Welcome, come on in! This is Pip and Pip’s Cabin, my home for the weekend on the border of Devon and Cornwall.
The place is actually called Spring Park and it has eight quirky little places to stay scattered around in their own private gardens. Duke, Duchess and Ragnarr are restored wagons, Hercules is a showman’s trailer, Maiden & Wisteria Cottage is a railway wagon with cabin, The Old Potting Shed is… an old potting shed albeit a huge one, St Agnes is a tin tabernacle and Pip & Pip’s Cabin is a steam roller living van coupled with a spacious cabin. I liked the look of most of them. I fought myself particularly hard over St Agnes (I like churches) and Duchess (it has a bath) before settling for Pip on the grounds that it’s cheaper and also seems to have by far the most space. But they’re all pretty and they’re all spacious and they all seem light and airy and I’d be happy to stay in any of them.
Let’s start with Pip’s Cabin, since that’s where I spent most of my time.
As you come up your own private driveway/path, Pip’s Cabin is right there on your left, after the hot tub. It’s a substantial building, actually. It’s quite comfy and cosy as it is but you could put the bed in there and it would still be a lot more spacious than most glamping accommodation. It’s split into a living area, with two sofas, an armchair and a woodburner, and a kitchen with proper fridge and a cooker like we had when I was a child – gas powered, with four rings on the top, a grill/small oven and a main oven – a kettle and a whole pile of that pretty mismatched charity shop china that glamping places seem to like so much. I wouldn’t have minded a toaster. I’m a child of the 21st century and I’m not used to making toast on a grill. The first side took forever to toast and then when I turned the bread over, the other side cooked so quickly than in under a minute, it was on fire.
The notice in the kitchen said to evacuate and call this number and give this address in the event of fire. Well, I had a fire and the correct response was to blow on the toast in a panic until the fire went out. Behind the kitchen is the bathroom – quite a big one too, with a large shower with instant hot water. No standing back shivering waiting for it to get warm.
I really liked the Cabin! Its only major downside was that Maiden and Wisteria Cottage are right behind – another combination of railway wagon and living cabin – and I’m pretty sure that Wisteria and Pip’s Cabin are the same building with a solid wall down the middle. I read the reviews and they all rave about how peaceful it is here. I think that depends on your neighbours, because I heard every word my neighbours said. And they played music! I admit, I’m not a huge music fan and I only put it on in the car or occasionally to try to trick my brain into being more focused during work hours, but I can’t fathom coming to the middle of the countryside, miles from anywhere, and putting on loud thumping music that all your neighbours can hear.
I had some trouble with the woodburner – it had been set out for me on the first night and it took one match to light that mess and have heat for the rest of the evening. But on Saturday night, I burnt the kindling beautifully and scorched the logs and that was that. For reasons you’ll hear about later, I invested in some fresh wood on Sunday afternoon and that burned really quickly and easily so I was able to light the woodburner and be toasty on Sunday. But there’s also an electric heater and even I can manage one of those. Oh yes, there’s electricity in both buildings. I could charge my phone and camera whenever I felt like it!
Pip’s Cabin also came with an entire shelf of books and a pile of games. I had brought books – I spent the weekend ploughing through most of Joe Abercrombie’s latest (bookshop.org affiliate link, not a penny going to Jeff Bezos. Be aware that’s the third book in his latest trilogy and you should read the first two first). It’s a very nice space and suitably quirky as per the website URL.
Pip is across the garden and is basically a shepherd’s hut, only smaller. Most shepherd’s huts, I think, are custom-built for glamping but I do believe Pip is a converted original. Back in the days when steamrollers were steam-powered behemoths, I guess vans like Pip were hitched to the back for the workmen to live in while they were on the road, and steamrollers and traction engines are so slow I guess it wasn’t worth trying to trundle them home every day. For a few weeks in August, pre-plague, I’d often meet or see such vehicles on the road heading for their big party and can attest to the slowness.
Anyway, Pip is a bit on the small side, hence the Cabin. It’s got a double bed at one end and a disused, presumably original, woodburner at the other end and some storage. It also has electricity so I can charge my phone overnight right by the bed, warm up the place with the electric heater and switch on the lamp. Since it’s an uninsulated wooden van, I expected it to be chilly in October but between the cosy bedding, the hot water bottles and the heater, to say nothing of my fuzzy pyjamas, I was actually too hot to sleep two out of three nights.
The downsides of this arrangement are first and foremost that once it gets late and dark, I have to go outside on my own, lock up my cabin and walk across to my van. Second is that you can’t lock Pip from the outside so you don’t know for absolute certain that no one’s hiding in there. You also can’t really leave stuff in there during the day when you’re not there, for its own safety, so you have to carry over everything you might want overnight. I know it’s the middle of nowhere and no one’s going to venture that far into the wilderness in the hope of finding a solo helpless female but it’s intimidating to go over to Pip alone in the dark and I know I put off bedtime more than once because of it. Once you’re in with the door bolted behind you, it’s fine. I guess if I’d known in advance, I could have taken a padlock because there’s the hardware on the door to attach one. Now, to be fair, I had two small keys on the same ring as the Cabin key for which I never found a use. Maybe there once was a padlock. I’d still not relish the walk over but at least it wouldn’t be carrying quite such an armful of stuff and I’d be more confident of finding it empty.
So it’s all very nice. It is. I’m open to going back but as a single female traveller, I personally would feel more comfortable in one of the other places, where everything is under the same roof. Should have gone for the Tabernacle after all. Now I see why Pip was a bit cheaper; it’s the inconvenience.
A few things about the site: Duke, Duchess, Ragnarr and Maiden/Wisteria have a separate entrance. The other places are clustered behind the main farmhouse. They each have private parking and everything is clearly signposted in mint green, including the two site entrances. In the middle of the parking cluster are the recycling bins and a big cupboard containing fire stuff – boxes of wood, massive bags-for-life full of kindling, piles of newspaper, jars of firelighters and matches. Wood is £5 a box, kindling is £3 a bag and it works on an honesty system: take what you want, leave the cash in the box. Or, knowing it’s 2021 and those of us who still carry cash have been forced to feed it into parking machines across Devon and Cornwall, it also has its bank details so you can transfer payment electronically. Wonderful! Such a fan of this!
I bought wood on Sunday. I had a certain amount in the cabin, which I’d burned. I also had two crates under shelter in the garden but it wasn’t burning well and all I had left was really big stuff that would hardly fit in the burners, let alone light from a pile of kindling. It frustrated me that no matter how closely I watched my fires and no matter how regularly I fed them, the wood was doing little more than scorching. Having paid extra to use the hot tub in the first place I resented having to buy wood to actually use it but on Sunday I gave in. I was burning kindling beautifully but the logs just didn’t care. So eventually I had to conclude that maybe they were damp from stored outside. I bought a crate of wood and it was like I’d bought a magic spell. One log in the hot tub and within half an hour it had gone from tepid to warm. Another log and I turned it from tepid to too-hot-to-get-in-until-at-least-2am. Well, at least I’d proved the wood was the problem and not me.
Yes, the hot tub was the third element. On Friday night I got it to just warm enough to not immediately freeze to death outside in the dark. On Saturday I got it warm enough to be pleasant for a few minutes before the open lid stole all the warmth again. And on Sunday I made it too hot to get into. I do not have a calm and easy relationship with hot tubs. I need someone to light and tend it for me so all I have to do is sit in water of the perfect temperature. I had to come home earlier than I would have liked every day to get the thing lit by 3 or 4 in the afternoon in the hope it would be lukewarm before darkness fell – because you really hear every rustle in the woods when you’re in a hot tub in the dark.
So mixed feelings towards Pip and Pip’s Cabin, although mostly not aimed at the site itself. I need to buy the wood earlier, keep it inside to keep it dry, not get over-enthusiastic with it, come before the night draws in so early and stay in one of the other properties so I don’t have to go outside at night. Other than that, lots of good things about Spring Park and I’ll be happy to return if life sends me that way again.
