Park life: escape to Coworth Park

Forty-five minutes from London, and up a winding country road next to Richard Caring's Wentworth golf club in Berkshire, sits Coworth Park, the latest member of The Dorchester Collection. This sprawling country house is in a delightfully rural idyll but the interior is kooky and contemp-orary with leather banisters, smashed-tile fireplaces and an autumnal colour scheme of orange and brown that instantly reminds you of an Hermès flagship store.

We were ushered straight to our table at John Campbell's new restaurant, a high-ceilinged room with a ring of copper oak leaves suspended from the ceiling and mirrors at either end. Formerly at the Newbury gastrodome The Vineyard at Stockcross, Campbell has brought his flair for tasting menus and an army of crack wine waiters with him to Berkshire, and is working hard to regain his two Michelin stars lost in the transfer. The highlight was a seared pigeon breast but, sadly, this will be off the menu by now - he likes to keep the kitchen on its toes and regularly swaps dishes around on the eight-course tasting menu. All the more reason to come back, we thought, as we washed it down with an earthy Bordeaux.

Our room, the Stanley suite, on the second floor of the manor house, had a four-poster bed, a white marble bathroom with a free-standing bath, underfloor heating and a Bang & Olufsen TV that rose up from between the bed posts, Bond villain's lair-style.

Out of the window the following morning we admired the view over the hotel's 240 acres of parkland and a polo pitch, and watched horses cantering past in the misty morning light. To the left the chimney of the hotel's biomass boiler puffed merrily - the hotel is run on eco-friendly power, with its energy needs met using carbon-neutral fuel from willow trees grown onsite.

After a full English breakfast we headed to nearby Eton, definitely more town than gown on a Saturday morning. We sauntered past the old-fashioned shirt-makers' and tailors' shops, before moving on for a walk up to the JFK memorial in Runnymede. The engraved concrete slab is outshone by the view of the Thames meandering through the rolling countryside. Still a little early for tea, we decided on a quick lap of Virginia Water to build an appetite. Stupidly we hadn't thought to take the hotel up on its offer of a borrowed bicycle, not realising that it's a four-mile round-trip around the lake. But once we'd passed the 15ft cascade and Roman pillars imported in 1818 from Leptis Magna near Tripoli in Libya, by the then royal architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville, we realised it was easier to carry on than to turn around. We just made it back in time for the second sitting of tea and fell hungrily on tiered trays of scones and finger sandwiches, including a particularly good BLT, warming ourselves by the drawing room's open fire as a pianist tinkled out some Michael Bublé.

What better way to round off such an arduous day than with an indulgent treatment. The hotel's spa is a short walk from the manor house, but having done plenty of walking already we elected to arrive instead by chauffeur-driven golf buggy. The spa building, a glass-walled new build with a roof of lavender, camomile and thyme, blends seamlessly into a grassy bank and in the summer the glass walls open up to the elements, all the better to enjoy the spectac-ular view across a wildflower meadow to the polo pitch. I chose the Restorative Deep Tissue Massage and my aching neck and shoulders were kneaded and drained of lactic acid with the help of black pepper, ginger and rosemary (harvested from the roof, no doubt). It's a popular choice with visiting polo players, apparently, but I quickly discovered that it works just as well on tired ramblers.

Rooms from £239 including breakfast. Tasting menu from £80 per person. Deep Tissue Massage from £85 (coworthpark.com)