Three hundred to a thousand pounds a head, and none of it here.
Farm-to-table retreats at partner farms in other parishes. Not on Diddly Squat, not near Diddly Squat, and not a technicality — the planning permission on this site does not allow anybody to stay the night, so the retreats happen on somebody else’s land under somebody else’s licence.
These are not on Diddly Squat, and that is not a marketing decision
The planning permission for this holding does not permit overnight accommodation. There is no shepherd’s hut, no barn conversion, no campsite and no glamping, there is no application pending for any of those, and anybody telling you otherwise is describing a different farm. Every retreat listed here is at a partner farm, run by that farm, licensed by that farm, and priced by that farm.
The four partner sites.
| Where | What it is | Nights | Per head |
|---|---|---|---|
| A dairy farm in the Cotswolds | Six beds, one long table, a cheese room | 2 | £420–560 |
| A market garden in Herefordshire | Eight beds in a converted granary, kitchen garden | 3 | £640–820 |
| A hill farm in the Yorkshire Dales | Ten beds, a barn, and genuinely nothing else | 2 | £300–380 |
| An orchard and cider farm in Somerset | Twelve beds, press house, October only | 3 | £780–1,000 |
Why we send people away rather than saying no.
The enquiry arrives several times a week and it has done for six years: can we stay? The answer is no and it will remain no.
A business that has learned anything from that ought to do something more useful with the demand than reject it. There are farms within two hours of here with beds, a licence, a good cook and no way of reaching anybody, which is precisely the market failure the family’s own platform was built to address.
So the retreats page is a referral, made with no money attached, to farms we have been to. It earns this estate nothing, which is why we can be honest about which of the four is best in February.
What a retreat actually involves.
You arrive at a farm that is not this one
In a different county, usually, and the drive is part of it.
Somebody who farms it cooks for you
From what is outside. It is not a chef doing a farm theme, it is a farmer who cooks, and the difference is the whole thing.
You do a day of work you are bad at
Milking, picking, pressing or gathering, depending on the farm and the month.
You eat what you handled
Which is either profound or slightly awkward, and occasionally both.
Somebody from here turns up at two of the four
For a day, to talk about the numbers and the failures. Not at the other two, and the page says which.
What a retreat is, and whose it is.
Included
- Beds, meals and the work, all provided by the partner farm
- An honest description of what each site is like in bad weather
- A day of somebody from this estate, at two of the four sites
- No commission taken by us from any partner, at any point
Not us
- Anything at all on Diddly Squat land
- Any overnight stay on this holding, now or in future
- Transport between here and there
- A booking made by us — you book with the farm directly
- Any liability on our part for a site we do not run
The retreats are the only thing in this chapter that happens somewhere else, and they exist because the honest answer to the most common enquiry we get is a referral rather than a refusal. If one of the four is bad we will take it off this page, and we have done that once.
The reason nobody stays here.
The planning cap, the insurance, and the two things we will not host at any price.
