A few years ago, Laura, an English friend of mine, wrote a magazine story about a castle located in the Gloucestershire countryside near London. I made sure to read the piece, wanting to imagine my friend in such a luxurious setting. The photographs showed the residents, Kent (an aristocrat in his thirties) and Lucy (his fashion-stylist wife), both dressed up in big hats and flowing costumes, leading sheep across a huge expanse of farmland.

Each of the rooms featured in the pictorial was exquisitely appointed. Gleaming copper pots were neatly arranged on a whitewashed stone wall in a kitchen suffused with golden light. A medieval tapestry hung in one bedroom, facing a king-sized canopy bed.

The living room had a long table surrounded by high-back chairs, a big fireplace and two magnificent chandeliers.

I looked at the photographs and thought of my friend there. It was all so perfect. Could she stand it? I called her and asked about the story. Did she actually get to stay in the castle? Was it as incredible as it looked in the magazine?

"Sure,"Laura said. She being English (critical, yet discreet and understated), this could have meant anything. I decided to take Laura's comment at face value, and imagined her wearing a big hat and a flowing dress, joining the couple in sheep-herding through the fields.

Last April, I finally took Laura up on a long-standing invitation to visit her in London. "I've got something planned for the weekend," she said when I arrived. "If you're into it, Lucy wants us to join her in Gloucestershire."

It's one thing to be a journalist at one of these places, quite another to be the weekend mystery guest. I was filled with both awe and dread at this prospect as we drove into the grounds, navigating the car through a sharply turning, narrow road.

As we arrived at the castle, I noticed first that the plot of land it sits on is large, but we're not talking the moors in Wuthering Heights. This land looked out to a highway winding in the distance.

The castle itself was large, but not exactly towering. How dark it was. And how drafty. Obviously, klieg lights had been placed in the kitchen to give the photographs that hallowed quality. What rooms went with what pictures? I had to imagine all the rooms unnaturally lit to place them.

And while I did sleep in a canopy bed, I also slept with a hot water bottle under the blankets to stave off the chill. (In the bathrooms, space heaters were running day and night.)

Only the residents lived up to the hype. Lucy greeted us wearing full makeup and a slightly sinister high-fashion black fur coat. To break the ice, I asked her what her coat was made of. "Monkey," she said, sounding like Joan Collins, an aristocratic, wild-eyed, mad look in her eyes. Later we enjoyed an all-stops-out evening in the dining room, where in front of a roaring fire our hostess tangoed across the room to Rod Stewart belting out "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" By then, I was enjoying myself but also wondering whether this performance was copied from a magazine pictorial, or vice versa.