This post was supposed to be about seasonal skincare changes, but in order to provide a bit of context I started writing about my usual skincare routine and then I went off on a tangent about how I feel about my face in my forties and then about eighty-seven years later I looked up and realised I’d suddenly written a thesis.

I am therefore breaking it down into something more manageable: I’m going to do a bit of an intro to my face and then describe my skincare routine and then next week we’ll have a good solid base to refer back to when I start to talk about the seasonal skincare changes. Here goes.

I’m forty-three (until next month), I have what would probably be described as “normal to dry” skin and, apart from a few blips in my thirties I have never really had any pressing skin concerns.

You could say that I’ve been preoccupied with “having good skin” for most of my adult life; I’ve been writing about skincare for almost fifteen years and before that I was a model for over a decade and “having good skin” was partly what I did for a living. I’ve tried tens of thousands of products, both newly-launched and well-established and I like to think that I get quite good intel when it comes to what’s what in the beauty industry. What is total bollocks, for example, and what actually does make a visible difference…

I don’t currently have any “tweakments”* and haven’t had any in the past. I’ve had a couple of facials that have incorporated machinery into them – radio waves and ultra sound and so on – but I’m not sure that’s for me, either. Mainly because I like all of my skincare maintenance to be very, very low effort. Done at home, either lying down in my bed, in the bath or, as a last resort, at my desk when I’m on Zoom meetings with the camera turned off.

(*the whole tweakments thing is a huge other post in the making. I don’t want to get sidelined by it here. I use this term to include things like filler and Botox and more dramatic stuff like facelifts and eye lifts – basically anything that involves needles or knives!)

I was quite a heavy smoker for about ten years, from when I was eighteen-ish until twenty-eight, and I was an utterly shameful sun worshipper, as we mostly were in the olden times. Though I must say that I never used to burn, I was always very careful with my worship sessions, considering these were the days before SPF50 was the default holiday sunscreen option.

Anyway, I’m sure that I have all the effects of that life of debauchery ready to catch up with me and so I try my best just to keep my skin barrier healthy and on an even keel whilst also applying the highest possible level of active ingredients I can without making my entire face fall off. I cannot be arsed with anything that requires “downtime”: peels that demand face-bandaging afterwards, rollers covered in needles that draw blood as they prickle the skin – even too-strong retinoids that make my face itchy and dry are a complete no-no in my book. I repeat: I cannot be arsed.

My basic routine includes some choice actives (Vitamin C, Retinal/Tretinoin, Hyaluronic Acid, the odd peptide) to keep my face on its toes (weird visual) but the general gist of the whole skincare routine is that it is short, quick and to the point. Three-ish steps, just like Clinique told us, back in the nineties.

Is it low cost? Debatable. There are a few bits of gadgetry thrown in that are a hefty initial investment, but I don’t do anything that requires regular financial commitment. Or, indeed, requires leaving the house. It’s enough of an imposition to go and get hair and nails done, quite frankly!

Most pricey products usually have a very good, very affordable alternative out there – not an identical copy, but you can put together a good routine for very little expense. (Another post that’s in drafts!) I’ve tried to give a nice range within the product examples that I’ve listed, but this post is more about the routine itself and the types of products I use rather than the specific brands. We have plenty of time to get into the forensics of it all – I’m just getting started!

Ad-info: no paid or sponsored mentions in this post. I regularly work with beauty brands and some of them, including Beauty Pie, Medik-8 and Current Body, are mentioned below. Any affiliate links are marked with * next to the link.

My Basic Morning Routine: Cleanse-Antioxidant-SPF

I am not one for the morning cleanse, I’m afraid. I go in hard with the evening one but cannot abide the feeling of water cascading over my face in the morning. So in the AM it’s a cursory scrub over with a damp flannel and then a quick swipe with a gentle exfoliating liquid before I sit down to do my makeup.

One of my most-used exfoliants? Placid Daily Exfoliant*.

I use a daily liquid exfoliant because it very gently gets rid of dead skin cells to leave skin brighter and smoother, but it’s far less heavyweight than an extreme weekly peel mask or the stronger peel pads. This “little and often” approach seems to agree with my skin more. I used to do a stronger peel every other evening but now that I use retinoids at night I don’t like to overdo it and so gentle morning exfoliating action is where it’s at.

Step 2: Vitamin C

I am religious about using a Vitamin C serum (or general antioxidant) before going in with my day cream/SPF. Added protection from the elements, but also the Vitamin C really does help brighten. And just good form if you want to help prevent dark spots or unevenness of tone, or stop existing patches from worsening. I see it as going hand in hand with my sunscreen.

Some great options: Paula’s Choice C-15 Super Booster here*, Skin Rocks Antioxidant*.

Step 3: Moisturiser/SPF

I usually use one product to do both jobs – hydrate and protect. It’s perfectly possible with the excellent modern sunscreen formulas we have now. This is (another) entirely separate post in the making, but I go for a more hydrating SPF25/30 in the wintery months and a dedicated SPF50 in the summer – one that usually tends to be lighter in consistency.

This year’s wonder SPF summer discovery: Cabana Clear SPF50*. And this RoC SPF30* is a beauty of a wintery day cream if you want something richer.

My Basic Evening Routine: Cleanse-Retinoid-Moisturiser

This is where we get feisty. My evening cleanse is an event. I like a balm texture. Something I can massage onto dry skin and feel it break down into an oil as it gets to work. Something that will remove all eye makeup, as well as SPF and grime and foundation and God knows what else, and sweep it away easily with a flannel and warm water. If you haven’t tried a balm cleanser and you faff about trying to take the day off with micellar water and cotton wool, or cleansing cream and tissue, or facial wipes, then this is possibly the greatest change you will ever make to your skincare routine. There is no comparison. You genuinely cannot properly remove makeup and SPF with a wipe or with micellar and cotton wool. They’re great for getting off the messiest stuff before a proper cleanse, or for use in an emergency, but even then. A balm and flannel session is so much lovelier.

Try: Oat Balm Cleanser from Inkey List* for a brilliant budget buy or Farmacy Green Clean Cleansing Balm* for slightly spendier times, but the ultimate for scent and general luxuriousness of experience has to be Emma Hardie’s balm here*.

Step 2: Retinoid

Again, this requires a whole other post because it’s an absolute can of skincare worms, the retinoids thing. Using a retinoid (commonly referred to as just “retinol”) is possibly the biggest thing you can do in a skincare routine to make an actual, visible difference to the tone and texture of the skin. Finding one isn’t necessarily straightforward though, because some will make your skin dry and itchy and others won’t be strong enough and others will require a prescription and some of them won’t do anything at all, really. Can of skincare worms! I told you.

However. Ease into the retinoids thing slowly, with a reliable brand and a great formula and you’ll be onto a winner. Try using every few days, building up to applying more frequently (I do every night or alternate, see below) and you’ll have yourself a night treatment that will tackle just about every sign of fatigue and wear-and-tear you can think of. Fine lines, crepeiness, deeper wrinkles, loss of elasticity, dullness, it gets to work on pretty much everything. Seems to keep my PMT-related spots at bay too. (At least I’ve had very, very few for the last couple of years since I’ve habitually used powerful retinoids at night.)

Try: Medik8 Crystal Retinal* – comes in varying strengths so that you can work your way up to the top. Medik8 excel at producing easily-tolerated retinoids, in my opinion. I also have “And Begin” on subscription – this is a bespoke night cream that’s formulated based on your consultation with the team and contains very strong ingredients.

Nearly all of the high street brands now have a retinol range but Beauty Pie’s Super Retinol* is competitive with high street prices, if you have membership. The formulas are advanced and brilliant. Use RUTHSENTME if you’re a new sign-up to get money off membership, and they also have a £20 off code running (not sure whether they work together): 20OFFBP

Step 3: Moisturiser

I used to worry that applying moisturiser after my retinoid would buffer it and make it less potent but quite honestly, the benefits of slathering on a rich cream after your retinoid (which can be massively drying) vastly outweigh the potential reduction in potency. Does it have to be a rich moisturiser? Not at all – I like a lightweight gel-cream as much as the next beauty aficionado. I have a few face creams on the go at all times so that I can pretend I’m in an apothecary and dip into whichever pot suits my skin that particular evening.

One thing I will say is that I do try to get my ceramides and/or peptides shoved into this step. I realise that sentence made me sound like a bit of a tosser, and I do hate to throw about scientific words that sound purely like marketing spiel, but I am all for a bit of ceramide action to help with the old skin barrier function. I’m sure there are other “transformational” active ingredients I could be including, but I only have one face, limited patience and a finite time on earth and so I just try to shoehorn in the ones I like best and understand most fully.

See Inkey List Ceramide Cream here*: a no-frills moisturiser option you can bung on liberally due to the non-horrifying price point.

There’s an important caveat here, with the retinoids, which is that quite a lot of the time I alternate my retinoid nights with a night of pure hydration. A lovely, soothing serum (I love this Aveeno one*) followed by a mega-hydrating, plumptious moisturiser – the sort that makes my skin so turgid and bouncy it’s almost obscene.

Some moisturisers that seem to do this for me include: Japanfusion Rich* and Curel Replenishing Night Cream*. FYI.

Extras!

Gadgets:

Here’s where things get less basic, because I’m a recent – but very enthusiastic – beauty tech convert. I thought that it was all a gimmick at first and was hugely cynical (I am always hugely cynical about things I don’t understand, or things that require charging up before I can use them – see aforementioned low-maintenance ramble) but then had such remarkable instant results with the ZIIP (a facial toning device) and such brilliant long-term results with the LED mask that they became a big fixture in my skincare routine. Didn’t ever think that they would, but life is full of surprises.

I work regularly with Current Body who make this beauty tech and so it somehow feels trickier to write about them without feeling as though I’m somehow being “sales-y”, but at the same time it would be weird for me not to mention them when I use them on a daily basis. Are they absolutely necessary? I think that always depends on whether you can afford the outlay. I think that consistent use of a good SPF is possibly the best thing you can ever do for your skin, if you had to pick one thing from the entire routine, but would I buy my ZIIP and mask again if my gadgets suddenly and mysteriously disappeared? Yes I would.

The general brightening and line-smoothing effects of the mask have been really noticeable over the past few months and I love the instant lift that the ZIIP gives, especially around the mouth and at the brows. I would definitely miss the effects if I didn’t have them in my routine. In a separate post I’ll pull out my before and after pictures and “live action” video so that you can appraise the results for yourselves.

Current Body LED Mask* and ZIIP* – NB: you can use code RUTHZIIP for the ZIIP or RUTH15 for 15% off anything else at Current Body. These codes are valid at time of writing.

Right. I feel that we need to go in deeper when it comes to pretty much every stage of the routine that I’ve mentioned, so maybe that’ll be my next run of posts once I’ve tackled the seasonal changes thing. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see in these skincare posts – questions answered, concerns tackled, specific product types reviewed…

The post My Skincare Routine (At 43) appeared first on Ruth Crilly.

I am loathe to write this particular post about how I stopped my cat from being sick because each of the three times I’ve attempted it, in the past six or so months, my cat has immediately gone and puked. Writing about him not puking seems to be an instant jinx: I put pen to paper and it is apparently an invitation for him to break his no-vom run and heave up something ungodly onto the rug.

But write about his non-puking I shall, because this could be a handy old bit of information for some. It’s the sort of helpful info that should be freely passed around, perhaps from generation to generation, even, daubed onto a cave wall or scratched onto a scroll of parchment. Ye ancient words of Ruthe Crillye, in service to cat-owners everywhere. Saving carpets and rugs, one house at a time.

In case you’re new to me (hello!) then let me introduce you to my cat, Mr Bear. He’s a British Shorthair, will be thirteen this month and is a bit of a unit, size-wise. (As male British Shorthairs tend to be.) At his majestic pinnacle of weightiness he was an ungainly eight and a half kilos: I feel he is rather lighter now, but he would still do well in a cat wrestling heavyweight championships.

If such a thing existed.

God, please let that exist.

For much of Mr Bear’s life, he has been a puker. Now before we go deep into this unsavoury topic, can I please stress that the following does not constitute veterinary advice, nor does it replace it. If your cat is vomming, please do seek professional help, etc.

I had to take my cat to the vets two or three times before I worked out for myself that my cat wasn’t dying of some hideous disease, but simply greedy. I am not an advocate of the Dr Google approach to healthcare (internet searching your symptoms to diagnose your own ailments) and I’m not keen on Google Vet (same thing but for your animals) for the same reasons. Reasons I need not go into because they should be obvious.

Even though – in the end – Google Vet was actually more useful than the actual, really expensive Real Life Vet, I still must be responsible and highly recommend that you see the real person if your cat is projectiling bile around as though its an extra in Poltergeist.

Anyway, to get back on track: for much of his life Mr Bear has been a puker. Big, fishy piles of mush, thrown up noisily and with what looked like a hell of a full-body musculature workout, all over the carpets. Never on the tiles, even if tiles were close by, and never on the easily-wipeable wooden floors. Just on the carpet.

I swear that my cat would find an area of expensive, stainable, highly-absorbent fabric even if he was placed in an expansive room made entirely of, I don’t know, granite. Or marble. Had he been a cat in the Palace of Versailles, in the times of – say – Louis XV, un chat royale, then he would have stalked the miles and miles of marble-floored corridors holding in his vom until he happened to chance upon a section of priceless, ancient, golden-thread-woven rug and then he would have held his curly wig to the side and chucked up on it.

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This puking was alright for years – manageable, not too much of an annoyance, cat seemed “fine in himself” – but for the past year or two the throwing up had become more worrisome. Daily, sometimes. In we went to the Real Life Vet, so that the vet could feel his stomach (the cat’s, not his own) and look in his ears (ditto) and then send us home with a bill for eight thousand pounds with the verdict that there was nothing physically wrong with him. (The cat.)

Which is where Google Vet came into its own. Because there’s nothing the internet does better than feed you with unverified anecdotal material and potential misinformation that has been entered into the system by billions of people who may or may not be sound of mind: and from within this quagmire of brain effluence came something so revelatory, so utterly accurate, that I actually cheered.

Mr Bear wasn’t vomming at all: he was regurgitating his food! This should have been obvious because the piles of sick actually looked and smelled exactly like his food, down to the precise shape of the kibble and the fact that some of it still had the dusty dry surface, but I hadn’t really put two and two together.

God bless Google Vet.

Once I knew this, that Mr Bear was regurgitating his food soon after eating (gorging) on it, rather than slowly dying of something the vets weren’t picking up in their tests, I set about fixing the problem. And here, finally, almost a thousand words into the post, is the helpful bit: how I stopped my cat from being sick.

I raised the cat bowl upwards from the floor.

I know! Bloody hell. Could a fix be any more simple? I thought, at first, that the cat was eating too fast – greedy gobbling – and I put out one of those puzzle bowls to see if slowing him down would stop the vom. You know the pet bowls with the nobbly bits inside?

It didn’t work. Puke volume reduced, frequency reduced, but problem not eradicated. I have to say that I was quite disheartened by this: “slowing down the feeding” seemed to be the most-touted fix on Google Vet, and I had been sure that Mr Bear’s enthusiastic speed-feeding had been the culprit. My mind darkly turned itself back to incurable cat diseases.

But then I read something else, something about certain cats – especially larger ones – regurgitating food because of the angle that they have to eat at when a bowl is placed on the floor. There was a diagram – sadly now I cannot find it – showing the cross-section of a cat’s head and neck and demonstrating the fact that the food was having to be pulled up the throat almost vertically to get around the bend and into the digestive system.

I’m sure the accompanying piece even said something along the lines of, “imagine if YOU had to eat upside down! That’s what it’s like for a cat when you place the bowl on the floor!” Which seemed slightly dramatic and far-fetched, really, but stuck in my mind. A bit in the same way the food was getting stuck in the cat’s neck!

It was worth a try, at any rate, and I placed five paperback books beneath the cat bowl that very morning, raising it up so that he could leisurely chomp away without having to contort himself. Has he thrown up since? Almost never. I don’t even think it has been a handful of times. Probably just the three times I’ve gone to write about it, which is definitely a jinxing situation rather than a relapse one.

Cat vom is simply not part of our lives anymore – we’ve gone from virtually every day to it being a surprising occurrence. (It usually happens if we’ve been away, actually – it’s as though he goes on hunger strike and then gorges once we return.)

Eventually we bought a proper raised bowl and took the paperback books away – I bought this one here from Amazon (affiliate link) – and the only regret I have is that I didn’t do more extensive Googling before.

I’m going to tell you something else, too: whilst I was at it, I changed his food over. After twelve whole years of feeding him the one that the breeder had given him (Royal Canin British Shorthair) I decided to do a bit of research and see if that was the best one or whether I had just blindly followed the advice of someone who may have not done their own research in the first place.

Sidestory: when my dog was tiny, he had terrible stomach problems. Fancy dog foods like the ones you get now (hand-delivered to the door, no less! Using expensive cuts of fresh meat!) barely existed when we first got him and the idea of “grain free” pet foods, ones that weren’t just filled with all sorts of shite and sawdust and whatever else they probably put in some of them, were pretty niche.

But he was really poorly with the dried dog foods that were widely available and so I spent quite a while trying to find him something he could tolerate. And I came across this brilliant website that rated different dog foods according to the ingredients and percentage of useful nutrients and so on – All About Dog Foods. I highly recommend it – you can even add your dog’s details in now to try and find a suitable food. When I first used it, it was a very basic site.

All About Dog Foods

Anyway, this website gives you a percentage rating for each dog food and tells you what’s good about it and what’s not – for example, some Pedigree food rates at 19% (which is not great, obviously) other brands, such as Aatu, rate at 80%. Others rate even more highly. It’s well worth a look if you’re looking to switch up your dog’s food, or you’re just curious about what’s in the one you’re using. It ended up being a really helpful way for us to find a dog food that Dexter (the cockapoo) could tolerate and it also gives the approximate price of the food per day so that you can easily weigh things up.

I remembered this site when I was doing all the bowl-faffing with the cat and wondered whether there was a cat food equivalent and behold:

petfoodexpert.com

Hurrah! Not exactly the same site, but similar enough and also unbiased and with the helpful percentage scoring. Using their info, I narrowed down my food options for Mr Bear to around five choices and then worked out the cost per kilo for each. I ended up going for Orijen Original, which had the highest ingredients score for the most palatable price. In actual fact the cost per kilo for the Orijen (84% scoring for ingredients) was only marginally higher than for the Royal Canin (36% ingredients score).

I tell you all of this not to put you off the brand of food that you use, or suggest that you change, I just found it all very interesting and it seemed like a no-brainer to move the cat onto something that was more nutrient-rich and had less bulky filler, especially as he’s getting into his Silver Fox years.

If you’ve stuck around to the end then congratulations – especially if you don’t have a cat, or don’t even like them, but just carried on to see how it all ended. Please do share this post with cat-owners, if they too have to endure the regurgitation rituals I described earlier. Again, I’d stress that this is all just personal experience and doesn’t replace actual expert advice.

Comments section is open for all joyful cat and dog discussion – see you there!

The post How I Stopped My Cat From Being Sick appeared first on Ruth Crilly.

If you subscribe to my blog posts by email then you might notice something slightly different about the next one, arriving tomorrow: it is being sent by a new provider. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about because – for you – there is no other change.

Oh, apart from – and this is a massive bonus, depending on whether you actually enjoy my posts or not – the fact that you’ll be seeing my emails more often and more consistently from now on. Once a week, and always on a Tuesday.

Obviously if you cannot stand receiving my posts by email then this news will devastate you and it is an absolute necessity that you find the unsubscribe button on this post right now and then click on it. For everyone else, this should all come as brilliant and exciting news. Because it is brilliant and exciting: we’re returning to an era of regular blog posts. We’re going back to the days (and the title) of A Model Recommends – unbiased reviews and slightly unhinged takes on the world from your favourite erstwhile mannequin. Best beauty buys and book recommendations and travel stuff and all sorts of useful bits and pieces, interspersed with some of the more ridiculous life updates and observations that burst forth from my fertile mind.

 It’ll feel like 2013, all over again. Except that it’ll be coming from a slightly different place.

Before you begin to panic about the olden days and feeling as though everything is being uprooted; this website isn’t going anywhere. You’ll still be able to drop in for a pootle about in the archives and many of the new things I publish will be here, too; but the majority of my writing will now be on Substack.

Why? Well, we have to move with the times, baby! There’s a whole post about this – the first post in our new home, actually, and it will be arriving in your inbox soon – but in essence, if you make content in this day and age then you really need a platform to post it on. So that people see it. Unless you’re a dedicated beauty blog, or you post recipes, or things that the general public are likely to Google and hunt out, it’s very difficult to get new eyes on your content. I mean, how many people will really be Googling “what does a merman’s penis look like?” (The speculative answer to that particular question is within this post.)

I feel utterly fortunate to have such a huge readership here, but a lot of my writing isn’t the sort of stuff that is necessarily very searchable online. It’s there for enjoyment first and foremost. And it would be lovely if more people could enjoy it.

I have been looking into a platform for my writing for a while and have chosen Substack. It just seems like a really lovely place to be, where it’s easy to comment and reply to comments, easy to reshare other people’s work and to build up great communities. You can also leave voicenotes, written notes and video content for your followers and hold live video streams: it’s as though someone has delved inside my brain and designed the exact platform that I’ve always wanted to create and use.

And there’s definitely a pull, for me, in that I don’t have to build or maintain any of that platform – just log on and spend 100% of my time writing things, rather than spending half of my online life updating website plugins or trying to work out why the hell comments can only be WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

You’ll see (or you might not, I haven’t fully worked out the settings yet!) that there are various ways to use Substack. Some people charge for their content, some people charge for all of it on there, others have their newsletters available completely free of charge. My new weekly post is completely free. If you are receiving this post by email then you are automatically subscribed – I have simply moved my existing subscriber list over to the new provider. You don’t need to do anything at all – well done, congratulations, be excited for the years ahead!

If you do not wish to receive my future ramblings then please unsubscribe by clicking on the link on this email – it’s right at the bottom. If you ever change your mind, or you hear people whispering about that brilliant A Model Recommends on Substack – “it’s like listening to Lady Whistledown!” – then just search me out and re-subscribe. There will also be a huge banner at the top of my website with a link to take you to my posts, in case you get really, really lost.

If you’re not currently subscribed to receive my posts by email (bloody hell, this is getting complicated!) then you can sign up to the new weekly posts here.

Right. This isn’t goodbye, it’s a huge hello again. Hello again to regular posts, to more writing, to a little return to how things were before shortform content took over the internet and we all developed the attention span of a gnat. See you next week. A huge, genuine heartfelt thank you to those who have followed for so many years and have seen me through so many different blog eras and iterations. This is going to be the best one yet and I couldn’t think of better people to bring along for the ride.

You’ll get your first email from the new home at around 10am BST tomorrow – if you don’t see it then have a look in your spam filter, and if it is in spam then make sure you mark it as “not”. Until then, my loyal friends!

The post We’re On The Move appeared first on Ruth Crilly.

After a rather lengthy foray into Disney parks and Florida road trips, we’re back on home turf for a bit of “UK staycation*” action. I’ve been meaning to share these little self-catering gems with you for a while, now: my favourite finds, the houses and cottages and cabins that have had that little extra something. That holiday rental je ne sais quoi that is difficult to define but that combines, for example, good location with a dash of interiors flair. Or that blends perfect solitude with well-thought-out details like an outdoor bathtub or cooking area.

(*I know I’m using the word staycation in its incorrect sense and that it’s supposed to refer to a “holiday spent in your own home” and not “a holiday spent in your own country”… but really. How is a “holiday spent in your own home” actually a holiday? We all know that’s an absurd concept. You can’t enjoy a vacation in your own home when you’re surrounded by all of the things that silently act as your stress triggers. The growing patch of damp near the back door, the neighbour’s annoying drum practice, the Evri driver throwing someone else’s parcel over your fence thus weighing you down with the moral question of whether you should now go and deliver the parcel to the correct address… How can you possibly take a holiday at home?)

I bloody love booking a staycation. And for the first two thirds of the process, when I am filled with hope and optimism and the world (or I should say the UK) is my proverbial oyster, I can think of few things I’d rather be doing. I’d cancel a social event to stay in and scour the internet for a “remote dog-friendly cottage with sea view” if it wasn’t going to eventually ruin every single one of my friendships. The excitement of deciding on an area to visit, the frisson of entering your dates into the search form – holding your breath as the results begin to load…

Few things rival the feeling. Perhaps only house-hunting on Rightmove, but as I’m never moving house again that joy is mostly lost to me now. No: booking a UK staycation is one of my greatest pleasures in life. No travel plans to negotiate, because the whole journey can (usually) be done by car, no painful packing deliberations because you can just shove absolutely everything you think might be necessary into the aforementioned vehicle. No hugely high expectations, because you can assume the weather will mostly be “unexpected” or “strangely unseasonal”; food you know your kids will eat, low risk of digestive upsets, always a Mountain Warehouse within a three mile radius, the UK staycation is just casual and easy.

And I could write a whole new post about why we tend to self-cater as a family rather than do hotels. I touched on it briefly in my Florida post, but it’s generally down to having more space and a sense of freedom and the fact that you can usually rent an incredibly lovely holiday home for the same price as a twin hotel room. I say this as a true hotel enthusiast, too. I just think that fancy hotels are mostly wasted on young kids anyway – save them for the odd, decadent jaunt away without them.

(Cruella!)

(I jest. We all know that checking into a hotel that charges £5.85 for a morning glass of orange juice, provides nothing in the way of a kids’ menu and has restricted pool hours for those under the age of 12 is marvellous for giving you relaxing holiday vibes.)

So, here are a few of the self-catering places that have surprised and delighted me over the past couple of years. I’m currently in the process of booking my own summer staycation en famille and am sorely tempted to go back to Yorkshire just to stay in the farmhouse we found last year; everything about it was just top notch…

Ad info: no paid or sponsored content. The Dorset Nook is my own business and I my stay at Skylark Treehouses was a review stay for KIP Hideaways, though I stayed on an extra night and paid full price because I loved it so much! 

Skylark Treehouses, Gloucestershire

Remote romance for two, or single solitude for – er – one, the Skylark Treehouses near Gloucester are incredible. I went last summer and reviewed them here but, in short, they were so much more than I expected them to be. Each treehouse is entirely set apart from the next, you’d hardly know anyone else was within shouting distance and the houses have been perfectly set up for outside living. You cook outdoors (albeit undercover and with a fully-equipped, amazingly stylish kitchen) and you bathe outdoors (in an incredible freestanding tub) and you relax outdoors next to your firepit and then, when you’ve finished with all that outdoors stuff you go into your fully-contained and lockable bedroom pod (which also has a shower room) so that you won’t get eaten by wolves or attacked by some wandering forest madman or whatever your imagination conjures up.

These treehouses are not the cheapest way to self cater for two but by God are they unforgettable. It’s Swiss Family Robinson meets swanky eco-hotel and with guaranteed peace and quiet. You can peruse and book Skylark at KIP Hideaways here – prices from £250 per night. I particularly loved the fact that you could order homecooked meals to be waiting in the fridge on your arrival – the fish pie I had was excellent.

Incidentally, my first ports of call when I’m searching for my self-catering holidays are KIP (my own little holiday cottage is listed with them, they’re my favourite staycation site to browse), Unique Homestays and then Perfect Stays if it’s a holiday in the south west. They’re all quite niche websites specialising in very stylish, luxurious or quirky places to stay and I love that they have very exacting standards and a discerning eye for detail. It’s not as though I want gold-plated taps or cutting edge coffee machines – I don’t give a hoot about hot tubs or Sonos sound systems – I just want somewhere that’s had thought and care put into it. Good beds. Nice linens. Little finishing touches that make me smile.

Caldbergh House, Yorkshire Dales

Talking of good beds, nice linen and little finishing touches that make me smile: this is the house in Yorkshire I was talking about. It really did surprise and delight – it far surpassed everything we expected from the photos and website description. We went as a slightly extended family of six but it would have slept eight very comfortably. The farmhouse had a large kitchen, fully-enclosed (beautiful, walled) garden and two cosy living rooms and everything looked as though it had been styled for a magazine interiors shoot. You could tell that no expense had been spared – gorgeous curtains, amazing upholstery fabrics, antique furniture – and this made it feel like a very special place to be.

There were walks right from the front door and the hamlet of Caldbergh was very quiet and uneventful (apart from some shoot days where the vehicles accessed the dales through the gate next to the house, but it was barely noticeable) and it was just a real treat to be in such a handsome old house that had been so sensitively renovated.

Prices start at £240 a night – you can book Caldbergh House here. I think we paid around £1800 for a week, with a small charge for the dog. Yorkshire Escapes (here) have loads of beautiful properties to rent, if you’re heading up that way. They were also a delight to deal with, just so friendly.

Middlelands House, Pembrokeshire

When I booked Middlelands House in Pembrokeshire (here) it was around £350 per night, which seemed very good value considering we piled three different families into it. It looks as though the rates have gone up a little since then, but still: this was a rare Airbnb find. A property that ended up (again) being loads better than the description. We drove down a long driveway cut through the fields to find a spacious country home with airy bedrooms and great views across open countryside. There wasn’t anything to do within walking distance but drives to the coast were relatively short and manageable and we all just loved the house as our “base camp” for its welcoming atmosphere. The huge fire in the living room and the big kitchen that could accommodate loads of adults, all preparing completely different meals. (Don’t ask.)

The decoration/furnishings vibe was quite rustic but there was just a lovely feel to the place – comfortable and slightly quirky, like we’d all gone to stay with some long-lost uncle who liked to collect old books. (We’ve never had any moneyed long-lost relatives in our family, alas, but it was that sort of nostalgic, slightly magical vibe. The feeling that you might find an old board game in the attic that, if played during a thunderstorm, would almost definitely transport you to another world.)

We had a few hot days (it was May) where the bees were buzzing lazily and the kids just rolled about on the grass and the adults all had a glass or two of wine sitting under the arches at the back of the house, which made us all feel as though we’d gone to Italy and not to Wales, and it was superb.

It doesn’t look as though Middlelands House is on Airbnb anymore, but I’ve found it on Great Welsh Escapes here.

Tregoose, Cornwall

I stayed at this house to review it when it had just been renovated and have had it earmarked for a return visit ever since. It’s a brilliant, hugely spacious house for a few families to nest down into for a week by the beach. We particularly liked that the bedrooms were on the ground floor and that the first floor had the amazing views of the sea and that the whole place was light-filled and airy and just a short (steep!) walk down to Polzeath and the beach.

The sleeping arrangements were quite flexible, with some of the rooms suitable for two adults and a child, or three children, or…three adults, if that happened to be your thing. And then an extra bedroom in a snug, if needed, and a bedroom that was set away from the rest on its own little corner. Very versatile, brilliant for big family gatherings with a huge entertaining space.

Read my review of Tregoose here (wow, have just seen this photo and am aghast at how quickly time flies!)

Perfect Stays have lots of large holiday houses – this one sleeps 8-12 – and I’ve actually stayed in a few of them. Unless I’ve just been extraordinarily lucky, the standard is universally brilliant. They’ve all felt just so….professional. High-tech. Beautifully maintained. Absolutely check them out if you’re planning a big family-friendly get-together, you can find their website here.

The Dorset Nook, Dorset Coast

I’d be crazy to write a post about UK self-catering gems and not mention my own little hideaway, The Dorset Nook. I try not to harp on about it too much, but it really is the most beautiful coastal escape. It’s hidden away down a tiny footpath and is so relaxing and quiet – the perfect romantic bolthole, obviously, but equally lovely if you’re on your own.

My favourite thing about the Nook (apart from the cosy living room with its woodburner, the nest-like bedroom with its crisp linens and the bright, warm sunroom surrounded by the little cottage garden) is that it’s away from any roads and has the most incredible walks straight from the front gate.

When I go to visit I unpack my car and then don’t get back in it again for the duration of my stay, unless I want to pop to Lyme Regis for a mooch around or peruse the antique shops in Bridport. I love walking (especially a very steep, very challenging hill!) and so if I want a bite for lunch then I walk over the cliffs for half an hour and hike down into West Bay, or if I’m feeling spritely I head the other way to Seatown, where there’s an incredible pub.

You can take a look at availability for The Dorset Nook here, if you’re after a restorative break – it’s minutes from Eype beach, which is totally unspoilt and has breathtaking cliff walks. Prices start at £120 per night with no extra charges and there are short stays and longer holidays to choose from.

(It doesn’t currently allow dogs or kids and it’s not set up for babies, but babes-in-arms are welcome if you are happy to bring your own travel cot and so on and you’re happy to negotiate the footpath!)

So, there are a few self-catering gems. I have booked more staycations than I care to remember and can tell you that not all have been so successful! Why is it such a game of roulette? I think that’s why I always start by going to the more niche travel websites like KIP (they’ve recently made basic membership free, which is amazing news); I like that somebody is keeping an eye on standards and making sure that every place that comes up when you’re searching is extra-special.

Any recommendations to add to this little list? Fire away in the comments, please. You’ll be doing us all a grand service.

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