Houghton on the Hill

Houghton on the Hill has no hotels of its own, so most visitors staying nearby choose Leicester, only a few miles down the A47, where there is a full range of options from budget chain hotels near the ring road to boutique stays closer to the city centre and cathedral quarter. Leicester's hotels put you within easy reach of the castle gardens, the King Richard III visitor centre, Highcross shopping and the Golden Mile of restaurants on Belgrave Road, while still leaving Houghton's footpaths, Billesdon Coplow and the Ingarsby earthworks within a short drive for the day.

For a quieter base, the market towns of Market Harborough and Oakham are both within easy striking distance and offer traditional coaching inns and independent guesthouses with more character than a city hotel, along with their own shops and restaurants. Smaller villages across the Harborough district also have farmhouse B&Bs and self-catering cottages, which suit visitors who want to explore the ridge-top scenery around Houghton at a slower pace. Wherever you stay, a car is the most practical way to reach Houghton on the Hill itself, since the village is small and its attractions — the church, the footpaths and the two pubs — are best appreciated on foot once you arrive. Booking ahead is sensible for weekends in Leicester and during university term time, when demand for rooms in the city rises.

The countryside around the village rewards walkers more than it rewards sightseers, with footpaths radiating out across the ridge and down into the surrounding farmland.

• St Catharine's Church — the parish church, with its 1014 inscription stone and medieval carved heads, is the most tangible link to the village's long history.
• Ingarsby deserted medieval village — a footpath from Houghton leads across open farmland to the earthworks of Ingarsby, once a village in its own right and now one of Leicestershire's best-preserved deserted medieval settlement sites.
• Billesdon Coplow — a wooded, 625ft Iron Age hillfort a short drive south-east, and a genuine local landmark; the climb up its ramparts is short but the views across three counties on a clear day are worth it.
• Leicester city centre — with its castle gardens, cathedral, Highcross shopping centre and the King Richard III visitor centre, all within easy reach by car, bus or taxi.
• Great Central Railway — Britain's only mainline heritage steam railway, running from Loughborough to Leicester North, a straightforward drive from the village.

The village has two pubs with genuinely different characters. The Old Black Horse Inn on Main Street is an Everards tied house with log fires in winter, a beer garden with its own pétanque pitch, views over open farmland, and a Sunday roast with at least three choices each week including beef, lamb, free-range chicken, fish and a vegetarian option. The Rose & Crown takes a different approach entirely, serving an Indo-Chinese and Indian menu of dishes such as lamb tawa, Manchurian prawns, butter chicken, crispy chilli mushrooms and bullet naans with cheese. Beyond the village, Leicester offers a much wider spread of restaurants, cafes and its famous Golden Mile of Indian restaurants along Belgrave Road.

There is no wild camping in England without the landowner's permission, and that applies as much to the farmland ridges around Houghton on the Hill as anywhere else, so any stay here means booking an official site. The good news is that the countryside immediately around the village is genuinely well suited to it: rolling arable and pasture land, ridge-and-furrow fields left over from medieval farming, and quiet lanes that make for easy cycling and walking once you have pitched up. Fox's Furrow, a small site set into the Leicestershire countryside close to Houghton, offers pitches from around £24 a night for two people alongside glamping pods, while a separate glamping site just outside the village itself occupies a two-acre field on a medieval ridge-and-furrow site, popular with walkers and cyclists who use Leicester's bus links to get into the city. Further afield, Country Bumpkin Yurts offers luxury glamping on a working farm, and sites further into Rutland add vineyard views to the mix for something a little different.

The terrain here is gentle rather than dramatic — rolling hills rather than proper hillwalking country — which makes it comfortable for family camping and for anyone bringing bikes, though the exposed high ground around Billesdon Coplow can be blustery even when the valleys are still. Ground tends to be at its firmest from late spring through to early autumn, and most local sites operate seasonally across roughly this period, so it is worth checking opening dates before planning a trip outside summer. Glamping pods and yurts extend the season a little further either side for anyone put off by a tent in changeable weather, and several sites in the area are geared specifically towards that market with fixed structures, proper beds and their own log burners. Given how close Houghton is to Leicester, camping here also works well as a budget-friendly base for a city visit, with the countryside quiet enough at night to still feel like proper rural camping despite the short drive into town. As with any farmland site, stick to marked pitches and access routes, keep dogs on leads near livestock, and always ask before lighting fires, since open ground fires are not permitted on most sites regardless of season.