Our guide to luxury Worcestershire holidays

South of Birmingham, among the Malvern Hills and a network of Victorian waterways, are chocolate-box villages, verdant valleys, cultural towns and historic cities. There’s the Cotswolds village of Broadway, with its honey-hued cottages and independent shopping, and Droitwich Spa, packed with historic houses and a Jacobean mansion to explore. There’s Evesham, famed for the great Battle of Evesham in which Simon de Montfort rebelled against Prince Edward, and Pershore, a pretty village known for its ornate Benedictine abbey church. At the foot of the Malvern Hills, sits Malvern; once a fashionable wellness resort for its pure spring water, you can still pick up freshly bottled Malvern Water today.

Worcester is the county town of Worcestershire, and by far the largest. One of the oldest cities in England and fortified by the Saxons, settlements there date back to 700BC. A maze of Tudor streets still sit in their mediaeval layout and once grand city walls lay in ruin around its core. Worcester’s magnificent cathedral towers above, with Royal Tombs protected below. Britain’s longest river, the River Severn, makes its way through the middle, whilst Fort Royal Park (the site of the Battle of Worcester) provides 180° views from high ground. This is a city packed with culture first, shopping second, ripe for an impromptu history lesson on foot with the children.

Worcester Cathedral might seem the obvious answer but it has little to do with the city’s nickname. Instead, it was fiercely loyal to the Crown during the English Civil War, earning it the title of the ‘Faithful City’.

Yes. The story goes that a fellow named ‘Lord Sandys’ had returned home to England after governing in Bengal, India. He commissioned pharmacists John Lea and William Perrins to replicate his favourite Indian sauce. Their creation smelt so strong, they delivered a batch to Lord Sandys and stored the rest in the cellar, where it lay forgotten for two years. It had fermented and aged into the Worcestershire sauce we know today, soon becoming the go-to steak sauce of the day. Nowadays, it’s more commonly found in a spicy Bloody Mary, brilliantly matched with early summer evenings spent chatting around the lakeside fire pit.

Around 100 miles long and 650 million years old, The Malvern Hills rise dramatically out of The Severn Valley, with views of the Cotswolds, Herefordshire and even the Black Mountains. That said, there are walking routes for ramblers of any ability. The main ridgeline and slopes up toward it are steep, but the Malvern Hills Trust has created Easier Access Trails for those in need of something a little gentler. The footpaths and bridleways that zigzag across the hills are also clearly marked so you don’t lose your way. Iron-age hill forts pepper the landscape, the earthworks at Midsummer Hill and British Camp still visible today. The hills are also popular with horse-riders and hang-gliders, and for dazzling sunsets, made complete with homemade sundowners carried up in makeshift flask-turned-cocktail shakers.