Braunston in Rutland

The landscape historian WG Hoskins suggested that, while Britain had plenty of nature reserves, in Rutland there was the potential for something else: a "human reserve", where people could take refuge from "noise, speed and all the other acids of modernity".

That was in the 1960s - but England's smallest county is still ideal for the purpose, says Stephen McClarence in the Observer. Around the charming village of Braunston, with its 12th century church, you'll find 20 or so square miles of open walking country with no roads - only footpaths among buttercup meadows and low hills dotted with copses.

It's an "Arcadian vision", just a dozen miles from Leicester; "a pocket of rural England apparently unchanged for 200 years".

The Old Plough (01572-722714) at Braunston has doubles from £65 b&b. ·