With its award-winning spa, two golf courses and sprawling grounds, Yorkshire’s Rudding Park hotel is the perfect antidote to the strains of daily life.

Before dinner, we walked past the Clocktower restaurant and up some steps, through azaleas and rhododendrons to where the parkland was already in shadow. Behind us, the oldest part of the hotel, an early-Georgian two-storey ashlar-faced house, looked down a gentle descent to the lake hidden at the bottom of the shallow valley. Mature oak trees, some dating from the ancient forest of Knaresborough, masked the first hole of the golf course, while steam rose from the open-air heated pools on the rooftop of the spa. We’d only been there a few hours, yet already the pressures of the daily grind had dropped away.

Country house hotels have come a long way. In the 1980s, if you turned up on a Tuesday morning, quite a few owners would have handed you the keys and walked away. Busy at the weekend, deserted during the week, they were often run by amateurs and successful for just as long as the enthusiasm of the family remained. Today it’s a different story, with professionals taking a long-term approach to building business and investing in the property.

Rudding Park typifies the trend. Over the past 30 years, it has quietly become one of the best country house hotels in the UK. Family-owned and with a stable management team, including managing director Peter Banks, it has grown its staff from 20 to 250 since opening and most recently added a £9.5 million spa, which was awarded best new spa by the Good Spa Guide in 2017.

There are many reasons why people stay in a country house hotel. You might want a romantic break with a loved one, or a couple of days away with your family, young children included. It might be a spa weekend, or a golfing break with friends, or a corporate retreat, or perhaps a wedding. All of these (and more) make different demands of a hotel and its staff, and it’s the reason why most tend to focus on a select few specialisms, and why those that try to be everything to everyone often come up short.

We were looking for a venue for a family get-together for three generations, which required a fair amount of correspondence in advance of our arrival. While first impressions are important, in this case, it was pre-impressions that reassured us – emails confirming what we’d booked (meal times, tee times, spa treatments) and the balance of rooms for the various family members attending. We even booked the 14-seater cinema, with optional popcorn and ice cream provided by the hotel.

Being in Yorkshire, while this is a very luxurious property, it isn’t pretentious. A ten-minute drive from Harrogate and 30 minutes from Leeds-Bradford airport, Rudding Park is set in 121 hectares and as well as having a helicopter landing pad also has a campsite. So much for targeting only one segment. The expansion of the original house has been done sensitively so that you wouldn’t know there’s quite a decent-sized hotel behind the elegant façade. Reception has three large open fireplaces, so even in the coldest weather you get a warm welcome, with neatly folded newspapers on the tables and modern art on the walls.

Walking to our rooms, we passed through a corridor with framed pictures of famous guests being greeted by hotel management, then into a lovely library and through to a new wing with white walls, a modern staircase and the feel of an art gallery.

Somehow, Rudding Park doesn’t seem like several different buildings glued together – perhaps because of the ever-present view of
the gardens outside through floor-to-ceiling windows, which provides a kind of consistency. On one side is the freshly planted spa courtyard garden, off which you’ll find the newest rooms in the Follifoot Wing. Here you can opt for a Spa room, which comes with personal hamman steam rooms, private terraces and extra-large bathrooms with roll-top baths and Molton Brown products.

As well as superking-sized beds, desks with USB and power points, and charging stations for devices, there’s also a kettle, teapot, Yorkshire Tea (of course) and a bottle of fresh milk in the minibar, replaced daily.

There are two places to eat – the main Clocktower restaurant and bar, and the smaller Horto situated in the spa extension. Breakfast is in the Clocktower, an inviting room with sweeping views of the grounds and an adjoining orangery complete with a 400-year-old olive tree.

In the evening, dinner choices cater for all tastes, from modern European and comforting classics in the Clocktower to more high-end offerings in the fine-dining Horto, which has a minimalist feel, with light wood flooring and white table tops trimmed in brass. Here you can have a seven-course tasting menu, or a small selection of à la carte choices based on seasonal ingredients grown locally or in the kitchen garden.

The historic old house contains several rooms that can host everything from a dinner to a wedding reception – not that you would notice that one was going on. Walking back from golf one day, I heard a loud cheer and realised a wedding was taking place in the chapel, yet that was the only sign that it was happening and there was none of that “listening to the disco until midnight” that you get at some other hotels.

There is both an 18-hole and a six-hole short course. Unlike a lot of golf courses attached to hotels, this one is playable for the average golfer (me), with wide open fairways and yet plenty of challenges.

Set over three floors, the spa has been designed with an “indoors-out” feel, including an outdoor spa bath, heated hydrotherapy infinity pool, and a sauna cabin sitting on the roof in a garden designed by Matthew Wilson. Inside, where light floods in through full-height windows, are “experience” showers, foot spas, a large circular steam room with mosaic walls and a “starlight” ceiling, a second herbal steam bath that uses herbs from the kitchen garden, a panoramic sauna, and heated relaxation beds.

The menu includes facials by Carita, treatments by Ila, and natural products and body therapies by Elemental Herbology, based on traditional Chinese medicine. You can also book a free Aufguss ceremony in the panoramic sauna, an entertaining group ritual that blends heat, ice, herbs and some gentle thrashing with birch branches.

The quality of service at the hotel is outstanding, with every member of staff we encountered genuinely friendly and motivated to help make our visit as enjoyable as possible. We are already planning the next trip. The only question is what the purpose will be – spa, golf or pure and simple relaxation. Whatever the reason for going to Rudding Park, it’s likely to be an enjoyable stay.

  • Internet rates in March started from £160 for a Ribston Wing room. Rudding Park Hotel, Follifoot, Harrogate; tel +44 (0)1423 871350; ruddingpark.co.uk