Last updated: 10 September 2026.
The short version
Some of the links on this site are paid links. If you book somewhere to stay after following one, the booking provider pays me a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects what I recommend, or where it comes in a guide.
How this site is funded
I work with Stay22, a booking partner that handles the accommodation and activity links on this site. When you follow one of those links and make a booking, the provider pays me a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way.
Nothing on this site is a paid placement. I am not paid to include a hotel, a pub or an attraction, no business sees a guide before it is published, and requests to buy a link or a mention are declined. Where something is recommended here, it is because I think it is worth your time.
Which links are paid, and why they are not labelled one by one
Accommodation and activity links are routed through Stay22, which adds commission tracking to them as the page loads rather than when the guide is written. A link can therefore be a paid link without looking any different when you hover over it, and I cannot reliably list them individually in advance. That is why every guide carries this disclosure at the top of the page, where you see it at the same time as the links, rather than a label on some links and not others.
Links to the National Trust, English Heritage, train and bus operators, councils and parish websites earn nothing. They are there so you can check opening times and fares at source.
What this means for your data
Stay22 identifies your device so that a booking can be credited to this site. It does that from the characteristics of your browser and device rather than from a cookie, and it keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage. It is classed as marketing here, so whether it runs before you have answered the cookie notice depends on where you are reading from: in the UK and the EEA it waits for your consent, while in the United States and Canada it starts on and the notice is how you switch it off. Declining that category stops it, and declining it does not limit anything you can read. I never see your booking, your dates, your name or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, occasionally, the fact that a booking happened.
There is more detail in the privacy policy and the cookie policy.
You can refuse all of this. Stay22 sits in the Advertising group in the cookie settings, and until that group is allowed the script does not load at all — no rewriting, no identifier, nothing stored. In the EU, the UK and the other countries listed in the privacy policy it stays off until you say yes; in the United States it stays off until you answer the bar. If you allow it and change your mind, the scripts stop and what they stored on your device is cleared, including visitor_id_id22, cache_id22 and the thumbmark_* keys. The links still work, the price is unchanged, and I still earn nothing extra from you either way.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you think something on the site is not disclosed properly, telling me is genuinely useful. The contact page reaches me directly.