A new home for Sawday's Special Self-Catering Places in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Eire, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal

Charming rusticity combines with luxury and sophistication. For children: a play area and large pool, for grown-ups: Renaissance Orvieto

Approach across open fields and through electric gates to pull up in front of a long low farmhouse and be greeted by Eva, warm and effusive. Your home is the Porcellaio, the old piggery, a single-storey building perfectly restored and surrounded by springy lawn. Floors are tiled, walls are chunky, rafters are slopey and ceilings unexpectedly high. Expect a charming rusticity combined with luxury, and cushions and curtains – some simple checked, others flowery – made by Norwegian Eva. The dining room and sitting room (traditional striped sofas, warm burgundy lampshades) are linked by a galley-style kitchen; bathrooms, one white, the other mushroom, have warm toasty floors. Outside is a big open garden with young bushes and trees, a sandpit, a play area and a swing, a super pizza oven and a serious grill, and one big lovely communal pool. Young families could spend the whole holiday here without budging an inch. But budge you must: this is on the border of Tuscany and Umbria and Orvieto is a delight, a Renaissance hilltop city with Slow status (no cars) reached by funicular railway.