Frant

Frant makes a peaceful, well-connected base for a High Weald break, whether you want a country pub with rooms, a bed and breakfast tucked down a quiet lane, or a hotel with more facilities just a few minutes away in Royal Tunbridge Wells. The village itself is small, so most visitors choose between staying right in Frant at a local inn, or basing themselves in nearby Tunbridge Wells, which offers a wider spread of options from Georgian townhouse hotels to modern chains close to the station and Pantiles.

Staying in or around Frant puts you within easy striking distance of Eridge Rocks, Eridge Park and the wooded lanes of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, as well as day trips to Bewl Water, Scotney Castle and Bayham Old Abbey. Families often appreciate the quieter, rural pace of a stay near Frant compared with a town-centre base, while still being close enough to Tunbridge Wells for restaurants, shops and the railway line to London and Hastings. Booking ahead is worthwhile in summer, when the village green hosts cricket and the countryside is at its busiest with walkers, but the area rarely feels overrun even in peak season.

Whatever type of accommodation you choose, the High Weald setting means you are never far from a good walk, a historic pub, or one of the well-known houses and gardens that dot this part of the Sussex-Kent border.

Frant itself is small, but it is superbly placed for walking, wildlife and a clutch of well-known Weald attractions within a few miles.

• Frant village green — the heart of the village, ringed by cottages, the church and the pub; still used for cricket matches through the summer.
• St Alban's Church — a Grade II listed Gothic Revival church rebuilt in the 1820s largely at the expense of the Earl of Abergavenny, with a chancel added later in the Victorian period.
• Eridge Rocks — a Sussex Wildlife Trust nature reserve within the parish, where sandstone outcrops up to ten metres high, formed tens of millions of years ago, rise out of the woodland; look out for ferns and mosses that thrive on the damp rock faces.
• Eridge Park — a historic deer park bordering the village, part of the wider Eridge estate and a good spot for a longer walk through parkland and woods.
• Royal Tunbridge Wells — just a few miles north, with the colonnaded Georgian shopping walk of The Pantiles, the Chalybeate Spring, and Tunbridge Wells Common for a stroll among sandstone outcrops of its own.
• Bewl Water — the largest reservoir in the south east, a short drive away, good for a lakeside walk, sailing or cycling the perimeter track.
• Scotney Castle — a National Trust property over the Kent border with a moated ruin, gardens and a Victorian country house, a popular half-day out.
• Bayham Old Abbey — English Heritage ruins of a medieval abbey set in a riverside valley, within easy reach for a quieter, more romantic sort of visit.

The George Inn on the High Street is the village's long-standing pub, its core building dating back to the 1670s, with beamed bars, a large garden and a menu of traditional pub food alongside cask ales. The Abergavenny Arms, overlooking the green, is another local fixture typical of the Weald's village pubs. For a wider choice, the restaurants, cafes and tearooms of Tunbridge Wells and its Pantiles are only a short drive north.

Frant sits within the High Weald, a landscape of steep wooded ghylls, sandstone outcrops and sunken lanes that makes for attractive but sometimes demanding camping country. As with the rest of England, wild camping is not legal here without the express permission of the landowner, so visitors should stick to licensed campsites and glamping sites in the surrounding countryside rather than pitching up on the common land, deer park or nature reserves around the village. Eridge Rocks and Eridge Park, though beautiful, are protected sites where camping is not permitted, and the same goes for the National Trust and English Heritage land at Scotney Castle and Bayham Old Abbey nearby.

That said, the wider area around Tunbridge Wells and the High Weald AONB has a good spread of campsites, from simple tent fields to smaller family-run sites with electric hook-ups, and a growing number of glamping options such as safari tents, shepherd's huts and yurts that suit visitors who want a taste of the countryside without full camping kit. The terrain's steep little valleys and clay soils mean the best camping season runs from late spring through to early autumn, when the ground is drier and evenings are long enough to enjoy a campfire; the same wet Wealden clay that makes the woodland so lush can make winter and early spring pitches heavy going.

Camping here suits anyone keen on walking, since many sites are within reach of way-marked footpaths through the AONB, with Eridge Rocks and Bewl Water both popular targets for a day's walk from a tent. Glamping sites in particular tend to make the most of the High Weald views, with pitches looking out over ridges and valleys rather than flat open fields, and many offer a fire pit as standard given how much of the appeal here is the woodland setting after dark. Booking ahead for peak summer weekends is advisable, as the best-placed sites near Tunbridge Wells and the Kent border fill up quickly.