Getting there

By car: 1 hour 45 to 2 hours 30 from London depending on traffic. The easiest route goes through Cirencester, which is also your best stop for supplies.

By train: London Paddington to Cheltenham Spa or Kemble is about 2 hours, then a taxi to Chedworth.

Day 1: arrive, stock up and settle in

Stock up on the way: Cirencester has everything you need, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and M&S, all within a few minutes of each other. For something better, Dunkertons Ciders has a bakery, farm shop and bottles of cider brewed on site, and Jesse Smith Butchers at Elkstone Studios is one of those butchers that people make detours for.

If you forget something or want eggs in the morning, Piccolo Farm across the road from the cabin sells them on an honesty card machine, and the Chedworth Tiny Farm Shop is in the village hall, 7am-7pm, a vending machine with milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese and coffee from a local farm. No signage on the outside, just walk through the front door.

Arriving at the cabin: Park up and follow the signs along the path through the young woodland (the brochure calls it your "wardrobe" into Narnia, which is a bit of a thing here). The site has four cabins, each set apart from the others, each with its own field view and its own particular angle on the Cotswold countryside. Get the fire going, pour something cold and watch the afternoon go past the window.

Walk to The Pub: It's about a 40-minute walk to The Stump or 5 minutes in the car. Wood-fired pizzas, a cosy inside and a sunny garden. It's open every day and you can walk in without a booking. If you want something a bit more destination-led, The Village Pub in Barnsley (owned by The Pig) is a 10-minute drive and worth booking ahead. Good food, proper country pub atmosphere.

Day 2: slow morning, walk somewhere beautiful

No hurry this morning: The benchmark for a good Cotswolds morning is: coffee, a book you've been meaning to read for six months and eventually getting up to go and find a pub lunch somewhere. Don't break with tradition.

The Chedworth Circular 16km, roughly four hours, and one of the best walks in the area. It takes you across the valley, along the River Coln, through fields and copses and quiet lanes, and finishes at The Stump if you plan it right. The Chedworth Roman Villa walk is shorter at 8.5km, through fields and along lanes to one of the grandest Roman villas ever uncovered in Britain, a National Trust site open 10am-5pm. The Coln St Aldwyn to Bibury circular is the one to do if you want to end up somewhere specific. Start in Coln St Aldwyn, walk to Bibury, stop at the Twig Cafe for lunch or coffee, wander along Arlington Row (one of the most photographed streets in England) and walk back. You'll keep stopping because the view has changed again.

Cook, fire pit, that's the evening: The BBQ works as well as any oven if you give it enough time to get hot, half an hour before you cook anything, then it'll do whatever you put on it well. Or keep it simple on the gas hob: something slow, a bottle of something, sitting outside until it's too dark to see the hills.

Day 3: pack up and on the way home

Have breakfast, fire out and everything cleared before you check out.

Bibury is the obvious stop if you haven't done the walk, 15 minutes from the cabin and on most people's list of the most beautiful villages in England, which is a high bar that Arlington Row somehow meets.

Stow-on-the-Wold has the Porch House, which is said to be the oldest pub in Britain, dating to 947 AD, if you want to know you've had a pint somewhere historic.

Sudeley Castle is worth the drive if history is what you're after, a English castle with gardens that take a couple of hours to do justice. Knead Bakery at Elkstone Studios (15 minutes from the cabin) is also worth visiting if you haven't already - pastries, coffee and lunch in a relaxed courtyard and they run supper clubs if you happen to be planning ahead.

Thinking about your next stay?

The Cotswolds are hard to improve on, but East Sussex gives you something completely different, bigger, wilder, with cliffs and chalk figures and a different shape of English countryside altogether. Or head to Dorset for Plush village and the Cerne Abbas loop, where the hills are ancient and the pub is thatched and two minutes from your door.