Any deviation from the beaten track comes with moments of uncertainty. Is this the right dirt track? Is our progress going to be thwarted at any moment by an impenetrable thicket, or worse still an implacable landowner who will force a ham-fisted reverse? As it turns out, we are only temporarily stalled by two male peacocks jousting in the middle of the lane in a kaleidoscopic blur of feathers and fury. We wait for them to retire to the grass verge and continue to bounce up the track until we see a sign for our cottage pointing to the left. This leads us deeper into a woodland of oak, ash, birch and Douglas fir, until we finally see a brick-and-stone house standing in a clearing set back from the trail.
From the outside, Van Cottage looks like a pioneer homestead, with a crooked stone chimney to one side and a metal-roofed veranda to the other. Around the corner there’s a wood-fired hot tub, and beyond the garden fence in a little forest glade is a small brick dunny. The house sits on a ridge, and the garden offers views over the carmine-coloured ploughed fields and billowy woodland of Herefordshire.
