My tip for a relaxing time

THE first thing you notice when you walk through the door is the welcoming, fresh smell of wood – Russian pine to be exact – and it is immediately good for the soul.

My wife Heather and I had arrived at Sun Hill Farm, in beautiful Wensleydale, for a weekend break in one of four luxury log cabins on land owned by racehorse trainer Ann Duffield.

These are proper log cabins: beautifully built, impeccably furnished, and surrounded by glorious fields which sweep away to Pen Hill. It’s a 40-minute drive from Darlington to the dales village of Constable Burton and yet it feels like another country.

On the kitchen table was a hamper of local produce: fresh bread, butter, jams, and – naturally – a generous chunk of Wensleydale cheese. A wood-burning stove, with a stack of logs, was ready to be lit for cosy nights, while the softest of bath robes had been left on a sumptuous four-poster bed.

Outside, hidden from prying eyes but with spectacular views across the all-weather gallops and down the hill to Sun Hill Farm racing stables, a hot-tub was waiting to soothe the stresses of working life.

Our log cabin – Spindrifter – is the smallest of the lodges. Just one bedroom, but that was all we needed for a romantic break to celebrate my 52nd birthday. The lodge is named after a racehorse, ridden by Ann’s husband, George Duffield, to a record-breaking 13 victories in its first season.

Spindrifter was lightning fast, but the pace of life in the cabin named after him is blissfully slow.

George Duffield is best known for his association with the great classic-winning mare User Friendly and that would certainly be an apt description for the Sun Hill lodges, which are each equipped with widescreen HD TV, Wifi, DVD player, iPod docking station, fridge freezer, microwave and dishwasher.

Ann and George bought the run-down Sun Hill farm in 1999, after spotting an advertisement in the Darlington & Stockton Times.

They moved in a year later.

“I fell in love with the place straight away,”

says Ann. “The house was lovely, but the old barns were dilapidated and the land was rented out to farmers for sheep and cattle. I had a vision in my head immediately of what it could be.”

Ann cut her teeth as a businesswoman in her early 20s when she took over her mother’s Liverpool care home, Woodlands, which was haemorrhaging money. She borrowed £185,000 from the bank, and turned it from a failing business, with just seven residents, into a flourishing 40-bed operation with planning permission for 40 more rooms as well as a nursery.

But care homes were never going to be Ann’s passion and she sold the business just before the stock market crashed in 1989. Horses had always been in her blood – her dad had a betting shop near Liverpool’s Anfield football ground and she kept ponies as a child. After selling the care home business, she settled in North Yorkshire and began buying and selling horses. A filly sold to an Army officer turned out to be a bit of a star in the sport of polo and the buyer came back with a significant order for more of the same.

From polo ponies, Ann moved on to a successful stint training point-to-pointers before launching her career as a professional trainer.

Thirteen years after buying Sun Hill Farm with its ruined old barns, the place is now established as a beautiful, independent racing establishment. It is branded as “The Friendly Yard” and you can see why. Five minutes with Ann and you feel you’ve known her for years.

Elegant yet down-to-earth, she is non-stop kind of woman, brimming with excitement at what she and George have created.

Racing is a notoriously unpredictable game full of ups and downs. A good season can be followed by a bad season and Ann knew she had to diversify to underpin her core business as a trainer. She needed something which wouldn’t take her away from the main focus of the racing stable, but would be a steady, alternative income stream.

The log cabins were the answer and, with the invaluable help of a grant from Defra, and the support of Welcome to Yorkshire, the Sun Hill lodges were opened last October. The development represented a £650,000 investment and it has been repaid with 100 per cent occupancy so far and precious extra trade for pubs, restaurants and shops across the dale.

“We were told that 40 per cent occupancy, would have meant a £500,000 boost to the local economy, but we’ve been full,” she said. “We can’t believe how well it’s gone. We’d have been happy with a dozen bookings before the New Year, but we had 100 and it’s gone from strength to strength.”

During our weekend break, my wife and I pottered around Leyburn, Middleham and Bedale and enjoyed evening meals at the repeatedly recommended Wensleydale Heifer at West Witton, and the delightfully quirky Friar’s Head, a few miles down the road from Constable Burton, at Akebar Park.

For a lifelong racing enthusiast like me, Sun Hill is the perfect break. For those with more money to spend, luxury racing packages can be arranged which involve staying in one of the log cabins, being picked up by limousine or helicopter, and taken to the races for a VIP day out, with a welcome by former jockey Jimmy Bleasdale and a visit to the weighing room. Tours of the racing stables in nearby Middleham can also be sorted.

But for the non-racing enthusiast, like my wife, the Sun Hill experience is also idyllic.

There is something magical about sitting underneath the stars in a hot-tub, listening to an owl hooting in the woods. And even she found that it stirs the blood to look up from having breakfast on the verandah to see magnificent thoroughbreds go thundering past on the gallops.

As well as one-bedroomed Spindrifter, Alborada and Pivotal both have two bedrooms and Woodlands has three. There are also two holiday cottages for hire – Sun Hill Cottage (twobedrooms) and The Palins (one-bedroom) – in the midst of the racing yard.

We enjoyed ourselves so much we booked up for another three-night stay to coincide with my wife’s birthday in September. We paid a £50 deposit on-line (sunhill-lodges.co.uk) and the total cost was £395.

The last thought when you leave Sun Hill, and take in one last smell of Russian pine, is...

when can we come back?

• Sun Hill Farm, Constable Burton, near Leyburn, DL8 5RJ. T: 01677-450303; W: sunhill-lodges.co.uk. One week costs from £475.