Win a two-night stay at Grove of Narberth worth £1,600
The location is another boon, with extensive woodlands and a network of paths and bridleways that make ideal settings for walks. The property is also just a short drive from Pembrokeshire's rugged coast, where surf and wildlife-watching adventures await.
As part of your prize, you'll enjoy a two-night stay for two on a B&B basis. It also includes a five-course tasting menu at Fernery, plus a wine or non-alcoholic pairing. A guided tour of the kitchen garden is included as part of the experience. The stay must take place between Wednesday and Sunday, and between August 29, 2025 and August 29, 2026. Blackout dates include public holidays, the festive period and Valentine's Day.
For more information, click here.
For your chance to win, simply vote in each category in this year's Times and Sunday Times Travel Awards. There are 17 categories in total.
Click here to vote.
For the full list of prizes, see here.Promotion closes at 23.59pm on August 31, 2025. Open to residents of the United Kingdom who are aged 18 years or older, excluding employees and agents of the Promoter and its group companies, or third parties directly connected with the operation or fulfilment of the Promotion and their affiliates, and their immediate families and household members. One entry per person. Winners will be selected at random from all valid entries. No cash alternative and prize is non-transferable. Winner and guest responsible for getting to and from the venue at their own expense. Subject to availability, Prize must be booked by April 1, 2026, to take place from Wednesday to Sunday, between September 1, 2025 and August 29, 2026, except on public holidays, the festive period and Valentine's Day. Winner and his/her guests must travel on same itinerary. All parts of Prize must be used in conjunction with same booking. Travel insurance, food and drink (outside what is previously declared in the board basis), spending money and all incidental expenses are the responsibility of the Winner. Prize is subject to Grove of Narberth terms and conditions. Your information will be used to administer this Promotion and otherwise in accordance with our privacy policy at newsprivacy.co.uk and those of the partners. Promoter is Times Media Ltd. Full T&Cs apply — see thetimes.com/traveltermsandconditions.
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Telegraph
26 minutes ago
- Telegraph
I followed in the footsteps of Sebald to see how Suffolk has changed in 30 years
'How long would it take to walk the Rings of Saturn?' I asked ChatGPT. 'About 17.2 years,' came the reply. 'You'd have to leap between icy particles flying at high speed.' I giggled. 'The book, I mean.' A few days, depending how much time I spent 'engaging deeply with the landscape and history of Suffolk,' it deduced. W. G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn, a hybrid travelogue, memoir, hauntology and history novel, was published 30 years ago. The unnamed narrator, thought to be Sebald, a Bavarian native who lived in East Anglia for three decades until his untimely death in 2001, walked south through Suffolk in a meditative mood. The landscape triggers tangential passages on everything from local writers to the Holocaust and silkworms, with a recurring theme of places and empires in decline. I'd travel the same coastal route, with Sebald's lyrical, wandering sentences for company. The narrator sets off in August 1992, 'when the dog days were drawing to an end'. I strapped on my backpack in early summer. I disembarked at tiny Somerleyton station. I didn't hop over a back wall, as Sebald had done, to visit Somerleyton Hall & Gardens, reworked from its Jacobean Manor footprint by Sir Samuel Morton Peto, whose company had built the 19th-century Houses of Parliament. All that remains of the domed glass, fountain and fernery of the exquisite Winter Gardens, demolished in 1914, is a dream-like conservatory echoing Sebald's line that 'those who visited were barely able to tell where the natural ended and the man-made began'. It was Morton Peto who also built the railway from Norwich to Lowestoft, my next stop, and created the seaside villas of the town that helped boost its attraction as a holiday resort. Sebald was disheartened as he walked into Lowestoft, hobbled as it was by the decline of the fishing industry. Lately, however, new life has been breathed into the town, thanks to the arrival of the First Light Festival, now in its fifth year, and a clutch of creative foodie, arty and cultural spots. In a nod to both local history and Sebald's book, I hungered after kippers, but Lowestoft's Atlantic Fish Bar only did battered hunks of cod and haddock. An audacious gull waddled in and out in search of fallen chips. It wasn't until I reached the Joseph Conrad, a Wetherspoon's pub, that I found a reference to the former source of the town's wealth: a photo, on a wall, of 'herring girls' gutting fish. In 1913, 12 million 'silver darlings' were landed in the town and at nearby Great Yarmouth in three months. Both Conrad, who first set foot on English soil when he arrived in Lowestoft in 1878, and herrings, are Rings of Saturn digressions. The following morning, I set off south – the same direction as herring move in the North Sea on their way to spawn – under a colossal sky of painterly clouds recently relieved of their rain. The sea changed from chocolate to milky blue as the sun pushed through. The cliffs at Kessingland, frothing with yellow lupine, buttercups and alexanders – with their mildly peppery perfume, rise 16 metres above the shore. I stood on sabre-toothed cats and steppe mammoth remains, from when Doggerland curled up close to the fjords of Norway, before sinking beneath the waves. Beside a holiday park, I glimpsed a tilted pillbox dressed in a skirt of marram grass. Suffolk's coast, vulnerable during the Second World War, was heavily fortified, and Sebald weaves the militarisation of the shoreline throughout his book. After passing the Hundred River, I find another pillbox, dislodged and licked by the sea. I watched sand martins dart into their nesting holes in cliffs the colour of ginger biscuits. 'I was [...] standing on perforated ground,' Sebald wrote, 'which might have given way at any moment.' This coast is indeed disappearing. At nearby Covehithe, four to six metres – the height of a giraffe – are swallowed each year. Or 198 giraffes since Sebald stepped this way. The ramble to Southwold, along the beach, was long, with very few people about. But footprints of dogs and walkers, and scattered cuttlebones, reminded me of life and death. I tacked past bleached branches and tree roots torn from their previous homes. At the Southwold Sailors' Reading Room, another Sebald stop, I sunk into a wingback and dozed until the noise of gulls, the rustle of chips outside, and the click of snooker balls in the Members' Room roused me. The Crown, where Sebald had paused, offered no newspapers, as in his day, though the Southwold Organ magazine pleaded to protest the 'National Grid Energy Onslaught' – a reference to the construction of Sizewell C nuclear power station and other projects. After leaving Southwold, I reached a bridge, spanning the Blyth River, that was built for the narrow-gauge railway that once linked Southwold to Halesworth. Now a mere footbridge, it was busy with crabbers – nothing like Sebald's bleak scene. The theory that the railway's carriages had originally been built for the Emperor of China, mentioned in Rings of Saturn, seems to be a case of Chinese whispers. Steel-grey clouds lowered over Walberswick as I arrived, and a drizzle descended as I strolled beside and over water, along reed and oak apple-strewn paths to Dunwich. Dunwich was one of the most important ports in medieval Europe, until – in 1286 – a storm tide devastated it so terribly 'that for months afterwards no one could tell where the land ended and the sea began'. As I read Sebald's spine-chilling account while looking towards where the town once lay, listening to the sea shushing against the shingle, I sensed the 'immense power of emptiness'. I steadied myself, later, in the bar of The Ship. The delightful, 16th-century, half-timbered Bull Inn at Woodbridge still creaks, as Sebald noted. Rooms are adorned with prints of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald, who was born nearby, and whose life captured Sebald's interest. Below Woodbridge the remote Bawdsey Peninsula stretches along the northern edge of the idyllic Deben estuary. Here, an 'Anglo-Indian fairy-tale palace in the dunes' peeps above the trees. Bawdsey Manor is where the Air Ministry's 'death ray' idea emerged – eventually becoming radar technology. Radar helped win the Battle of Britain, a story now told at the nearby museum. Sebald did not live to learn that Nasa used radar to explore the real rings of Saturn. Today, Bawdsey Manor is used by PGL for courses and children's holidays. Up the coast is Shingle Street, where I crunched along and found a hotbed of unusual plants – sea pea, yellow horned poppy and the otherworldly mullein – colouring the beach gardens of the isolated homes. The German Ocean Mansions, mentioned by Sebald, remain, as does the Martello Tower, one of 29 rounded forts built on the east coast to repel a Napoleonic invasion. When I arrived at Orford Castle, I climbed, like Sebald, to the top of the keep. From the roof of the keep, 90ft above an exceptionally pretty village, all roses and red brick, I saw the mingling of the Ore and the Alde rivers, and a horizon serrated by scattered angular buildings: Orford Ness. Long after the Ministry of Defence abandoned it to tide and time in 1993, it remains a mysterious finger of flat land, even though it's been open to the public for 30 years. The iconic 'pagodas' of the site were labs used to test vibration, temperature and the G force of nuclear weapons. I gawped at the desiccating remains of Lab 1, built to withstand the testing of the UK's Blue Danube, the country's first nuclear bomb. A cold-to-the-touch warhead is on display in the Island of Secrets exhibition. Once a year the Atomic Weapons Establishment boat to the Ness to make sure the National Trust isn't tinkering in the shingle and making it live. The Rings of Saturn are made from the fragments of a shattered moon which got too close to the planet. I'd begun my walk apprehensive of Sebald's splintered text and tangential spurs into his orbit of distant worlds, loss and haunting episodes in history. But as I walked with Sebald, I realised there was nowhere I'd rather have been than getting lost in moments, meanders and landscapes than Suffolk's shape-shifting coast. How to do it
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Labour's endless red tape is killing off the Welsh holiday
Has your holiday let business been affected by anti-tourist policies? Email money@ After a 37-year career in the Royal Navy, Ian Pattinson is tougher than most. But there's one thing that keeps the former captain awake at night and it's nothing to do with his military service – it's his Welsh holiday home. 'Every single day I worry about whether I'm going to make 182,' he says. Pattinson is referring to the number of days his two cottages have to be let each year to qualify for business rates following a change by the Welsh government two years ago. If he fails to hit the target, the properties will be subject to council tax leaving Pattinson with a £2,000 bill. For some Welsh holiday let owners, the bill can come close to £10,000 because their properties are subject to paying a 200pc second home premium. The 182-night rule is just one of a raft of measures brought in by the Welsh government in the past five years that has seen overnight tourist numbers plummet and holiday let owners exit the business. The Professional Association of Self-Caterers (Pasc) has identified 17 government interventions from both the Senedd and Westminster that it says are negatively impacting the sector in Wales. Pattinson, 66, moved to the outskirts of Newport in Pembrokeshire with his wife 10 years ago so the two could enjoy a comfortable retirement. The stone cottages are nestled against the slopes of the ancient Preseli Mountains, in the heart of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. 'For 10 years, we were living the dream. It was excellent. We only had to hit 70 days a year [to qualify for business rates] which we could easily manage. My wife and I both made £7,500 each per cottage and it helped boost our retirement income. 'But the onslaught of policies flooding through the industry at the moment is unbelievable.' On top of a daily worry about whether he'll be landed with a council tax bill, he expects it will cost him £15,000 to upgrade the former farm building to achieve an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C, thanks to Ed Miliband's net zero drive. It all comes as the Welsh government has given the green light for councils to pass an overnight visitor levy, which will leave a family of four spending an extra £72.80 in tax for a two-week stay. Fewer families and shorter stays The problem is fewer families are going on holiday in Wales and those that do aren't staying for long. Of the nearly 70 million people who visit Wales each year, around 90pc are day trips. Since 2022, there has been a 29pc decline in overnight stays, according to data from the Welsh government. Holiday spending is also down by 10pc in the same period. Although Pattinson has in recent years managed to reach the 182-night benchmark, he says the stress of the job and the diminishing returns means he will have to give up one of the cottages. 'We are able to make between 185 and 190 days, but what that means is I can never take my eye off the ball. I can never sit back and relax. My accountant tells me each one of those cottages provides £35,000 spin-off benefits to the local economy. Now I've shut one of them down, that's £35,000 gone straight away. If you multiply that out over what's happening in the rest of Wales, that number starts to build up.' It appears Pattinson's thesis is correct. Although the number of holiday let owners exiting the market is difficult to measure, the Welsh government's recent survey of tourism businesses found 39pc said they had fewer visitors in the last year compared with a year earlier. Tourism provides one in 10 jobs in Wales, contributing £3.8bn to the economy each year. According to Pasc, there are around 22,000 self-catering businesses in Wales. A recent survey of Welsh members found that almost half (47pc) of properties that pay council tax because they don't meet the 182-day requirement were operating at a loss. Pattinson believes the biggest mistake the Welsh government has made is to take a one-size-fits-all all approach to its policies. 'It's lazy policy-making. If I lived in Newport or Tenby, I probably wouldn't have to get out of bed to make 182 days, but I'm only four miles out of Newport and the numbers fall off almost like a cliff when you are not in those hotspots.' 'It's harming the Welsh economy' Julian Barnes, a retired glass manufacturer from Bodfari in Denbighshire, north Wales, is far away from the traditional tourism hotspots. 'The best we've ever managed was 127 days in the year after Covid.' He says the idea that his end-of-terrace cottage in the rural village home to 500 people will be let for 182 nights is a fantasy. 'They want to introduce a visitor levy, an EPC requirement, there's registration, employment rights, statutory licencing – a whole pile of things that are growing to make it more and more difficult to run what was a simple business that brought in a lot of trade to the village.' It means Barnes has resigned himself to paying double council tax on the property, which recently rose to a 150pc premium in April. 'The total bill is £4,956 for 42 sq m. The council tax premium for us means we are paying £118 a sq m in tax.' He says last year the cottage brought in £10,000 in revenue which left him and his wife, a retired midwife, with a £3,000 profit. This year, he expects they'll be lucky if they end up with £2,000 after their fixed costs rose by 25pc. He adds: 'That assumes we do all the cleaning, gardening and maintenance for free. We take at least five hours to turn the cottage around. If it was paid per hour, it would be around £1 an hour – you can forget your minimum wage. The Government talks about working people, well we are working people except we are working for basically nothing.' Barnes and his wife are planning to sell the cottage. He says: 'There are groups of us all over the country in dire straits with these businesses and it's harming the Welsh economy. 'One of the big attractions of our cottage is you can walk to the village pub. We reckon we bring about £10,000 worth of business to the pub each year. There are four of us in the village who have holiday lets. If we go, that's an awful lot of money for a rural business to lose.' 'I am absolutely trapped' But while some holiday let owners are deciding to get out, others who rely on it as their main source of income feel trapped. Nicki Robinson, 61, a former cattle farmer from Carmarthenshire, turned her old dairy into a holiday cottage in 2006 after her farming business was no longer financially viable. Almost 20 years later, she can see the same process happening again as her holiday let business struggles to stay afloat. 'I am absolutely trapped. 'If I don't achieve 182 days, the daft thing is you are not earning as much but you've then got to suddenly find an extra £3,000 to pay council tax. 'It's not because you are not trying. The cottages are up 365 days a year but we just can't achieve that level of occupancy because we are not near beaches, castles or other tourist attractions. It's simply clean accommodation with a rural outlook.' Robinson says it's not just government policy that has harmed the industry. 'When I started, I got so many of my bookings direct through the tourism office and I would have families come and stay for up to 10 days at a time. 'Now bookings come through online sites that take 25pc of the revenue and the stays are so much shorter. I recently had a run of stays where I did five changeovers in seven days. 'Rather than getting families, we are seen as an alternative to a budget hotel. Bookings come in at the last minute and people want to stay for one or two nights. 'In effect, I am working every day of the year for a job that pays less than minimum wage.' The Welsh government has said its policies against holiday let owners are designed to help local people get on the housing ladder but Robinson says this is completely misguided. 'I've got a 26-year-old son who is desperately trying to get on the property ladder. But you don't fix the lack of affordable social housing by trying to destroy the livelihoods of those who rely on tourism.'
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Second train company nationalised and returned to public ownership
A second train operator has been brought under public ownership by the Labour Government, with c2c, which runs services between London Fenchurch Street and south Essex, completing its nationalisation on Sunday. The company had been controlled by Italy's state-owned rail firm, Trenitalia, since 2017. The Department for Transport (DfT) Operator, now managing the services, confirmed that previously purchased tickets will remain valid and fares are not changing as a direct result of the transfer. The move comes as c2c boasts a strong passenger satisfaction record, achieving an 89 per cent rating in the latest Transport Focus research. This placed it as the joint sixth best performer among 22 operators. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said: 'Whether you're shopping in Lakeside or walking along the beach in Southend-on-Sea, from today you will be able to get there on a train service run by the public, for the public. 'Public ownership is already tackling deep-rooted problems we see on the railway that's led to spiralling costs, fragmentation and waste. 'A unified network under Great British Railways will take this further with one railway under one brand with one mission – delivering excellent services for passengers wherever they travel.' GBR is an upcoming public sector body that will oversee Britain's rail infrastructure and train operation. Ernesto Sicilia, managing director at Trenitalia UK, said: 'As the franchise moves to public ownership, we acknowledge both the progress made and the ongoing challenges of unifying a fragmented rail industry. 'In the meantime, we will continue to support and deliver services on the Avanti West Coast franchise until it too transitions to public ownership in 2026. 'While our role as operator is ending, our dedication to sharing knowledge, supporting innovation and fostering collaboration remains unchanged. 'We recognise that building a resilient and integrated rail network takes time and Trenitalia is determined to play a constructive part in that journey.' South Western Railway became the first operator brought into public ownership by the Labour Government in May. It joined Northern, TransPennine Express, Southeastern and LNER, which were nationalised under the Conservative government because of performance failings by the former owners of those franchises. The next operator to be nationalised will be Greater Anglia on October 12.
