Turning Pages: Inside the homes of the queens of Bloomsbury

As literary and artistic pilgrimages go, it's a doddle. Two sisters in one day, if you drive from London to East Sussex. And what sisters: writer Virginia Woolf and artist Vanessa Bell, queens of the Bloomsbury set. They both spent decades working, living and entertaining in their country retreats.

Actually "country retreat" gives too grand an impression, particularly of Monk's House in Rodmell village. When the Woolfs, Virginia and Leonard, first saw the house in 1919, they were not impressed: a "distinctly bad" kitchen, no hot water, no bath and no sign of a toilet. But they loved the big, wild garden, so they bought it.

The night they moved in, the kitchen flooded. E. M. Forster came to stay and burned his trousers on the stove, trying to get warm. But Woolf's novels gradually paid for improvements and extensions. She painted the walls in violent colours, and filled the rooms with books (of course) plus paintings, tiles, furniture and upholstery created by Vanessa and her lover, the artist Duncan Grant.

Today, the house has the quaint charm of one of those Midsomer Murders properties. There are many dark low-ceilinged rooms, but they feel cosy and relaxed, as if the Woolfs had just stepped out for a spot of gardening.

The National Trust looks after the house, and there are guides on hand to show you a painting or tell you an anecdote. Step outside, as we did on a cool damp summer's day, and there's a walled garden leading to the Woolfs' bowling green, an orchard, Rodmell church and The Lodge, a little weatherboard cottage where Woolf used to write in summer: you can look through the glass at her desk and her blue writing paper.

There's also a walk to the river meadows, where as Woolf said, "all nature is to be had in five minutes". And where one day in 1941 she walked into the river and drowned herself.

A short drive away is Charleston, once home to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (and later, Vanessa's husband Clive), which is like Monk's House writ large. The 16th-century house has a splendid garden and much more of the owners' distinctive styles of painting and decor: you have to admire their confidence and originality as they pop in an acrobat here, a cockerel there, and circles everywhere, all in rich colours.

The house has been restored by the Charleston Trust: you must book a session with a guide, which is well worth it. Our guide filled us in on funny, sad and scandalous tales about the Bloomsbury set and their friends, who all spent time in this house, often conducting their strange and convoluted love affairs under its roof. Every object in the house tells a story.