##Summer’s set in Somerset
Get your autumnal fix in Bruton, the West Country’s hottest market town. It recently lost lauded fine diner Osip to a site down the road, but boutique hotel Number One Bruton’s Bib Gourmand-winning restaurant Briar remains, now with a new private dining room. The hotel has also acquired and spruced up the pub next door, the Blue Ball. Local cultural powerhouse Hauser & Wirth hosts the country’s coolest Pumpkin Festival on October 25, alongside a major site-wide retrospective of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely’s kinetic collaborations.
##Lovers, Artists, Outsiders
Hot on the heels of Damian Barr’s new novel, The Two Roberts, the author curates this exhibition exploring the life and works of Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. These queer, charismatic and ultimately tragic Scottish artists rubbed shoulders with, and influenced, the likes of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton in mid-century Soho. Bohemian Charleston farmhouse makes an apt setting for the show; recreate its characterful handcrafted interiors with a trawl of the Lewes Antiques Centre.
##Canterbury tales
A 16th-century pub in Kent is the setting for a publican power move worthy of Game of Thrones. After four years at the helm of the Bridge Arms, Dan and Natasha Smith (who also own the nearby Fordwich Arms) are closing the pub in its current form and handing it to friend and former colleague Elliot Hewitt. Hewitt has spent the past few years steering The Rose, The Blue Pelican and The Zetland Arms in Deal, and will relaunch the pub alongside head chef David Gadd, who was also at The Rose and before that spent six years at The Sportsman. Can’t keep up? Us neither, but sounds like a good excuse for a pub crawl.
##Boys’ own
Elsewhere in Kent, a gentle breeze of change has been blowing through Boys Hall, a 17th-century house in Willesborough, just 40 minutes by train from St Pancras. Alfie Jebb-Crouch (ex-Hand & Flowers, The Swan at Chapel Down) and homegrown talent Joe Winston are the new head-chef duo in charge. Unsurprisingly, the focus is on local, seasonal and sustainable produce, with much of it grown and butchered on-site. Also new is Seventeen Sovereigns, Boys Hall’s first English sparkling wine – a 2022 vintage from a single Canterbury vineyard, two years in the making.
##Tidal pull
It’s a testament to Brighton and Hove’s pulling power that dynamic duo Rafael Cagali and Charlie Lee (of two-Michelin-starred Da Terra and Elis at Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel) chose the seaside enclave for their newest venture, Maré. Welcomes are warm and the shareable menu is prepared with fine-dining flair by Cagali’s protégé Ewan Waller.
##Back to nature
The golden days of autumn are the perfect time to get back to nature – if your version of nature, that is, includes soft bed linen, spa-worthy outdoor tubs and a farm-to-fork kitchen just up the hill. Set on 300 acres of fairytale woodlands in Surrey, Firesyde is a collection of five slick cabins new to Kip Hideaways. Each sleeps two, but the set-up is even more idyllic if you can gather a group of 10 for foraging walks, forest-bathing and feasts cooked on the open fire.
