I’m quite a recent convert to glamping. I’m a low-maintenance sort of bear, who’s usually going to default to her own two-man tent in a field with minimal facilities. But I have a major weakness: hot tubs.
You may remember the first time I gave in to the allure of my own hot tub, when I went glamping near Beaminster in December. That was delightful but also freezing and now I’m back, in Sturminster Newton in North Dorset and it’s June and incredibly hot. I came across the site by accident on one of my longer weekend walks in March and booked this stay the very same day. I did the post about my mini-holiday last week; you can read it here.
Let’s get one major thing out of the way before I start. It is utterly, utterly absurd to have paid as much as I did for two nights in a shoebox on wheels. The hot tub is extra and that makes it even more absurd. Maybe I should just look into hiring a hot tub for my own garden for 48 hours. But it looked gorgeous and amazing and I haven’t been anywhere for such a long time and I’ve made no plans because we all know by now that lockdowns and tier changes can come out of nowhere. But as this place is so local, it can’t possibly be affected by tier changes, especially as we’re not using tiers at the moment and expecting to be out of restrictions altogether the week after my glamping trip (I mean, we all knew that was never going to happen. But I’m minimising reasons for this trip to be unexpectedly cancelled).
But. It’s very beautiful and frankly, especially given that I’m not leaving the country for the second year in a row, I’d pay it again.
Let me show you around. I made a short video, partly for this blog but mostly for my grandmother who will be 91 this month and has no more idea what a shepherds hut is than I have what a Martian spaceship is like. It’s so totally alien that she doesn’t even know glamping is a thing (she keeps calling it clamping). So a short video tour:
There are currently two shepherds huts on site. I had the Pleasant Pheasant and across the other side of the field, where you could only see the other occupants if they were out from behind the privacy fences and you had either binoculars or a good zoom on your camera, was the Happy Hare. A major upside of the Pleasant Pheasant is that it’s a very short wander from the car park area whereas it’s a couple of hundred metres to the Happy Hare and a wheelbarrow is provided to help move your stuff in.
There’s a solar panel out the back and then the hut itself and its outdoor area faces the field and the open countryside. There are woven wooden privacy fences to shield you from direct sight from the Happy Hare and anyone lurking in the nettly hedge behind the hot tub. In my outside area, I had a firepit with a cooking tray hanging from a tripod and two wooden lounging chairs for sitting out in the sun or evening campfires. There was a sheltered dining area with a bistro table and chairs and a gas barbecue complete with lots of heavy iron pots and pans which you could also use over your firepit. Then there was the hot tub.
The hot tub, it turns out, is neither the shape or the style I’d expected. It’s more of a trough than a big pool a few people can sit in. Even the company that makes them describes them as “outdoor bathtubs” rather than hot tubs. But I watched that Amazing Hotels show, specifically the one when they went to ICEHOTEL and one of the team led an overnight wilderness hotel with exactly these hot tubs (iPlayer link; go to about 50mins in to see my hot tub in the frozen wilderness). It makes more sense in the wilderness than it does attached to a shepherd’s hut, I admit. But hot water and hot water of my own while camping!
It’s wood-fed and I did have to light it myself and keep it stocked with wood but there was plenty of wood provided, the firelighters are those amazing straw-like natural ones that catch instantly and burn furiously and it seems my firelighting skills are limited almost exclusively to lighting hot tubs. I did it both evenings and both times it lit beautifully on my first attempt and gave me no trouble at all, except that on the second night I put on too many logs to keep it going for longer and accidentally made it too hot to get into for the next two hours. It’s actually a really weird stove – it’s in the water, although protected from the bit you sit in by a wooden seat back and then wood goes down the chute and underneath.
As for underneath the hut, I had two crates of logs for my hot tub and firepit and a bucket of kindling. Inside there was another bucket of wood and more importantly, matches and firelighters. I had a tap with a hose for washing muddy boots or dogs or for watering the herb garden next to my outdoor kitchen shelter. I had a long lead attached to the front wheel for keeping the dog close-ish (not that I have a dog) but still able to run pretty freely. I had a dog bowl in a bucket – not sure what that bucket was for. I had various bins.
I really liked my outdoor area. It didn’t get a lot of shade so I spent my afternoons inside and my evenings dragging the chairs around to avoid direct sun but I definitely took mental notes on recreating something like this in my own garden one day, especially the cupboard of barbecue stuff but sadly minus the hot tub. That’s a luxury I just don’t get to have in my own home and it’s the reason I’m willing to pay for trips like this. Mmmm, hot tubs.
Inside, I had a little kitchen complete with gas hot to save the effort of lighting the campfire for a cup of tea – not that I drink tea but I appreciate making it easy, especially if the weather’s too bad to cook outside. I had a nice deep Belfast sink with hot water provided by the gas cylinders hiding behind the hut and all manner of cups and plates and cutlery, including a drawerful of useful bits and pieces and even a cupboard of small indoor pots and pans for cooking on the hob.
Then I had a wood stove for warmth. Needless to say, I didn’t light it and didn’t even think about it. Opposite the stove was a kind of breakfast bar with two stools and underneath was my fridge. It’s actually a red coolbox filled with ice packs but it works very nicely for a couple of days. If I’d been staying any longer, I’d have had to ask for fresh ice packs but that’s fine, that’s a service offered. The bed was a nice low one with enough space underneath for your bag. It also had a basket of games and hot water bottles, and a basket and crate for packing stuff at the end. For the sake of COVID and hygiene and simplicity, you’re asked to put all the crockery and cutlery you’ve used in a box so it can be run through the dishwasher in the farmhouse afterwards (I gave everything a very cursory wash; very little point in spending time and effort on washing up if you know it’ll be in the dishwasher half an hour after you leave) and you’re asked to strip the bed and put all the towels and so on in a bag. I didn’t have a bag under my bed so I used the basket.
Above the bed was a shelf of books – a few Hardys, some books on outdoors and nature and a few books that had a bit of a feel of “previous guests left these here”. I picked up Tess of the d’Urbervilles and I will read it one day but I’d brought my own book and I never got beyond the first chapter of Tess. I had some key hooks by the door and above them was a pair of very heavy and very powerful binoculars. Excellent for looking at the scenery (or the Happy Hare) but far too heavy to take out with you on a walk.
And then there was the bathroom. I had a proper toilet with a chain (although you have to swing the little thing it’s hanging from rather than pull the chain to flush it), a powerful shower with hot water fed again by the gas cylinders and I had a gorgeous pheasant sink. The Happy Hare has a matching hare sink and they’re custom made for these huts and such a beautiful touch. I had various towels and some nice minty handwash in a blue glass bottle and the window opened straight onto the thick hedge instead of onto the path to the other hot tub, like it did in Beaminster. It seems I didn’t take as many photos of the bathroom as I thought so if you want to see that, you’ll have to watch the video. Got the sink though, of course!
On the whole, I liked the layout of this hut a lot more than the Forager one in Beaminster. It felt a lot more spacious and I really appreciated the presence of the gas hob even if I didn’t use it this time. I preferred Forager’s double doors and the little round window over the bed but the Pleasant Pheasant’s single barn-style door did give a lot more space inside. I also preferred the Pleasant Pheasant’s electricity situation. Both had electric lighting from a solar panel but there was more light in the Pleasant Pheasant. I admit, June vs December does make a huge difference in both how much light you need and how much you can charge the solar panel but my Forager bathroom was lit only by a candle and I had to light a candle by my bed and I’m from this century, I like electric lighting. I also liked that I had a USB plug next to the bed to charge my phone and camera. Very much appreciated, Pleasant Pheasant.
It was all very peaceful. Much more peaceful than Brownsea was, actually. There was a dairy farm behind the site and the site is itself on another dairy farm so you hear mooing from across the hedge in the evening but the cows are out in the field at the bottom of the campsite during the day and although you can watch them, you don’t hear much from them. There’s virtually no traffic. It’s at the end of a very long narrow lane and the only people who’d drive up there are the two occupants of the huts and people belonging to the two farms. At the end of the cow field was the river and then there were more fields opposite. You could see the minor road running from Sturminster Newton to Hinton St Mary and you could see the top of the church tower at Hinton St Mary poking out above the trees and other than that, it was green countryside as far as the eye can see. A bit of birdsong, the occasional shriek of a peacock at the farmhouse next door, the odd evening moo and other than that, silence and solitude. It’s all booked up for the rest of the year but I’m definitely open to returning next year. Maybe not in June, maybe later in the year when I’ll appreciate the hot tub a lot more.
