After a four-hour drive from London, I wasn’t entirely sure we’d stumbled upon the right place when our Sat Nav told us we’d arrived at our destination. A lane petered out into a tangle of hedgerows and a scattering of barns and I could hear the low, impatient bellow of bulls in a nearby field. That was until a beaming trio wearing denim dungarees appeared, one handing me a chilled rosé, another pressing a pint into my husband’s hand. Welcome to Fowlescombe Farm.
A few days earlier, the guest relations team had phoned me to run through my itinerary. I had struck gold with a forecast of balmy August days for the stay, and together we sketched out a plan: stalking the farm dogs (the sole demand from our pet-deprived four year-old), plenty of lingering over farmhouse feasts and time to simply do nothing much at all. They offered up extras too: flower pressing in the greenhouse, early morning yoga on the lawn and a visit to meet the just-born piglets.
