Not only does The Temple offer two people the luxury of a double bed for their stay, but it is set on the edge of a lake and in the grounds of Stancombe Park, Legend has it that in 1815 a cleric living in Stancombe House built The Temple after falling in love with a local gypsy girl. He kept her there as his mistress, confident that his large wife would be unable to negotiate the narrow labyrinth of passages that joined the big house with the lovers’ lair. Although it is usually booked up nine months in advance, there is still availability for this New Year. Prices for three nights range from £427 in winter to £692 in mid-summer.Alternative splendour can be found at The Triumphal Arch, another of the National Trust’s more than 280 historic properties for let. It is in the grounds of Berrington Hall in Herefordshire and was designed by Henry Holland, also responsible for the house.

Once a coachman’s dwelling, then a shooting lodge, it has now been renovated by the National Trust to provide accommodation for four (one double room, one twin) at prices ranging from £236 to £750 for a week.For those wanting a complete break from the usual four walls there’s also plenty to choose from in the way of round buildings. The National Trust’s Watertower, in Trelissick, Cornwall, provides a small circular room on each of its four floors connected by a narrow spiral staircase. A Gothic-style stone building with just one double bedroom, The Watertower, which was once the real thing, is thought to have been built around 1865, evolving from an earlier circular dovecote. A week’s stay will cost between £195 in winter and £455 mid-summer.Rural Retreats also offers a former oasthouse in Shoreham, Sevenoaks, Kent, which, again, has just one double room Two nights cost from £153 in low season to £235 in high. It has a circular kitchen/dining room and a round living room. However, if you prefer hexagonal, there is the former deer house in Kirkby Lonsdale in Cumbria, offered by English Country Cottages, a company which has chapel conversions and a lighthouse on its books..

A Record-Breaking inflatable powerboat called the Spirit of Cardiff is set to become one of the hottest attractions in the Welsh capital, with the official launch of a centre dedicated to it on Thursday, writes Clive Tully. A Record-Breaking inflatable powerboat called the Spirit of Cardiff is set to become one of the hottest attractions in the Welsh capital, with the official launch of a centre dedicated to it on Thursday, writes Clive Tully.
Based in the Tube – the Riba gold medal-winning, space-age building on Cardiff Bay that serves as the city’s official visitor centre – it notched up more than 30,000 visitors in the first month it was open earlier this summer. That number rose to 49,000 in August.The Spirit of Cardiff is due to try to break the round-the-world record in 2002, aiming to demolish the reigning Cable and Wireless Adventurer’s 74-day record by three weeks. Last month, it broke the record for the fastest passage from Gibraltar to Monaco.Following major investment, the Spirit of Cardiff Visitor and Education Centre has been completely remodelled to explain the round-the-world trip.While the boat itself will not be on display, due to its sheer size, the centrepiece will be the engine and gearbox that will be fitted for its record-breaking odyssey. Other exhibits will include a mock-up of the cabin where the crew of four will live for almost two months, electronic navigation equipment and web-linked computers, and illustrations showing the route that the boat will take.The centre will become the operation’s nerve centre during the voyage, from where visitors will be able to send messages to the crew. (Visit www.spirit-of-cardiff .).

Don’t talk to me about American politics. The only Americans I care about are the exiles: the sad ones, travelling the highways and byways of the world

Don’t talk to me about American politics. The only Americans I care about are the exiles: the sad ones, travelling the highways and byways of the world.
I am not, of course, talking about the sort of people who spend a week in New York and then go home to Texas believing they have seen Rome. Or the schoolkids in Wisconsin who don’t even know that there are foreign countries.No. It’s the real American travellers – the world specialists – who fascinate me The best travellers you can ever meet. There’s no greater pleasure in life than bumping into solitary, bearded Americans in places like Kashmir or Beirut, looking depressed about the state of the world.They don’t necessarily say it out loud, but the feeling is written all over their pale blue eyes, watery after the latest sandstorm in, say, the Sinai Desert: “We come from a powerful country,” they want to say, “but unfortunately we are powerless people.”They explain to me, modestly, that this country of theirs is located in the ocean half way between Japan and Britain (“It divides the Atlantic from the Pacific,” they say. “You find it between Canada and Mexico.”) They then spend hours crushed into uncomfortable buses, telling me how sorry they are for everything.It’s taken me years to get the point.