Slaley Hall Sleeping under the Stars

Summer’s boudoir: a Victorian grotto set in a Japanese garden

If those muddy images of Glastonbury fill you with relief (that your youthful days of roughing it are over) yet sweet nostalgia (for those youthful days of roughing it), a more luxurious option for a night outdoors might just appeal.  

Slaley Hall, an elegant Edwardian hotel nestling in 1,000 acres of Northumberland moorland and forest, has created a luxurious alfresco bedroom in a Victorian grotto in its Japanese gardens.

Those who choose to sleep under the stars (£1,150 per couple per night, available every weekend in August, bookings from Monday July 14) are first welcomed with a champagne tea. Espa spa treatments or a walk through the grounds follow, and then it’s time for dinner in the hotel’s Dukes Grill, where guests can choose between a Warren Butterworth 21-day-aged Scottish fillet steak with roast bone marrow or monkfish tail in curried mussel broth.

Once it is time lay your head, a nightcap will be served next to a toasty wood-burning fire pit by a dedicated butler, in both senses of the word – he or she will be on call throughout the night to stir the embers of the fire or replace hot-water bottles. On awakening, a breakfast will be served in the dewy garden.

Although the hotel has contingency plans (if it rains, staff will put tarpaulin around the sides of the grotto; if it pours, a suite will be made available), Slaley Hall is taking glamping to rather a chic new level.