former dye mill dates from the 18th century, and was saved from demolition in 2015. The refurbished interior offers panelling in mellow unfinished wood, low beams, deep window seats and wonky floors aplenty.
Our “Riverwalk” room has bed and bathroom on a mezzanine above a seating area overlooking the river. It’s a gorgeous place to kick back while we wait for the rain to stop and allow us to hike out of town on the winding towpath. At dinner, portions are more modern in volume: we share small plates of heritage tomatoes with tapenade, and tangy ceviche, before manageable mains of chicken parmesan and Asian spiced pork belly. The house merlot is particularly smooth.
If we’d been touring by car, we’d probably have dashed off from Frome to do Longleat or Stourhead, or visited Iford Manor ‘s gardens or Farleigh Castle from Bradford-on-Avon. With only trains and legs, we find quieter, more local attractions: a contemporary art gallery by Frome station and, in Bradford on Avon, the astonishing Weavers’ Cottages.
Like in Frome, Bradford-on-Avon’s wealth was built on wool, which before the Industrial Revolution was literally a cottage industry. From the 17th century, this town attracted and kept skilled weavers by offering them bespoke accommodation. Pretty three-storey stone cottages with large upper windows – offering lots of light for loom work – climb the hill in rows behind St Laurence church. Their flowery front gardens lie across a path from their doors and all have wide-ranging views. One or two are now holiday lets, but they’re a fascinating picture of long-ago working lives.
We add a bus to the mix for our last stop, taking trains to Chippenham via Bath, then the X34 to Lacock. Elsewhere on the trip, we’d had to use some imagination to picture the England of centuries past, but there’s no need in Lacock, which has been on our screens in Pride and Prejudice, Wolf Hall and Downton Abbey to name but a few.
The whole village belongs to the National Trust and has been kept looking like a film set. Buildings on a simple square of streets house tasteful tourism businesses – garden stuff, gifts, jewellery – with no garish modern signs to shock a Bennet daughter out on a walk from Longbourn. Eight-hundred-year-old Lacock Abbey (adult, £22) lies just to the west, with a big NT car and coach park: that closes at 5pm, after which the streets magically quieten. We wander back to the Sign of the Angel, which would have been a historical building even in Austen’s time, having been built for a wool merchant in 1480.
Stone arches lead to the bar and dining room, and stairs climb to bedrooms with heavy latched doors and a panelled guest lounge. It serves Sunday lunch until 6pm so we have just time for excellent plates of roast pork and Brixham plaice with “posh mushy peas”.
We share the bus next morning with a pensioner off to a hospital appointment and younger people heading for jobs in Chippenham. Being car-free has opened a window on to West Country life – only those wheelie bags mark us out as visitors.
The trip was provided by Sawday’s, which has a seven-day south-west tour with Byway including stays at the Roseate Villa in Bath, Bistro Lotte in Frome, Timbrell’s Yard in Bradford on Avon and the Sign of the Angel in Lacock, from £859 (shorter breaks available from £300)
• This article was amended on 15 October 2024. It is Iford Manor, not Ilford Manor.
