The Cool Places Team

Cool Places was founded in 2012 by the team behind Rough Guides and Cool Camping. Their inspiration? The richness and diversity of modern Britain, and how much it has changed since they set off on their travels around the world.

Martin Dunford

Martin is one of the co-founders of Rough Guides and was the publisher there for many years. He is the author of many guidebooks and travel features and heads up Cool Places as well as working as a freelance writer and editor, focused much of the time on the UK.

Kenny Grant

Kenny built the Cool Places website and runs the development team at Cool Places, after working on the Cool Camping and Bedful

David Jones

David is the first port of call for all prospective Cool Places partners and works with our existing partners to make sure their entry reflects their business.

Jonathan Knight

Jonathan's Cool Camping England became an instant travel bestseller when it was published in 2006, since when Cool Camping and Glampingly have become the leading UK websites for camping and glamping sites, he now helps out with Cool Places.

Mark Ellingham

Mark founded Rough Guides in 1982, when he wrote the very first guide (to Greece), and ran the series for the next 25 years as Rough Guides became a household name, with guides to more than 150 destinations. He now runs a small press, Sort Of Books (most famous for Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons) and is also a director of Songlines world music magazine and Punk Publishing.

Writers & Photographers

Finally these are all the cool people who have had a hand in writing, photographing and editing the Cool Places you are reading about....

Alf Alderson, Lauren Ash, Sarah Baxter, Ros Belford, Kate Bendix, Alice Brown, Jules Brown, Kerry Christiani, Chris Coe, Sam Cook, Zoe Dawes, Fergus Day, Laura Dixon, Laura Evans, John Fisher, Stuart Forster, Wendy Gommersall, Lottie Gross, Diana Jarvis, Matthew Hancock, Liz Harper, Nicola Holland, Pat Kinsella, Phil Lee, Dan Linstead, Norm Longley, Robin McKelvie, Harriet O'Brien, Helen Ochyra. Beth Pipe, Laura Porter, Donald Reid, Claire Saunders, Sandra Shields, Amy Sheldrake, Hayley Spurway, James Stewart, Caroline Sylger-Jones, Amanda Tomlin, Victoria Trott, Greg Ward, Luke Waterson, Andrew White, Amanda Wragg.


What Customers say about Cool Places

Everything I needed for a stay

I'm already looking forward to going again and would highly recommend this hotel to anyone visiting the area. It definitely deserves a five star rating!

Nathan, Verified Customer

6 out of 5!!!!

This place was amazing… I could not recommend this place enough, I’ll be singing their praise for many years to come and we are going to book again soon.

Barbara, Verified Customer

Easy to navigate

Great site that offers a really broad range of places to stay across the UK. Easy to navigate and book holidays.

Patrick, Verified Customer

Such a great variety of properties

Found this website when looking to book a staycation for later in the year. Such a great variety of properties and the website is really easy to use. Already shared with my family and friends.

CT, Verified Customer

Great, simple, straightforward

Great, simple and straightforward. I will definitely be using Cool Places again.

SM, Verified Customer