Marlow is one of the prettiest towns on the Thames, a place where Georgian facades line the high street and a graceful suspension bridge frames the river. It sits in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, about an hour west of London, and has long attracted writers — Mary Shelley drafted much of Frankenstein here, and T.S. Eliot lived in the town while working on The Waste Land.
The town punches well above its weight for food. The Hand and Flowers, Tom Kerridge's pub on the high street, was the first pub in the UK to earn two Michelin stars and remains a destination in its own right. But Marlow is not just about fine dining — the riverside walks are genuinely lovely, the Compleat Angler hotel has one of the best terraces on the Thames, and on summer weekends the town fills with rowers, walkers, and families messing about in boats.
If you are coming from London, the train from Paddington via Maidenhead takes about an hour. The town is small enough to walk everywhere, and the towpath along the river connects to Henley-on-Thames and beyond for longer walks through the Chilterns.