Due to the Covid situation there will not be much open at the moment but below is a list of things to do and places offering food and drink at the time of writing (December 2020). We advise booking ahead in all cases. We will add a more complete list of local attractions hopefully in the spring! Please see our noticeboard as we will try to add information as the situation progresses.
FOOD
The Nest
Little Verzons | 6 mins
Shop open, take away and some table service.
A great little country market shop with licensed cafe and kitchen, oven ready meals and puds, store cupboard and toiletries, deli, bakery, meats fruit and veg, local alcohols and juices, orchards, wooded walks, childrens play, and garden centre! It is very dog friendly and they do picnic hampers to take away (including their famous scotch eggs!) We love this place.
Providing a take away menu at least.
A beautifully crooked black&white coaching inn rumoured to date back as far as 800 years , simple pub grub, good beer and with a lovely garden it is great for families.
Table service.
Country house hotel with high class restaurant championing local produce. They also offer traditional afternoon teas and cocktail classes.
Intending to be fully open from 2nd December.
A shopping village with independent shops including clothes, award winning wine shop specialising in local wines/beer/spirits with a tasting area. Amazing toy shop with lots of wooden and unusual toys. restaurant, food shop, craft shops, gift shop, antiques, play area, garden centre etc. Set in and around the works houses of an old hop farm!
Take away and table service.
Fantastic gourmet burgers with all the trimmings! All Herefordshire produce and probably the best burgers you will find anywhere.
Take away and table service.
Their slightly newer next door sister company, the Bookshop champions the Hereford cow with it's steakhouse and the Observers' 2017 'Best UK Sunday Lunch'.
Table service.
One of the oldest pubs in the county, there are rolling terraced lawns at the rear and a babbling brook and hidden nooks at the front. This was one of our favourite places to go as children and the perfect place to eat outside on warm evenings. There are both bar and restaurant menus and it won 'Best country pub of the year' 2017 in the Good Food Guide.
Tours should be back on with prior booking, shop open, play area closed.
This area of Herefordshire is famous for it's cider and Westons are probably the most well known of the local producers. They have quite a facility here complete with restaurant, tea rooms, shop, shire horses and play area. They also run tours of the cider mill.
Click and collect or delivery!
Traditional producers with an extensive range of styles and single varieties, very much for the enthusiasts. They have a shop and on Saturdays they open their ciderhouse and offer tastings all day. On other days they say if you phone ahead they should be able to show you round and let you try a few of their wares.
Ring ahead for shop or visit.
Particularly famous for their old variety perrys, Greggs' have an on site shop open thursday to monday (advisable to phone ahead) and on tuesdays and saturdays they run free deliveries to the local area! They are also very happy to arrange a guided 'Walk, Talk and Taste' through their ancient orchard, within which lies their equally venerable cloth and board stone press.
No tours at the moment but shop may be open.
Our favourite local brewer, they have several pubs around the county and a shop at the brewery where they also offer tours. Their 'Butty Bach' is the quintessential British draught ale.
Shop appears to be open.
Producing classic English still and sparkling whites from their vines on the slopes of the Frome Valley, they have a shop open tue/wed/thursday and offer tastings and tours of the farm including a trellising system exhibition vineyard..
Should be open for tours, open for shop and click+collect.
Previously having founded Tyrrells crisps the family are now distilling fine vodkas and gins from their own potatoes. They have an onsite shop and bar and they offer tours of their mixed farm and distillery.
Grounds open and possibly the interior.
Dating from the 12th century and still containing it's Norman font, this is where the eminent campanologist Fabien Stedman was raised and baptised. They are all about the bells here, welcoming visitors just to have a quick go or you can book an hour long bell ringing session!
Open from 19th December, advanced booking only.
Working farm attraction with animals large and small, ride on tractor play, soft play, full size bumpy tractor and trailer ride, sandpit adventure playground, haybarn climb and swing playground.
Grounds at least open for bookings.
This massive early 19th century Neo-medieval Revival castle sits in a sprawling estate of woodland, farmland, lake, arboretum and deer park. The interior is a directory of 19thc interior design styles.Other than strolling round the castle and grounds there are many different events, activities and shows on throughout the year, and Eastnor is also the home of the limit testing Landrover Off Road Experience!
Grounds at least open for bookings
Looming over the River Wye, an English Heritage maintained and very well preserved Norman castle housing 'Roaring Meg', only surviving civil war mortar cannon. Regular civil war reenactments.
Ancient woodland on the steeper west slope, the east slope has some of the finest agricultural land anywhere in the world with evidence of Saxon ridge and furrow strips. Plants you may find include orchids, spurge laurel, and of course the glorious pear and apple trees of the Ridge.
9 arched 14th century bridge, Norman church, James Wyatt designed neo-classical Sufton Manor with grounds by Humphry Repton, traditional orchards and and perhaps the Mordiford Wyvern!
Ancient woodland with myriad mosses and ferns, bluebells and bellflowers, riverside bends before rising up to Capler viewpoint for a spectacular view of the River Wye flood plain and an Iron Age hillfort.
850 acres of saxon owned woodland designated a SSSI due to it's national importance for butterflies and moths. There are miles of paths for walking and cycling some with picnic benches and information boards along the way.
From Colwall Station, quiet lanes, the sheltered banks of Cradley Brook, climbing for expansive views and dropping into the Frome Valley, up and down to the River Lodon and return to Colwall. There are several pubs and also Frome Valley Vineyard, Chase Distillery and the Hop Pocket along the route.
We have pork, burgers and sausages from Neil Powell;
Bread from Peter Cook;
Ciders from Greggs Pit and Bartestree Cider;
Beer from the Hop Shed;
Craft items from Monohandmade and Woodnwool;
Cakes and mince pies from Danielle Jones.
Covid-19 Notice for Guests
Our promise to you:
Regardless of a global pandemic, our properties are always cleaned to a very high standard throughout. Now, in light of the current situation, we are following the latest Government approved cleaning protocol, as advised by the Professional Association of Self-Caterers (PASC), and have prepared a Covid-specific Risk Assessment which can be viewed on request. For your reassurance, please find a copy of our Cleaning Checklist attached to this notice, which details all parts of our cleaning process.
We will also be regularly gathering all the information we can about where you can go out to eat and what local attractions are open as booking in advance will be crucial. This will be especially important for Restaurants and Pubs, as well as many take-a-ways needing advance orders to allocate collection slots. If you require any of this information please don't hesitate to ask.
What we ask of our guests:
The extra workload put on our cleaners means the time available to them is even more valuable during the changeover and so it would be very helpful if, on the day of departure, guests could complete the following:
1. Strip all bedding and bag it up in the white linen sacks provided
2. Open all windows to allow fresh air to circulate - unless it’s raining or likely to rain! 3. Bag up all rubbish and place in the correct outside bins provided
In addition to this, we respectfully ask that during any face-to-face interaction with your host, neighbours or the general public, you maintain social distancing whenever possible (2m is still the aim, but of course 1m+ has now been introduced for those times where 2m is simply not possible).
Covid-19 Specific Changes to What we Offer:
In light of the Covid guidelines released this year, aimed at reducing risk to guests, hosts & the general public, we have had to make a few changes to what we would normally offer/supply to our guests. These are as follows:
Tea, coffee & condiments - rather than leaving fully stocked caddies/mills with these available, for hygiene purposes we are instead just providing a handful of unopened sachets of each tea, coffee, white sugar, brown sugar salt & pepper. To save wastage (unused sachets will need to be thrown away), we aim to “under supply” these, with contact-free top ups available on request.
Children’s toys - given how tactile children are, forever putting things in their mouths, we have taken the decision to not provide the usual children’s toys for now, to avoid any potential risk - these are not the easiest of things to clean beyond doubt, so we feel it’s not worth the risk.
Glasses, crockery, kitchen kit etc. - in light of all the additional cleaning/sanitising required, for now, we are aiming to provide a less than normal level of these sort of items, so the cupboards may look a little bare! They will be at least two sets of all the essentials, and again, contact-free resupplying is possible on request.