We booked a week in the Yorkshire town of Holmfirth, just on the northern edge of the Peak District and just a few miles east of the border with Lancashire. The area is known as the location for the (very long lived, maybe overly-long lived) TV series, The Last of the Summer Wine and is undoubtedly a beautiful part of the country.

Bramble Cottage is a nineteenth century workers’ cottage, perched on the steep valley sides, and overlooking the centre of the village. The cottage itself has been wonderfully refurbished by the owners, who live next door, and it’s a very comfortable one bedroom holiday let, with every modern convenience. The original cottage would have been just one room downstairs and one room upstairs, but the owners have dug into the hillside at the back to create space for a modern, if narrow, kitchen downstairs, and a bathroom upstairs. It was warm inside, even though it was stone built and prone to a little condensation, and to be honest, we couldn’t fault it.

It’s not a great place if you’re not too steady on your pins, though, as all the slopes are very steep, and it’s quite a climb up from the town below. We’d been warned that the parking space was small, which it was, but the hill it was on was really quite steep. You had to take a run at it in the car, avoiding the low walls and parked cars, because once on the cobbled surface, there was no grip at all. If you didn’t get into the space first time then you had to roll back to the asphalted road to start again. you’re also going to have to have total confidence in your handbrake. I’m making it sound worse than it was, because after a couple of days I had it mastered. There was alternative parking, but it would need a walk up a steep cobbled path to reach it.

The cottage’s location worked very well for us as we visited Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, all without going much beyond an hour’s drive away. The roads in the town, or at least in the valleys, were scarily narrow and steep, and had parked cars everywhere. I know parked cars act as speed limiters, but when you’re not used to hill starts, blind bends and gaps just big enough to take a car, it’s challenging. We had a very nice Audi A3 as a rental, with an automatic gearbox and handbrake, and they were both put to the severest tests.

My only complaint about Holmfirth, and it applies equally across Yorkshire and probably beyond, was the constant traffic. On the two main streets it was never ending, even in early November. It’s not like there is no public transit, either, because there were plenty of buses. But we have all become accustomed to being able to drive anywhere we like, and that’s what the problem is. I am of course extremely aware that in our rental car, we were part of the problem, and I fully accept that.

Would I go back to Bramble Cottage? Yes, I would. That is the best recommendation of all.