Escaping the mass market to find unusual hotels, bed and breakfast properties as well as holiday lets, this guide lists UK and Ireland properties providing value-for-money memories that will last long after the bill has been paid.

Selected from the award-winning online guide, this selection of properties offers unusual and unique accomodation choices for all budgets, from £25 for singles to suites costing more than £550 a night.

Take your pick from vintage Airstream caravans, a converted naval gunboat, an enchanted manor, water towers, windmills, monuments and lighthouses, peaceful retreats in tipis and Mongolian yurts, as well as prisons, chapels and churches. Try staying at a property where you have to be accompanied by a dog. Enjoy the elegance of a a royal palace in Surrey or rock'n'roll chic in London. Stop the train at with a private railway platform in Snowdonia. Experience living in castles, follies and magnificent monuments, including one dedicated to a pineapple. Take a trip in a horse- drawn caravans in Ireland or aVolkswagen camper van in Bristol. You can even sleep with wildebeest outside your room on safari in Kent.

Criss-crossing the UK and Ireland, from the Napoleonic fortifications and Second World War lookout towers of the Channel Islands, to railway carriages and a laird's treehouse in Scotland, design masterpieces to down-to-earth dwellings, your travels need never be boring again.