Be sure to make time for yourself in 2024. Escaping for a couple of days is a proven way of winding down and enjoying some ‘me’ time. Trying out a new activity or experience can revitalise you even more!
We’ve handpicked a selection of memorable experiences to try as winter turns into spring – all within an easy drive of our canalside cottages.
If you enjoy being outdoors, head to the amazing Nant y Bedd, an organic garden and woodland located high up in the Black Mountains, with abundant wildlife. Their first event of 2024 is a workshop about making a hand-crafted plant support, from the coppiced and pollarded growth which is cut at this time of year. Many more workshops follow on topics as varied as making compost and cyanotype printing.
At Growing in the Border, near Skenfrith, you can spend the day getting hands on - propagating seeds and cuttings, or planning your vegetable plot.
If you’d like to learn how to prune wisteria and other winter shrubs, or create a wildflower meadow, book onto a workshop at Highfield Farm near Penperlleni – voted The Nation’s Favourite Garden in Wales and the Borders 2023 by readers of The English Garden magazine. You’re guaranteed plenty of fresh air and delicious refreshments on all these gardening courses!
If you’d prefer to admire nature’s beauty but not get your hands dirty, the splendid sight of snowdrops at the Wye Valley Sculpture Garden in Tintern is not to be missed.
Hopefully, during your stay at our cottages, you might catch sight of what is known as the dragon’s breath (otherwise called cloud inversion). Head up to the top of the Blorenge mountain behind our cottages, and look down on the Usk valley filled with fluffy white clouds.
Heading indoors, you can be equally creative making your own perfume, kimchi or gin! At the tranquil Wales Perfumery near Monmouth you can make a personalised perfume, room fragrance diffuser or candle. Scent-sational!
At The Crafty Pickle Company you can try your hand at fermentation and go home with a jar of kraut, kimchi or kombucha. That'll do you good!
Part of the growing scene of craft drinks producers in Wales, Silver Circle Distillery in the Wye Valley offers distillery tours as well as the chance to create your own gin recipe, distill it, and take it home with you.
With a wealth of local knowledge and eye on forthcoming events, we’d love to help you plan your perfect 2024 break. If there’s a sight you’d particularly like to see or something new you’d like to try, please get in touch.
