Something for the Weekend

The Cotswolds is famed for its chocolate-box houses so sweet you could wrap them up in a bowtie and give them to your gran for Christmas. Where we’re staying this weekend is in the Cotswolds, but it is entirely and exactly not a chocolate-box house.

Larchwood Lodge is a monolithic masterpiece: a design so grand that it would have Kevin McCloud reaching for similes from the sky. It is part of the Rural Retreats collection – or ‘homes you’d sell a kidney for’, as they might accurately be known. The company offers self-catering rentals at more than 400 locations ranging from a 12-bedroom castle in Cumbria to a one-bedroom lighthouse keeper’s cottage on the coast of Cornwall.

Larchwood has a relatively modest four-bed, four-bath count – however, given that one of those bedrooms doubles up as a cinema room and another has a surface area larger than most people’s flats, it’s by no means a meagre affair.

The house has everything you could ever need – along with a lot you don’t, but is still very nice to have nonetheless. We’re talking underfloor heating throughout; his’n’hers sinks in every en suite; an eight-person sofa; touch-sensitive controls to a four foot-square ‘air’ bath (read: posh Jacuzzi); and even a remote control mood light that changes hue as you rotate your thumb. It’s all bells, whistles, flatscreens and Blu-rays.

The location’s not too shabby, either: slap-bang in the middle of one of the most picturesque settings in Britain. The Lakes by Yoo is a private 650-acre estate of clear-water lakes and natural woodland in the centre of the Cotswolds. As well as 24-hour security, every house benefits from a lakeside plot with uninterrupted views of the water. Like a five-star golf resort, there’s a clubhouse with a pool table and bar, as well as a spa and gym.

As a guest of Rural Retreats, you can take advantage of the concierge service too, which includes anything from enjoying treatments from visiting masseuses to having your Rolls washed.

Philippe Starck is the creative mastermind behind the development, and his design flare is evident from the first step inside Larchwood where you are faced with a grand dining room table surrounded by his iconic Ghost chairs. Yoo is by no means a one-man band though – the houses draw on the collective talents of Kelly Hoppen, Jade Jagger and Sophie Conran too. The result is an interior layout that could take the centre-spread of Wallpaper magazine. The development has plenty of eco credentials to shout about too. The houses are made from sustainable timber, and there’s an on-site ecology manager responsible for creating and maintaining wildlife and flora habitat, including some nationally scarce species.

Larchwood Lodge is the kind of house I’d love to own – but for this weekend, I would just have to pretend.

Talking about the land of make-believe… allow me to introduce the Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé – a car so out of this world I’m still not certain that I didn’t hallucinate it. Thing is, when you’re staying in a house this extravagant, it’s nice to have a car to match it.

As I pulled up in the £307k Rolls, a friend’s reaction was pretty telling: “No wonder the car costs the same amount as a house: it’s as big as one”.

The Phantom certainly has, how can I put it, presence. Within five minutes of leaving our house in London, two tramps had toasted us, one lady had curtseyed at a pelican crossing and a dozen jaws had dropped. In most executive cars, people don’t give you a second glance – in the Rolls, they don’t even pretend not to. At 6ft 5in wide, 18ft 4in long, and weighing in at 2.5 tonnes, it’s no shrinking violet.

It’s got the bark to back up its bite, though – in the form of a 6.75ltr V12 engine. Not only does this produce a fulsome 453bhp, but it offers 75% of that power at a mere 1,000rpm.

Inside, everything is calm serenity. The dials glow with an ethereal white light and it’s deathly silent. You can see why they call it the Phantom.

On the dashboard, instead of a tachometer, there’s a ‘power reserve’ that tells you how hard the engine is working: cruising at 80mph, it informed me that there was still 95% power left. Spooky.

Much like Larchwood Lodge, the Rolls takes everything to the nth degree. Take the roof lining, for example – this is speckled with hundreds of LEDs that twinkle like a clear-night sky (one that you’d see in the Cotswolds, not in smog-cloaked London). Elsewhere, such vulgar implements as the satnav screen and the on-board computer knob are tucked away in hidden compartments behind thick glossy wood-veneer panels. Only when you need them do they appear (with the light tap of your left hand) – a clock rotates into a satnav, while the i-drive selector slides out from the armrest.

One uniquely Rolls touch is the brace of golf umbrellas concealed in the fenders, which again come out at the press of a button. In fact, there seems to be a button for pretty much everything. (When you do find something you have to do manually, you feel robbed.) You can waste many a happy hour pressing the button to make the Spirit of Ecstasy slide in and out of the bonnet housing. Even the doors shut hydraulically at the close of the button. Now that’s just lazy. All this isn’t just for show though: there’s some clever thinking behind the Rolls, too. The doors, for example, are also rear-hinged, which not only makes for easier access, but also aids the overall stiffness of the body – they allow for uninterrupted A-pillars helping make this the most torsionally rigid Rolls ever. Electronic driving aids keep the car in check even if you can’t. And direct injection plus variable valve and camshaft control mean it has the best fuel efficiency in its (admittedly somewhat limited) class.

So, just like Larchwood, the Rolls-Royce is big and it is clever. And just like the house, I can’t afford it – but it’s nice to have for the weekend.

Rural Retreats offers three nights at Larchwood Lodge from £1,765 and seven nights from £3,223. The house sleeps up to ten people. For booking, contact 01386 701 177; ruralretreats.co.uk

For more info on Rolls-Royce contact the Murray Motor Company on 0131 442 1000; rrmc-murray.co.uk