From painting to pasta making — the best weekend hotel workshops in the UK

Occasionally, a trip to a country hotel with little planned except a bath and dinner is exactly what the doctor ordered. But Blighty’s luxury hotels offer an impressive array of workshops and courses worth knowing about. Many of them tap into your inner creative, allowing you the luxury of focusing solely on the task in hand, and nearly all are set in soft, inspiring countryside or landscaped gardens, helping to clear the lungs of city soot.

Then there’s the estate-to-plate food, the spas and sumptuous bedrooms to retreat to after days spent capturing lemon trees with oil paint or plucking herbs from the gardens and studying their remedial powers with a medical herbalist. Less upskilling, more creative soul food, here are the best hotel retreats in the UK to book now.

Arniano Painting Retreat With Amber Guinness And William Roper-Curzon at Lime Wood, The New Forest

The remedial benefits of are well-documented, and the Arniano School of Painting’s new two-day Lime Wood retreat offers plenty of material to work with. The charismatic William Roper-Curzon will take