Getting there

By car: Plush is about 2 hours 30 from London.

By train: London Waterloo or Clapham Junction to Dorchester South is about 2.5 hours.

Stock up before you arrive

Plush village is small and has no shop. The Old Chapel Stores in Buckland Newton is 2 miles away and good for basics and local things. For a bigger shop, Lidl and Waitrose are both in Dorchester at about 4 miles from the cabin. Pick up firewood at any petrol station on the way in.

Day 1: arrive, settle, walk to the pub

Lunch on the way: Dorchester is your best bet for lunch en route. It's a proper market town with independent cafes and a decent high street - worth a stop before you head out into the lanes towards Plush.

Arrive at the cabin: The setting here is something else. The cabin looks out over a valley of green Dorset hills, livestock in the fields and absolute quiet. Get your stuff inside, light the wood burner and let it do its job. Figure out what you're cooking later. The pace of Plush has a way of slowing you down fairly quickly.

Walk to the Brace of Pheasants: Two minutes on foot. It has a thatched roof, an open fire, a beer garden and it's the pub that our guests talk about most. The Brace of Pheasants is the kind of local that most places only have in an idealised version of the English countryside, and this one is real and it's right there. Go in the evening, eat something, come back when you're ready and get the fire pit going.

Day 2: no rush, then a proper one

Slow morning: The hills around Plush are very good first thing in the morning when the light is low and there's still mist in the valley. Coffee, bread, sit with the door open if it's warm enough. No pressure.

The Cerne Abbas loop: This is the walk to do while you're here. The Cerne Abbas loop is 9.39 miles, taking you up out of the valley and across the hills to Cerne Abbas, where you can look down at Britain's largest chalk figure - the Cerne Abbas Giant, carved into the hillside in the late Saxon period, 55 metres tall and still unexplained to everyone's satisfaction. Have lunch at the Royal Oak in Cerne Abbas halfway round, then walk back over the hills. If you want something shorter, the Dorset Gap and Hill Fort loop is 6.38 miles along the hilltops. It ends back at the Brace of Pheasants. There's a trail book at the Dorset Gap that has been signed by walkers since 1972 - worth adding your name to.

Cook and the fire pit: The evening is for the fire pit. Get it hot, keep it simple on the BBQ, sit outside until you can't see each other properly. The sky out here on a clear night is very dark and very full of stars.

Day 3: explore before the drive home

Check out is 10am, so you've got time for breakfast and a slow departure.

Gold Hill in Shaftesbury is one of the most photographed streets in Britain and about half an hour's drive - the steep cobbled street up to the 14th-century church is exactly as good as it looks in the photos. Worth stopping for coffee and a walk around town before you join the motorway.

Corfe Castle is further east and a bit further out of the way, but if you've never seen it, it's worth going. The ruins sit on a hill above the village and the whole thing feels like it was put there deliberately to look exactly like that.

Lulworth Cove and the coast are about an hour from Plush - if you want to finish the trip with salt air and a beach, head south. Tyneham is also nearby, a village abandoned since the Second World War and only open at weekends (the army use it during the week).

Thinking about your next stay?

Dorset's a hard one to follow, but the Cotswolds give you something completely different - honey-coloured stone villages, Roman history and some of the most beautiful footpaths in England. Or head back east to the South Downs for bigger skies and longer ridge walks, with a different kind of countryside that's just as good in a different way.