I love the luxury of travelling. When I leave home, I want a parallel luxury universe — where sheets are crisp and clean and the carpets are immaculately vacuumed, with not a crumb in sight. Anyone remember Carrie in Sex and the City exclaiming 'Hello, lover!' when she was given a new pair of Louboutins? Well, it's the same sentiment for me and an immaculate suite.
Maybe it's to do with the fact that I can never reach five-star status at home with my boys — Benito, who is eight years old, and Lorenzo, who is three (the endless clothes, bags and toys...) — and a husband who thinks nothing of leaving a detritus of papers, keys, ties everywhere. This has usually meant going abroad. Sure, British tourism has come a long way since my childhood holidays in the 70s — shivering in a remote Welsh cottage (I use the word loosely, it was more like an outbuilding) — but it couldn't compete with the glamour of an exotic location.
Then I heard about a design revolution among the Farrow & Ball-daubed doors of the Cotswolds and was intrigued. The quaint villages and cutting-edge style do not go together. But The Lakes is different. It's a development of wooden, luxury, contemporary houses just outside the picturesque town of Lechlade-on-Thames in Gloucestershire. All are based around six lakes in a tranquil 650-acre estate — most are for sale and some are holiday rentals — with 325 acres remaining a nature reserve.
It's the brainchild of developers Yoo and the Raven Group. Devised by John Hitchcox, co-founder of the Manhattan Loft Corporation, and Philippe Starck, who practically invented the word design, their vision is to lure urbanites to the British countryside just like the Hamptons do to New Yorkers.
And it doesn't disappoint. With celebrity names enlisted to help with interiors, it certainly has the wow factor. Each glass-fronted house has been individually designed by the likes of Jade Jagger, Sophie Conran and Kelly Hoppen. There's no chintz here.
