Hotel Hit Squad: Getting a taste of tennis fever at Stoke Park – the Buckinghamshire home of the Boodles
There are strange parallels between Wimbledon and Love Island. Ferocious enthusiasm erupts from nowhere. It is sunny outside but suddenly everyone is glued to their televisions, transfixed by an annual British ritual notorious for its skimpy outfits and awkward grunts. I’m not a Love Island enthusiast. But I am partial to a bit of Wimbledon.
Now, there are hotels with tennis courts. And then there is Stoke Park. Every year the ancient estate, named in the Domesday Book, hosts the Boodles, a warm-up event that several Wimbledon players attend to work on their skills in the lead-up to the main event. It’s a jolly, garden party atmosphere with ladies in silky florals and fascinators; and enough champagne is sunk to fill the hot tub in the spa.
Even if you can’t make the Boodles, it’s possible to get a taste of tennis fever any time at Stoke Park, with a private lesson on one of the 13 courts. The indoor Smart Court has all manor of snazzy specifications, from ball-speed measurement to 3D graphical displays and video analysis. But there’s nothing quite like lobbing balls across the outdoor courts in summer, with the sun glowing across the grass.
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“Now what do you think might not be quite right with your technique?” asked Nick, my instructor, after a round of volleys. You see, I am not a tennis player as such. My experience is limited to a few huffy games against my sister as a teenager on holiday. And despite my narrow-eyed pout of a starting position and white Nike tennis outfit worthy of many a #tennislife Instagram shot, my lack of experience was all too evident. Some balls shooped into the air at ugly angles. Others sighed pathetically against the net.
Nick showed me how to get into position behind the ball better. We also worked on my “follow-through” (how you manoeuvre the racket after hitting the ball). My performance improved drastically. Soon I was slipping between left and right-hand volleys (though my style was more gym-shy wheezer than Serena).
We rounded off with serves. Nick’s introduction was ominous: “Most casual players think they can serve. They can’t.” Although tossing a ball dead straight into the air then whacking it into the opposition’s box is harder than it looks, I persevered. “That’s a corker!” he boomed as I nailed my final one.
Spa time followed. After watching the garden foliage swooning in the wind from my seat in the outdoor sauna, and soothing my muscles in the hot tub, a therapist called me for my treatment – a Thalgo back and scalp massage, and facial rolled into one. It banished my post-tennis shoulder twangs. It also left my skin with a Hollywood glow befitting my walk to dinner via the hotel’s Georgian sweeping staircase – which features in the mini-break scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary.
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Food at Stoke Park’s fine dining restaurant, Humphry’s, is a cheerful experience. Perhaps the chef is rather fond of slathering his creations in swarthy gravies, but after an intense session of tennis, this felt perfectly justifiable. It was all good, local stuff. To start, a pan-fried pigeon more tender than an Elvis Presley B-side, with sweet riffs of blackberries and beetroot around the sides. Beef from a family-run Hertfordshire farm to follow was so soft I could have cut it with my finger – though a white-tableclothed three-AA Rosette restaurant didn’t seem like the right setting in which to experiment.
Bedrooms at Stoke Park are perfect for post-training relaxation. The bathtubs are vast enough to please both the achy of muscle and the overly accustomed to tasting menus. Traditional suites have velvet-swaddled four-posters and milky-bosomed Renaissance paintings. I, however, plumped for one of the hip rooms in the estate’s separate Pavilion wing. Think the kind of suites where the television comes with 3D glasses, illuminated shelves display American Indian headdresses and the walls pump with hot-pink pop art.
Take time to explore the house. Some of the carpets look like they were fitted in the Thatcher era, and there’s something church hallish about the noticeboard-tacked corridors of the sprawling spa-gym. But overall the feeling is one of exuberance and pomp: crystal chandeliers that could sink a submarine, paintings of pharaohs and silver-sprayed statues of Roman gods are all crammed together in a joyful, senseless cacophony. Whether your bag is tennis or afternoon tea betwixt coloured marble pillars, this much-loved British establishment should deliver the goods.
Rooms from ￡240 including breakfast. Two adapted rooms.