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Strong Sense of Place | Travel Through Books

Join Us for a Bookish Weekend at a Manor House in Wales

Strong Sense of Place | Travel Through Books

Melissa & Dave

Books, Arts

5.0559 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a special episode of Strong Sense of Place in which we announce that we’re doing it again — we’re taking a group of readers back to Trevor Hall. In October 2025, we took over Trevor Hall — a Georgian manor house in Llangollen, Wales — with forty members of the Strong Sense of Place community. It was the best book club ever. We took walks in the countryside, talked about (so many) books, enjoyed ridiculously delicious meals, and told spooky stories by candlelight. And we made lifelong friends. We’re doing it again — and you’re invited to join us! Together, we’ll make ourselves at home in this historic mansion surrounded by the picturesque North Wales countryside. We’ll have a book club, share gourmet meals in the Great Hall, play parlor games, ramble in the hills, and stomp our feet at a Celtic ceilidh. Our weekend begins in Manchester, England — a UNESCO City of Literature. We’ll check into our rooms at a design hotel and enjoy our first IRL meetup in a historic library. After a good night’s sleep, we’re off to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House for a private tour of the Victorian villa where she wrote ‘North and South’ (and entertained literary friends like Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens). After a restorative tea-and-cake break, we’ll ride together via private motor coach through the rugged countryside to Llangollen, a charming town on the River Dee in North Wales. Our destination: Trevor Hall. The Hall sits on a wooded hilltop overlooking green slopes dotted with sheep and horses. After a tour of the house and gardens, we’ll ease into country living in the Hall’s luxurious (and tastefully eclectic) rooms. With bookish activities, entertainment, and surprises planned throughout the weekend, you’re sure to be delighted — and have plenty of time to connect with old and new bookish friends. DatesThis is a five-day, four-night trip: Thursday through Monday. It will be held on two consecutive weekends; each weekend is limited to 19 guests. Weekend 1: Thursday, November 5 through Monday, November 9 Weekend 2: Thursday, November 12 through Monday, November 16 Also! Click here for the complete details about the weekend and to enjoy the pretty photos For early access to tickets, join our Patreon. To be notified the minute tickets go on sale, join our free Substack newsletter. If you’re curious about last year’s trip, listen to our podcast episode That Time We Rented a Manor House in Wales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, welcome to a very special episode of Strong Sense of Place. Today we are going to tell you about something that honestly we have been counting down to since last October. It's true. We're going back to Trevor Hall. Yeah.

0:28.6

In November, we are once again taking over a manor house in Wales for a readers' weekend,

0:33.9

and you are cordially invited. Now, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about,

0:40.1

last year, we hosted our very first Reader's Weekend. We took over a beautiful Georgian Manor on the

0:48.5

border of Wales, filled it with bookish people from all over, and spent a long weekend together eating incredible food,

0:56.9

talking about books, going on walks, and pretty much living out our country house fantasy.

1:03.3

Yeah, and it went well.

1:05.1

It went really well. I'm going to share a few things that our guest said because I used to be

1:10.8

an advertising

1:11.3

copywriter and I could not have written copy this good.

1:15.0

Kate said, better even than I expected.

1:18.4

I didn't realize how much meeting the others would affect me.

1:21.6

Pam said, and this might be my favorite, I almost said exceeds expectations, but then I

1:26.9

remembered the Hogwarts grading system, and so I am going

1:30.0

without standing. Louise said it was kind of life-changing in ways I'm still discovering. And Colleen said

1:37.6

it's just a unique experience that you can't find anywhere else. 23 guests filled out our survey, and they gave the weekend a 9.92 out of 10.

1:49.5

100% said they would recommend it to a friend.

1:52.7

100% also rated the food outstanding, which I have to admit is very relevant to my interest.

1:59.8

And also, yeah, the food was outstanding. We'll

2:03.5

talk more about that in a second. So we're doing it again. Same wonderful house, same spirit,

2:10.2

but we've been tinkering because we're Mel and Dave and we cannot leave well enough alone.

2:17.0

Actually, we listened to everything our guest told us, and we added some things and changed a couple of things to make it even better.

...

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