The North's best luxury experiences

Spa retreats, chef-led tables and weekends away, picked for taste, not for who's paying us.

Days Out

Across the North

Luxury Valentine's lunch and afternoon tea for two in the North

Valentine's Day 2027, 14 February, falls on a Sunday, which is good news for a lunch or afternoon tea: the six places here, from a Windermere lake house to a Michelin-starred Sunday lunch in the Ribble Valley, all publish regular Sunday service. They are chosen for exactly that, because plenty of the North's best restaurants and tea rooms are shut on a Sunday.

Cheshire & Manchester

Luxury spa days near Manchester

For a proper spa day within reach of Manchester, Cheshire's country-house hotels do it better than anywhere else in the North West — here's where to book, from a purpose-built spa garden to a Georgian hall with its own mud chamber.

Across the North

The North's luxury outdoor (not that wild) swimming spots

Wild swimming has gone thoroughly mainstream, and with it a run of genuinely well-run spots across the North where the cold water comes with a warm robe, a decent coffee and somewhere proper to sit afterwards. Eight of the best, from a beachfront sauna in Tynemouth to a floating one in Liverpool docks.

Food & Drink

Browse all food & drink

Across the North

Luxury lunch at the North's most serious tasting-menu restaurants

A tasting menu at a Michelin-starred kitchen doesn't have to mean a three-month waitlist and a three-figure bill — at lunchtime, the same chefs plate shorter menus at lower prices, and you can often book for this week. These four kitchens treat lunch as a genuinely different service, not a discounted rerun of dinner.

Cheshire & Manchester

Luxury afternoon tea in Cheshire for a girls' day out

From a Bollinger-and-thermal-garden estate to a Georgian hall with a Rasul chamber, a Champneys country house and Manchester's original grand hotel Tea Room overlooking St Peter's Square, four proper reasons to get dressed up for cake — no garden-centre stands in sight.

Across the North

Luxury chef's tables and tasting menus worth planning a trip around

These are the five places in the North worth booking months ahead for: real kitchen-counter seats, Michelin stars held for decades or won this year, and one cellar serious enough to send a sommelier round the table. This isn't "a nice restaurant" territory — every one earns its place on critical form.

Written by people who've actually been — and honest when we haven't

Every venue carries a "Been there" panel where we've genuinely visited, and "The Consensus" — our cross-check of independent reviews — everywhere else. No invented reviews, no generic "best of" filler.

Read our methodology