Tenterden

Tenterden's high street holds most of the town's best places to stay, and the choice runs from centuries-old coaching inns with a handful of individually styled rooms to a golf and spa hotel set in its own parkland just outside town. Properties on or near the high street put the museum, the railway station and the pubs within a short stroll, which suits anyone planning to explore on foot or catch a steam train without needing the car. A little further out, St Michael's and the lanes towards Rye offer a quieter, more rural setting, with country house hotels set in gardens and grounds that make the most of the surrounding Weald.

Standards across Tenterden's accommodation tend towards the characterful rather than the corporate: exposed beams, wood-burning stoves and boutique touches are the norm in the town's pub-with-rooms, while the larger country hotels lean into spa facilities, golf courses and function spaces for weddings and events. Several of the high street inns are dog-friendly, a useful detail given how well suited the surrounding footpaths and marshland are to walking. Prices are generally more affordable than the better-known Kent honeypots of Sissinghurst or Rye itself, though rooms in the smaller inns are limited and worth booking well ahead for summer weekends, when the Tentertainment Festival and Chapel Down's harvest events draw extra visitors to the area.

Tenterden packs a surprising amount into a small area, and most of the best things to do are within walking distance of the high street or a short drive into the surrounding Weald.

• Kent & East Sussex Railway — England's first light railway, opened in 1900, still runs vintage steam and diesel services from Tenterden Town station through nine miles of Wealden countryside to Bodiam and its castle.
• Chapel Down Winery — England's largest wine producer has its home and visitor centre just outside Tenterden at Small Hythe, with tours, tastings and a restaurant set among the vines.
• Smallhythe Place — this timber-framed house was the country home of Victorian actress Ellen Terry, and the National Trust property now displays her theatrical costumes and mementoes in gardens that still feel lived-in rather than curated.
• Tenterden and District Museum — a compact, volunteer-run museum tracing the town's wool trade, farming and railway history, with displays that go well beyond what the size of the building suggests.
• St Mildred's Church — the fourteenth-century tower, funded by wool merchants, can be climbed on open days for a view across the Weald that explains why the town sits where it does.
• Rare Breeds Centre — a short drive away at Woodchurch, this working farm keeps traditional livestock breeds and runs lambing weekends, falconry displays and adventure play for families.
• Sissinghurst Castle Garden — Vita Sackville-West's celebrated garden, with its famous White Garden and Elizabethan tower, lies a short drive north and is one of the National Trust's most visited properties.
• Tentertainment Festival — held most summers on the recreation ground, this community-run music and food festival has grown into one of the larger events on the Kent calendar without losing its local, unpretentious character.

Tenterden's food scene reflects the produce on its doorstep: Kentish lamb and beef from the surrounding marshes, apples and hops from Wealden orchards, and wine from vines that now stretch across much of the parish. Chapel Down's restaurant and cellar door is the obvious draw, but the high street's own pubs hold their own, several combining boutique rooms with kitchens built around seasonal, locally sourced menus and proper Sunday roasts. A farmers' market brings local growers and producers into the town centre on a regular basis, and independent bakeries, delicatessens and a butcher or two along the high street make it easy to put together a picnic for the railway or the surrounding footpaths. For a pint, the town's historic inns pour Kentish ales alongside the county's growing list of craft breweries, and Chapel Down's still and sparkling wines appear on menus well beyond Tenterden itself as a point of local pride.

Tenterden itself has no large campsite within the town, but the surrounding Weald and the Sussex border a few miles south are well provided for, with touring parks set among orchards, farmland and the fishing lakes and woodland that fringe the Rother valley. Most sites within easy reach of Tenterden take tents, touring caravans and motorhomes, and several have grown a small glamping offering alongside their standard pitches, giving visitors without their own kit a way to try camping without buying a tent.

Facilities at these parks tend towards the straightforward rather than the resort-style: electric hook-ups, clean shower blocks, small on-site shops and, in some cases, playgrounds and fishing lakes rather than swimming pools or entertainment programmes. That suits Tenterden's appeal well, since the draw here is the Kent and Sussex countryside itself, the Kent & East Sussex Railway's steam trains passing within sight of some pitches, and easy access into Tenterden, Rye and Bodiam for a day out. Dogs are welcome at most of the sites within reach of the town, and all sit close enough to Tenterden for the vineyard, the railway and the high street to be a short drive rather than a serious expedition.