By Steve Dinneen
Unyoked lets you get away from it all in a chic cabin in the woods within easy travelling distance of London. Steve Dinneen takes a genuinely rejuvenating break in the South Downs.
WHAT IS IT?
The idea of getting away from it all and disconnecting from your job/social media/the relentless news cycle has been part of the travel zeitgeist years – but Covid really kicked it into overdrive. Instagram is littered with impossibly dreamy pictures of mirrored treehouses and squat Scottish bothies, all seemingly unmoored from civilization.
Now a company called Unyoked has built a series of luxury cabins in the South Downs, the Black Mountains in Wales, and Norfolk, with plans to expand further across the UK. Starting out in Australia, Unyoked is all about escaping the daily grind and reconnecting with nature.
It’s all very slick, a Silicon Valley start-up mentality transplanted into the forested wilderness. Before you arrive you download an app that has all the information you need about getting to your cabin, as well as a bunch of supplementary material (podcasts, recipes) presented in a way that’s part new age self help book, part Innocent Smoothie carton.
With some of the cabins within a couple of hours of London, it’s a great way to escape it all for a few days, and with a room for two starting at £154 for weekdays and £179 for weekends, it won’t break the bank.
THE STAY
Arriving at the cabin feels like an adventure in itself. Preferring not to drive, we took a train to Haslemere in south west Surrey, then got a cab for the last 20 minutes to a place just outside a village called Chithurst within the South Downs National Park.
The Google Maps pin took us to a tiny road flanked on both sides by dense woodland. Momentarily at a loss about where to go next, we spotted a little yellow sign with the Unyoked branding and followed a series of arrows, like a little treasure hunt, until we arrived five minutes later at our cabin, called Maynard (they all have human names: Josef, Esme, Marley, etcetera).
The cabin itself is like a slate grey Monopoly house scaled up to human size. It’s just big enough to fit a sizable bed, log burner, small bank of kitchen cabinets with a stove, and a separate shower/toilet. It’s undeniably bijou but it never felt cramped.
Everything is finished in bare wood, with cosy accents added by throws and little knitted hot water bottles. It is a genuinely lovely place to hang out, which was just as well as we went in January and the weather was… not great.
It seems terribly cliche to point this out, but coming from London you’re struck by the remoteness. As the evening drew in and the huge windows became mirrored sheets against the darkness, the only sounds were owls hooting and the occasional crack of some woodland creature crossing the small clearing outside. In better weather you could build a campfire and gaze at the stars, which are actually visible this far from the city lights.
But we were content to stoke the wood burner (logs provided) and play games of Scrabble. There are a handful of paperbacks about the local flora and fauna in the cabin and quaint, analogue touches include a cassette player with some tapes and a wireless radio.
We woke with the sun streaming through the windows, providing us with views through the woodland to the superbly-named Titty Hill. Between downpours we managed a couple of trips to the nearest pub, a pleasant 20-minute stroll down the closest road. All things considered, this really is the life.
NEED TO KNOW
Cabins start from £154 with a two-night minimum – for more visit the unyoked website here.
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