The New Grand Tour: Britain’s Period Dramas Are Rewriting the Travel Map

There is a particular kind of traveler who has spent decades chasing the ghost of a good story. The kind who books a Tuscan villa because it once housed a Merchant Ivory crew, who plans a Highland itinerary around a single shot of mist rolling over a loch. In 2026, that traveler has never had it easier in Britain, because the country’s coastline, crags, and country houses are about to become the backdrop for an unusually rich crop of literary adaptations, nearly all of them directed by women reimagining the classics with a fresh, unsentimental eye.

Call it set-jetting with a bonnet on. The trend has existed in some form since the first Colin Firth lake scene sent a generation wading into Derbyshire ponds, but this year’s wave feels different in scale and ambition, and the properties opening their doors to welcome the pilgrims are worth the trip in their own right.

Austen’s Peak District, Reimagined by a Millennial Voice

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is getting its most unexpected treatment yet, adapted for Netflix by Dolly Alderton, the writer behind Everything I Know About Love, and directed by Euros Lyn of Heartstopper fame. Emma Corrin takes on Elizabeth Bennet opposite Jack Lowden’s Darcy, with Olivia Colman playing Mrs. Bennet, and filming has ranged from Spitalfields in East London out to the Peak District in Derbyshire, with the East Sussex town of Rye transformed into a Regency-era Meryton and Deal in Kent drawing crews as well.

For anyone who has already made the pilgrimage to Chatsworth House chasing the 2005 film version of Pemberley, this is an invitation to look again, and further afield. Rye alone rewards a slow afternoon, its cobbled streets and half-timbered houses carrying real literary weight of their own thanks to former residents Henry James and Virginia Woolf, and a September visit lines up neatly with the town’s own Arts Festival for travelers who like their book pilgrimages layered.

Dartmoor’s Turn Under a New Director’s Gaze

Where Austen adaptations have traditionally leaned on the polished elegance of Chatsworth and Blenheim, Sense and Sensibility is heading somewhere rawer this time. Directed by Georgia Oakley and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, the new version was shot across Dartmoor and Devon, trading manicured lawns for granite tors and wind-scoured moorland.

This is Devon at its most unvarnished, and it is exactly the kind of setting that rewards travelers willing to get out of the car. The Dartmoor ponies, the Bronze Age stone rows, the sudden fog that rolls in without warning, all of it was presumably part of the appeal for a director known for stripping the gloss off familiar stories. Pair a few days on the moor with the Devon coast for a trip that moves from windswept drama to cream teas without much effort at all.

A Herefordshire Village Standing In for Shakespeare’s Stratford

Chloe Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet takes a more unexpected turn, using the quiet Herefordshire village of Weobley as a stand-in for Stratford-upon-Avon. It is a smart piece of location scouting. Weobley’s black and white timbered houses have survived in a way few English villages can claim, and the result is likely to introduce a new audience to a corner of the Welsh Marches that has largely stayed off the well-worn heritage trail.

For a well-traveled reader who has already ticked off the Cotswolds, Herefordshire offers the same architectural charm without the crowds, plus an increasingly serious food and cider scene worth building a long weekend around.

The Moors Get the Gothic Treatment

And then there is Wuthering Heights, handed this time to Emerald Fennell, with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi taking on Cathy and Heathcliff against the Yorkshire Dales, scored, unexpectedly, by Charli XCX. It is hard to imagine a more tonally daring pairing of source material and soundtrack, and the Dales themselves have rarely looked more purpose built for tortured romance.

Sourcing note: This article draws on reporting from Condé Nast Traveller regarding 2026 travel trends, along with additional reporting from VisitBritain, Wikipedia, Remodelista, and Denton Reserve’s own property listings.

Amanda O’Brien is the creator and editor of The Boutique Adventurer. She has visited 80 countries and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers as well as the IFTWTA. She is passionate about wine had has just completed Level 3 of the WSET. Born in Australia, she lives in London.