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Successful weekend breaks are a balancing act. You need to minimise travel (what’s the point in losing four of your 48 hours off in a car, train or airport Wetherspoons?) and maximise difference (why spend your weekend in a less good version of where you’ve come from?). For Londoners, a stay at historic retreat Monkey Island Estate is firmly in the Goldilocks zone: a half-hour train ride from the capital, but feeling a world away. The hotel occupies its own island – or ‘eyot’, if we’re using the old English term – surrounded by the Thames and accessible only by a footbridge. Guests can amble the grounds past beehives and chicken pens, watch the geese comically waddle around, or hire electric boats and pootle down the river past Bray Film Studios: onetime home of Hammer Horror and now filming location for several Amazon series, including its Lord of the Rings reboot. It all adds up to a tonic of a stay, where one night can restore the pep too often sapped by the working week.
What are the rooms like at Monkey Island Estate?
The estate oozes history – legend has it that King George III and his pet monkey were banished here at the height of the royal’s mania – which owners the YTL group, who took over in 2015, have balanced well with the mod con needs of a high-end hotel.
There are thirty rooms on the eyot and the standout is the Wedgewood Suite. Occupying the upper room of the island’s 18th-century temple, it manages to be wonderfully grand without slipping into austerity. On the glorious summer day we stayed, light flooded in from the windows on all sides, lighting the original plasterwork ceiling, which is a blue-hued cacophony of mermaids and seashells. I spent a happy hour tucked up in the window seat looking out across chestnut trees and hydrangea bushes and, given the opportunity, I could have stayed there all day.
Across the bridge on the mainland there are a further 11 rooms in a converted barn and three kitchen-equipped cottages – two with pools – that are perfect for larger groups.
What is the food and restaurant like at Monkey Island Estate?
Faced with the most intimidating of neighbours – Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, with its three Michelin stars, is a 20-minute walk away – the Monkey Island Estate’s restaurant wisely plays to its strengths. Rather than pushing culinary boundaries and credit card limits, it focuses on seasonal local ingredients cooked with deceptive simplicity.
Opting for the riverside terrace, rather than the low-ceilinged dining room, our meal unfurled at a leisurely pace with the hand-dived scallops, a robust lemon sole and an unexpected show as an increasingly exasperated member of staff attempted to chase away a wily flock of geese.
What are the facilities like at Monkey Island Estate?
Because no new buildings can be added to the listed grounds, the owners have got creative to expand what it can offer guests. The Floating Spa, as the name implies, is located on a converted canal boat bobbing on the Thames. The result is both charming and calming. Therapist Sophie is attentive and deftly deploys the Isun products for my facial, which she proudly tells me aren’t available in any other hotel in the UK.
There are also electric bikes available for those looking to explore Bray and the surrounding countryside and an electric boat you can skipper yourself past the Thames’ rowers and fellow pleasure cruisers.
What’s the area like around Monkey Island Estate?
While it is tempting to spend your time in glorious isolation on the island, you’d be missing out. As well as the aforementioned Fat Duck, once in a blue moon meals are within walking distance of the hotel at the Hind’s Head, the Crown and the Roux family’s Waterside Inn, the only restaurant outside France to retain three Michelin stars for almost 40 years.
Windsor, one of England’s most beautiful towns, is also a stone’s throw away. You can walk off the culinary excess at Windsor Great Park, a sprawling, 4,800-acre green space that’s home to waterfalls, red deer and the Long Walk, a three-mile-long, tree-lined thoroughfare that stretches from the Copper Horse statue of George III to Windsor Castle.
DETAILS
Address: Monkey Island Estate, Bray, Maidenhead SL6 2EE
Expect to pay: Nightly rates start from £275
Closest transport: Maidenhead railway station is a 10-minute drive