Wem hotels — Expedia and Hotels.com

Wem is the small north Shropshire market town that gave the world the modern sweet pea — Henry Eckford perfected his Grandiflora varieties here from 1888, and the Eckford Sweet Pea Show still fills the town every July. Stays are country-house rather than chain: Soulton Hall, a Tudor manor two miles east, is the standout at £120–150/night, with Georgian B&Bs near the station from about £80. Book months ahead for show weekend — total inventory is a handful of properties, and Shrewsbury, 20 minutes south by direct train, absorbs the overflow. Hawkstone Park Follies, an 18th-century landscape of sandstone cliffs, caves and grottoes, is a 15-minute drive. Essayist William Hazlitt grew up here, and the 1995 town-hall fire produced the infamous Wem ghost photograph — debunked in 2010 as a lift from a 1922 postcard, but the story still draws the curious.

Typical nightly rate: £75–£150