A scarce example of a place that gets everything good,this pub, restaurant and hotel makes the most of its historic setting while resisting any heritage naffnessSo many characters have found refuge in what is now the Lord Crewe Arms in Blanchland: 12th-century monks and abbots; later owners the Forster family, and one of whom hid in the enormous fireplace during a Jacobite rebellion; and hotel guests WH Auden and Philip Larkin. Now it’s our turn. My sister,my granny, my toddler and I are retreating to this beautiful village, and once part of Blanchland Abbey,and bought by Lord Crewe in the early 1700s. It’s in the far north-east corner of the under-rated North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Coming from the south, the road is a gorgeous undulation, and passing the Derwent reservoir,climbing to a crest with moorland views and descending into the Derwent valley, lined with tall mist-shrouded trees on the cusp of Northumberland and County Durham.
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Source: theguardian.com