‘This is one of the country’s best kept secrets.” I heard these same words — or very slight variations on them — twice in four days. Each observation concerned an area of England little known to tourists but, as the speaker thought, deserving of wider attention. In each case, I found myself in agreement.

The first speaker addressed me last week in the interval during Grange Park Opera’s production of Eugene Onegin. This was taking place in the incomparably lovely setting of Nevill Holt, a property in Leicestershire belonging to David Ross, a businessman who made his moolah (and how!) by setting up The Carphone Warehouse. In a stunning position above the Welland Valley, the Grade 1 listed building was until recently a prep school. Lucky pupils, you might think, until you learn why it is a prep school no more. Google and gasp.

After ten years hosting an annual visit by GPO, Mr Ross and his team have decided to go it alone. From next year, Nevill Holt will be having its own festival — opera still, but with an element of the visual arts. Ross is a keen collector of sculpture. His works include a wonderful Nic Fiddian Green horse’s head. Position is all — see right — where this is concerned.

The ‘secret’ to which my neighbour in the stalls alluded was not Nevill Holt itself, but rather the lovely rolling countryside about it. “It’s like the Cotswolds without the crowds,” he said. Driving with the car roof off around the leafy lanes later (a rare treat in this sopping summer) I came to see his point. The nearby village of Rockingham is a particular joy (until you get to Corby on the other side of the estate).

Secret place number two was the Staffordshire town of Leek. We drove through it last Saturday on the way to the Buxton Festival, where over three evenings I saw productions of Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo, Handel’s Jephtha and a double bill composed of Sibelius’s The Maiden in the Tower and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kashchei the Immortal. Leek’s architecture particularly impressed — well-preserved Victorian buildings in the main — and on Monday morning we returned for a closer look.

My regular readers will not be surprised to learn that the buildings which particularly impressed were the pie shops and pubs. Best of the pubs was The Cock, in Derby Street, belonging to Joule’s brewery. It was its landlord, a former antiques dealer, who spoke of the ‘secret’, while supervising the service of excellent beer and perfect pub food (splendid ham sandwiches with the freshest wholemeal bread for me).

Not the least of Leek’s attractions is absurdly cheap property (though it does not seem so to locals, many of whom are on hard times since the decline in the textile industry which was a mainstay of the town). The place is also very friendly. “No trouble here on a Saturday night,” said the landlord. “We all know each other.”

On Sunday morning, on a drive to Bakewell, we chanced upon Peak Rail. From Rowsley South station we enjoyed a four- mile trip to Matlock (much duller than I remembered) behind a former LNER saddle tank. The class 31 diesel at the back pulled us on the return journey. I thought the steam locomotive fairly ancient, until I looked it up in my Ian Allen ABC of spring 1963, and found the class dated from the mid-1940s. Strangely enough ‘our’ engine, No 68013, was the very one depicted in the handbook. Studying the photograph as an 11-year-old train spotter, I could never have imagined riding behind the loco 50 years later.