Our favourite places to eat and drink near the East Sussex cabin

May 19, 2026

East Sussex has a particular way of hiding good things. The best pub is down a footpath through a farm. The best coffee is in a town most people don't think of as a destination. The craft brewery with the views is two miles across the fields with no signpost telling you it's there. Once you know where to look, the area around the cabin is genuinely well-stocked and almost everything worth going to is either walkable or a short drive at most.


These are the places we send guests to most.

Pubs

  • The Six Bells, Chiddingly (half a mile on foot)

Start here. It's half a mile from the cabin on a footpath through the farm (we will share on Komoot) and it's exactly the kind of pub East Sussex does well. Old school, big beer garden, good food for lunch and dinner and live music on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. If you're there on a weekend night it has a proper crowd. It's the most-used recommendation we give out and the one guests mention most when they get home. Walk there, walk back, get the fire pit going. That's a good evening.


  • The Gun Pub (3 miles, walkable via footpaths or 7 minutes by car)

A gastro pub with a country garden and dining room, proper seasonal food and local ales. You can walk there from the cabin via footpaths (we'll share the komoot) or drive if it's later and darker than you planned. Either way it's worth it. Good for a longer lunch or a proper dinner out if you want something a bit more considered than the Six Bells.


  • Gun Brewery and Taproom (2 miles, walkable)

A working craft brewery with views over the East Sussex countryside, 2 miles from the cabin through the fields. They brew their own beers on site, there's wine, and occasionally a food truck depending on the day. Closed Monday and Tuesday, so plan accordingly. The walk out and back is 8km and makes a very good reason to leave the cabin mid-morning. Sit in the sun for an hour, drink something local and walk home.


Cafes and delis

  • Laughton Village Shop and Cafe (on the way in from Hailsham)

A small deli with local Laughton produce for cheese, cold meats, bread, proper coffee to take away. Good for stocking up on the way in rather than doing a full supermarket run. The kind of place that makes the weekend feel more deliberate. It's in Laughton, just off the route from Hailsham towards the cabin.


  • Chiddingly Village Shop and Cafe (at the village)

Tiny village shop with a cafe serving fresh cakes. Easy to miss because it's small and quiet, but worth knowing about for a morning stop or if you need a few basics without driving to Hailsham.


  • Taith Coffee, Lewes

Lewes is 15 minutes from the cabin and worth a couple of hours on its own - independent shops, good pubs and the kind of high street that rewards wandering. Taith is a small, good coffee shop right in town. Go here for coffee and something to eat, then spend an hour looking around before you head back. There are walks along the canal too if you want to earn the coffee first.


The Six Bells and the Gun Brewery between them cover most of what you'd want from a stay out here - a walkable local and somewhere worth making a proper day of. Everything else fills in around them nicely.

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April 8, 2026
Green space, lower cortisol Every one of our cabins sits inside an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - Cotswolds, Canterbury, Dorset, East Sussex, South Downs. Studies on green space have linked time in landscapes like these to measurable drops in cortisol, the stress hormone. You don't have to hike or do anything in particular. Step out of the cabin door with a coffee, and the landscape starts its quiet work. Unfamiliar paths, clearer thinking The brain runs most of its day on autopilot (same commute, same rooms, same loops). Moving through unfamiliar terrain is one of the gentlest ways to wake it up again. Our cabins are placed on footpaths you've never walked: Cotswold Way trails from the Andoversford door, woodland tracks in East Sussex, Kent meadows, South Downs chalk ridges. The parasympathetic soundtrack Birdsong and wind through leaves nudge the nervous system into its "rest and digest" state - the one most of us don't spend nearly enough time in. We chose our sites with this in mind: away from roads, away from streetlights, away from the hum of modern life. Guests often tell us they slept better than they have in months. Nowhere to be The brain has a "default mode" it slips into when there's nothing to check and nowhere to be - the background state where memory settles and ideas connect. It doesn't switch on while you're scrolling. Our cabins are genuinely off-grid: patchy signal, no TV, no passive entertainment pulling at your attention. A notebook by the window Journaling in a quiet space has been linked to less rumination and steadier emotions because a thought on a page holds still long enough for you to look at it. Every cabin has a spot for this: a table by a window, a view of the field or the trees. Reading by the wood-burner A University of Sussex study found that reading for just six minutes can meaningfully reduce stress — more than a walk or a cup of tea. Add a wood-burning stove, a soft lamp, and no phone on the side table, and you've got the kind of evening that's hard to describe until you've had one. We built our cabins to be the conditions that let your body remember how to rest.
March 10, 2026
If you ask what the Countryside Code actually says and you'll get a vague answer about closing gates and picking up litter. It's not something anyone really teaches you and the detail has shifted over the years. Its pretty important when you visit the beautiful spots you'll find our cabins in s o here it is in simple words. It's built around three words: Respect. Protect. Enjoy. 1. Respect This is the bit about other people. The farmers, the dog walkers, the family coming the other way on a narrow path - be kind and respectful. Don't block field gates, driveways, or passing places when you're parking. Tractors and emergency vehicles need to get through at all hours. Follow the signs. If a footpath is closed or a sign asks you to detour, there's a reason. Usually livestock, sometimes a fallen tree. Trust it. Leave gates as you find them. Open stays open, closed stays closed. Farmers set gates deliberately and there's almost always a reason. Say hello. A smile and a "morning" to the dog walker coming the other way costs nothing and keeps the countryside feeling like the friendly place it mostly is. 2. Protect Stick to the path. Even when it's muddy and there's a lovely dry strip of grass next to it, stay on the muddy bit. That dry strip is probably growing something, and marked paths exist to keep walkers out of crops and away from nesting birds. Take everything home. Not just the obvious rubbish. Apple cores, orange peel, sandwich crusts. Food waste doesn't biodegrade as fast as people think. It sits around attracting animals that shouldn't be fed. Don't light fires. Open fires in the countryside are almost never allowed, even small ones. Dry grass and heathland catch in seconds. Our fire pits at the cabin are fine because they're contained. Keep dogs close. Between 1 March and 31 July there's a legal requirement on open access land to keep dogs on leads because of nesting birds. Around livestock, leads go on. Leave what you find. Wild flowers, birds' eggs, interesting stones, antlers in the woods. All of it belongs where you found it. Take photos instead. 3. Enjoy The third pillar is the one people forget exists. The Code isn't just a list of things not to do. It's an active encouragement to have a proper time. Plan ahead a little. Check the forecast. Bring the right kit. Tell someone where you're going if it's remote. Download a map offline because phone signal in the places worth walking is famously unreliable. Let yourself actually be there. Put the phone away. Stop and watch the kestrel. Pick blackberries if it's August. Sit on a bench for twenty minutes doing nothing. Have the second pint. Walk slower than you think you should. The whole point of the countryside is that it's not the rest of your life. If you stride through it like you're crossing it off a list, you've missed the thing. Be considerate and leave no trace.
February 18, 2026
Most of us who grew up on The Chronicles of Narnia remember the feeling more than the plot. The hush of the wardrobe door closing behind you. The crunch of snow that shouldn't be there. The sense that you've stepped, by accident, into somewhere the ordinary rules don't apply. That feeling is exactly what we want guests to have when they walk across the field to their cabin. You park the car, close the gate behind you, follow the path through the long grass, and somewhere along the way the week you've just had starts falling off your shoulders. Each cabin is named for a character chosen because something about them felt right for the landscape. Here's who lives where. Dorset Aslan belongs here for the obvious reason. He's the heart of the whole thing: regal, old, quietly powerful, tied to the deep magic of a place. Sit outside with a cup of tea and watch the mist roll off the hills, and you'll understand. Tumnus is his gentler neighbour. The faun with the umbrella who invites Lucy in for tea and sardines by the fire. The welcoming one, the cosy one, the place you come back to after a long walk and feel immediately looked after. Canterbury Lucy is the one who finds Narnia first. The youngest, quietly brave, the one who believes in things before anyone else does. Her cabin has that sense of discovery: pushing through a gate, walking across a field, finding something nobody else has quite noticed yet. Susan is the elder sister. Steadier, more considered. Her cabin is the grounded one, with the most amazing valley views where you find yourself staring for hours. South Downs Jadis is the White Witch, which sounds ominous until you remember her Narnia was buried under endless, beautiful snow. This cabin sits higher and more exposed, and on a frosty morning when the whole valley is silver and your breath hangs in the air, the name makes complete sense. Caspian is the young prince who sails east to find the edge of the world. His cabin has that outward-looking, horizon - seeking feeling. The one where your morning coffee turns into plans for walking further than you meant to . East Sussex Hwin is the mare from The Horse and His Boy. Gentle, thoughtful, quietly wise. Her cabin is the calming one, the place for people who need to be reminded what their own thoughts sound like. Reepicheep is the opposite. The bravest mouse in all of Narnia, forever itching for adventure. This one is for the walkers who can't sit still and want to be out on the footpaths by nine in the morning. Small, mighty, sends you out into the day ready for anything. Cotswolds, Andoversford Cornelius is Caspian's old tutor, the half-dwarf scholar who teaches him the true history of Narnia by candlelight. The bookish cabin. The one you bring a stack of novels to and end up writing in a notebook for the first time in years. Rabadash is the hot-headed prince from The Horse and His Boy. An unusual cabin name until you realise Rabadash is unforgettable. This one has personality. It's the one guests remember. Miraz is Caspian's uncle, a king with a certain commanding presence. The cabin sits well in its field and holds its ground. Cotswolds, Chedworth Bree is the proud war horse from The Horse and His Boy. The showier cabin, the one with the view that makes people stop talking for a minute when they walk in. Aravis is the runaway princess who rides with Bree across the desert. Fierce, independent, stubbornly kind. Her cabin is for the people who came here to do things their own way: solo weekends, girls' trips, anything that starts with "right, I need to get away." Edmund is the Pevensie who goes wrong and then goes right again, and by the end of the books he's the quiet, just one. His cabin has that same steadiness. Forgiving, warm, the one you come to when you need to put a hard week behind you. Tirian is the last king of Narnia. There's a bittersweet quality to him, a sense of an ending that's also a beginning. His cabin sits at the edge of things, where the ordinary world runs out and something quieter takes over.