Stevenage

Hotels in Stevenage are built around convenience: this is a well-connected town on the East Coast Main Line and just off the A1(M), so most of its accommodation caters to business travellers and people passing through, which in practice means reliable, competitively priced rooms for holidaymakers too. Budget and mid-range chain hotels cluster around the town centre, the railway station and the motorway junctions, making them an easy, no-fuss base for exploring the town itself or using Stevenage as a springboard into the rest of Hertfordshire.

For visitors who want to combine a stay with the town's own attractions, hotels within walking distance of the Old Town High Street or Fairlands Valley Park put the museum, the historic pubs and the parkland's water sports and cycle trails on the doorstep. Families in particular will find the town centre's hotels well placed for the leisure park's cinema and bowling, plus quick access to Knebworth House and its gardens a short drive to the south.

Those wanting a quieter or more characterful stay tend to look just outside Stevenage, where the surrounding Hertfordshire villages offer country inns with rooms, small independent guesthouses and farm-based accommodation set among the fields and lanes towards Knebworth and the Chilterns fringe. These give a genuinely rural feel while keeping Stevenage's shops, station and restaurants within easy striking distance, and they suit anyone splitting a trip between the town's practical amenities and the surrounding countryside's slower pace.

Stevenage's attractions range from its new-town heritage to green open space and a genuine stately home just down the road, so there's a fair spread of things to fill a day or two.

• Fairlands Valley Park — around 120 acres of parkland and three lakes laid out through the town, with canoeing, kayaking and windsurfing on the water, plus a mountain bike track and climbing wall on land; it regularly ranks among the region's most-loved free attractions.
• Stevenage Museum — a compact community museum, founded in 1954, telling the story of the town's dual identity: an ancient settlement transformed almost overnight into Britain's first post-war New Town.
• Stevenage Old Town — the original medieval town, with a High Street of independent shops, cafés and centuries-old coaching inns that survived the New Town's arrival largely intact.
• Knebworth House — a Tudor manor remodelled in flamboyant Gothic style, five miles south of Stevenage, set in extensive gardens and parkland and famous for hosting major outdoor concerts over the decades.
• Stevenage town centre and Southgate — one of the earliest purpose-built pedestrianised shopping centres in the country, worth a look for anyone interested in post-war urban planning as much as for the shops themselves.
• Roaring Meg Retail Park and cinema/leisure quarter — modern multiplex, bowling and restaurants for an easy evening out.
• Fairlands Valley Farm and nearby countryside walks — footpaths link the park to surrounding green space, giving quick access to open country without leaving town.

Beyond the headline sights, Stevenage rewards a bit of wandering. The New Town's original neighbourhood layout — self-contained residential "units" each with their own local shops and green space, built around a strict separation of pedestrians and traffic — was hugely influential in post-war planning circles, and walking or cycling the underpass network that still threads beneath the main roads is a small pleasure for anyone interested in how the town was designed to work. The Old Town's parish church, St Nicholas, has origins going back centuries and sits at the heart of the historic settlement that predates the New Town by hundreds of years, giving a useful counterpoint to the concrete-and-parkland image most visitors arrive with.

The Old Town High Street is the best place to start, with independent cafés and restaurants sitting alongside historic coaching inns that have served the road between London and the north for centuries. The Drapers Arms is a longstanding High Street pub with a solid food menu and sports screens, while Lavish Bar and Grill brings Turkish and Mediterranean-style grills and cocktails to the same stretch, and El Bar de Tapas is a family-run tapas spot in the historic High Street. The town centre and Roaring Meg leisure park add a wider spread of chain restaurants and casual dining for evenings out, useful for anyone combining a cinema trip or bowling with a meal, and the surrounding villages offer classic country pubs serving traditional British food for those happy to travel a little further out towards Knebworth or Hitchin.

Stevenage itself is firmly urban New Town, but the Hertfordshire countryside on its doorstep — rolling farmland, hedgerows and quiet lanes towards Knebworth, the Mimrams and the edges of the Chilterns — gives campers a genuine rural escape within a short drive. As with anywhere in England, wild camping without the landowner's permission is illegal, so plan around Hertfordshire's licensed campsites and Certificated Sites (small, simple sites for a handful of units, often on working farms) rather than pitching up on open land. The terrain here is gentle: low hills, mixed farmland and river valleys rather than anything dramatic, which makes for easy, family-friendly camping and straightforward cycling or walking between pitches and the surrounding villages.

Late spring to early autumn is the sweet spot, when the ground is drier, daylight runs long, and nearby attractions like Knebworth House's gardens and outdoor events are in full swing. Hertfordshire's clay-heavy soil can turn heavy going after wet weather, so anyone bringing a tent should keep an eye on the forecast, particularly outside the height of summer. Facilities on small countryside sites tend to be simple — a water point, basic toilets, sometimes an honesty-box shop — so this is camping for people who want peace and a view of fields rather than a resort-style experience, with Stevenage's shops, station and supermarkets never more than a short drive away for supplies.

For anyone who wants the countryside setting without the tent-pitching, glamping has taken hold across Hertfordshire in the past decade, with shepherd's huts, safari tents and small wooden pods appearing on farms within striking distance of Stevenage. These typically add proper beds, heating and sometimes a wood-burner or hot tub, making them a good option for a shoulder-season break when a traditional tent might feel like hard work. Whichever style of camping suits, Stevenage's location — main-line trains to London, the A1(M) running north-south, and genuine countryside a few minutes outside town — makes it a practical base for combining an outdoor break with easy access to everything else Hertfordshire has to offer.