Self-catering has a bad name… and for a reason! We’ve all, when pondering our holidays, ploughed through chunky agency brochures, undiscerning web sites and tourist board bumpf in an effort to find the perfect holiday house, but are often hindered by lack of independent opinion. Each and every place, the brochures would have us believe, is idyllic. Getting it right has, until now, been more a matter of luck than judgement. Many are the woeful tales of families turning up at the ‘idyllic, characterful cottage’ only to discover a banal, cold shell of a place that’s little more than a repository for someone else’s unwanted furniture and thinning bedding.
That’s why we started Special Escapes, an online attempt to celebrate the emerging wave of genuinely special self-catering places across Britain. There are surf shacks, cottages, castles, modern refurbished barns, quirky hilltop bothies and everything in between. It is the latest horse from the famous Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay stable… and here are a few reason’s why we think it’s worth having a look at:
- Special places – we’ve unearthed holiday properties you’ll rarely find elsewhere. Quirky, comfortable, independent places run by people who care.
- Honest, lively reviews – we write all the reviews ourselves and are well known for our candid and engaging style.
- Fully inspected properties - we know and like all the places on this site. We don’t include include ones we wouldn’t stay in ourselves.
This blog will have some of the latest properties that we’ve uploaded to the site. Subscribe using RSS to get the latest postings straight to your desktop.
More about Alastair
Publishing beautiful books is only the most recent of Alastair’s endeavours: in the past he has led tours all over France, guided disaster relief teams in Turkey, worked for the VSO in Papua New Guinea, and any number of other exotic things – all pursued with the same intelligence and exuberance he demonstrates as a publisher.
His lifelong passion in all his work has been the environment. This explains such wrinkles in his career as standing for Parliament with the Green Party in 1992, and vice chairing the Soil Association. His convictions are manifest today in the way our books are produced, and the way our office is run. In 2006 Alastair Sawday Publishing was awarded a Queen’s Award for Sustainable Development.
Our books succeed because readers trust our high standards. Increasingly Alastair’s commitment to ecological issues has meant the creation of a Sawday imprimatur for “greenery” – an informal certification of owners’ ethical acumen, in the shape of our Fine Breakfast Scheme and our showcase “green” properties.
