Fairmont Cheshire The Mere

The Mere Golf Resort & Spa has been a highlight of the Knutsford city limits for decades, best known for its high-end golf course and hosting equally high-end weddings. As of 10 July, it’s taken on a new name and whole new identity: Fairmont Cheshire, The Mere, the result of a £125 million transformation, taking its place alongside the UK’s other four snazzy Fairmont properties: The Savoy, Fairmont Windsor Park and Fairmont St Andrews.

This is a bit more than a simple lick of paint. Bergman Design House has handled the interiors – Japanese lacquer, figured timber veneers, handcrafted zellige tiles, and beaten metal. It’s unshowy and refined.

The rooms alone are some of the UK’s best. There are 116 of them across the estate, including 23 suites, running down to the Mere Lake itself. As far as local trips away go, it’s easy to get to: Manchester is twenty-five minutes by car.

Dining is split three ways. The Orangery does afternoon tea by day and shifts into a champagne and oyster bar by evening, in a room built around stonework and mosaic flooring. The Club Lounge is the more relaxed option. Here, international-inspired dishes alongside a strong Indian-influenced strand, in a space designed for casual dinners. It’s a comfortable, unfussy room with an elegant edge, and that’s a fair descriptor for the food too.

The Southwest Deccan lamb is a showstopper. Slow-cooked for god knows how long and infused with subtle but tongue-tingly spices, wrap a chunk of this in the chilli garlic flatbread, and you’ve got yourself the mouthful of the weekend.

The headline draw, is Gordon Ramsay at The Mere – his first Cheshire outing. Expect a British menu anchored by his signature Beef Wellington, with a private dining room, terrace seating over the lake, and a speakeasy bar attached. My visit was slightly ahead of time, meaning the restaurant wasn’t open yet, but old shouty gob rarely lets us down.

The spa, however, was very much up and running and well worth a visit in its own right: a restored Victorian stable block showcasing a 20-metre pool, Finnish barrel sauna, ice baths and a Rasul mud room, with treatments from Wildsmith Skin, KAMA Ayurveda and 111Skin. The golf course is as reliable as it gets – dating back to the 1930s, it was laid out by James Braid and George Duncan, and remains one of the region’s better parkland tests.

It’s all money well spent. As a first look, it’s a serious boost to the Cheshire landscape, with everything you could want from a bucolic 5-star destination. Wack it on your wind-down list.