Coffee stop with a view
A pandemic project led Lucy John to open a mobile coffee stop in a converted horsebox in the woods near Painswick. She tells BEE BAILEY about wild orchids, birdsong, and the secret to making a good cup
LUCY John has known the old railway path between Padstow and Wadebridge in Cornwall since she was a little girl, racing up and down it on her bicycle on family holidays to Polzeath.
Cycling down the same Camel Trail path as an adult with her husband, Charlie, and their Hungarian Vizslas Bolly and Taitt running along behind, they came across a man selling hot drinks and were struck by how good the coffee was, despite its off-road location.
“I remember thinking, ‘this is epic’ because we were in the middle of nowhere and this bloke was making the most insane coffee,” Lucy says.
“He had compromised on where he was but the product wasn’t compromised and I thought that was genius. That’s something I wanted to emulate.
“It was just the perfect pit stop for our journey – that’s what I wanted to do.”
When The Royal Oak in Painswick, the family pub Charlie and his father run, was hit by lockdown restrictions in the pandemic, Lucy was furloughed from her role as chef. She started to toy with the idea of opening her own coffee and cake stop, The Box Coffee.
Lucy and Charlie, now both 32, bought a stripped-out horsebox that had had electrics installed, been clad, and painted to echo the old Land Rovers with the white roof.
They set about their new venture, starting with a Fracino coffee machine that ran on gas, rather than a generator, to cut noise pollution.
“It’s an awful lot of work to put a coffee machine in, especially when gas is involved. I thought it would be simple but it wasn’t,” Lucy says.
“It was stressful because I went in blind but that’s my naivety. I had a dream and I wanted to make it work. Everyone mucked in and we got there in the end.
“I’d say to anyone, if you want to do something and you have a vision, you can achieve it, even if you have little or no idea about what you’re doing.”
The location she chose for The Box was on another path Lucy has known all her life, a section of the Cotswold Way national trail that runs near the home in Painswick Beacon she shares with Charlie and their 18-month-old daughter Margot.
The coffee they use is roasted in Cheltenham. The ice cream on sale in the summer comes from the family-run Yoke House Homemade Ice Cream, just a couple of miles down the road from The Box. And all the cakes are homemade by Lucy.
Lucy learned to make proper coffee when she was travelling in New Zealand.
She was barista trained while working for a couple who had a chain of bagel shops and a coffee shop on the side of the bakery. Having not really been a coffee drinker before, she fell in love with it.
The secret to making a good cup, she says, is good ingredients.
“I just wanted to do one thing – great coffee – really well, in a spot where people need one. The fact you are in the middle of the woods doesn’t mean you can’t get a really decent coffee to put a smile on your face,” she says.
“We buy the coffee beans from Ritual Coffee Roasters in Cheltenham. They are great guys with a passion for coffee who roast it all themselves. It’s great, honest coffee.
“A good coffee has got to taste smooth, it’s got to be silky and clean on the palate. You don’t want any bitter aftertaste or any sourness to it.
“I switch that coffee machine on every morning and the smell of those coffee beans never gets old.”
Getting the horsebox up and running wasn’t straightforward.
Lucy’s initial application for a traders’ licence was turned down by the council with concerns that it wasn’t right for Painswick Beacon – a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
“People just think burger van, lots of noise, lots of smell,” she says.
“What we were proposing was a horsebox which is in keeping with the surroundings. We wanted people to stumble across it and think, ‘Oh, that’s nice’.
“I wanted it to be unobtrusive.
We don’t use a generator so there’s virtually no noise; I park it in a barn overnight and charge up the battery and that keeps it going for the day.
“I’ve lived in this village pretty much my whole life. I know how beautiful it is up here and I don’t want to ruin it.”
Lucy appealed, providing more information about what she was planning and allaying concerns. She garnered local support and spoke with the members of a local conservation group. Her appeal was successful.
She and Charlie opened The Box in a walkers’ car park surrounded by ancient woods on Golf Course Road, a mile outside of Painswick, on May 1, 2021. The licence has just been renewed after their first year of trading.
They committed to disposing of their own litter, using a company that either recycles or composts all of the disposables.
“All of our packaging disposables are compostable. They’re more expensive but it’s very important to me,” Lucy says.
“Every single piece of takeaway packaging that I give out is compostable, the wooden stirrers, the cups, the sleeves, the lids, the boxes that the cakes go in, the napkins, you name it.
“That was a huge thing for me because it has to be sustainable.
“We’ve been getting it wrong for so many years, we’ve got to change.”
When the coffee machine is ready to roll in the morning, the first one she pours is her own oat flat white, usually sipped with some of her regular customers who are often queueing when she opens up.
“I have people that come and chat and treat it like a café,” Lucy says.
“Mostly it’s people on a dog walk or doing the Cotswold Way who use it as a pit stop.
“I love meeting different people every day. Everyone’s on a different adventure.
“When they are out on a walk they are happy, it doesn’t really matter if it’s rain or shine. I’m a welcome sight, a little caffeinated beacon.”
Lucy’s motto from the start was to keep it simple and “do one thing well”.
“You lose the vision of what we are trying to do if you start going into frappucinos and this with cream and blah blah. I’m not Starbucks, I’m coffee from a horsebox.
“We’ve got tea and a few syrups but it’s about coffee and the quality ingredients which are going into that coffee.”
And, of course, coffee often needs cake. Lucy spends her afternoons baking, both for the horsebox and the pub.
“I have a few recipes my mum passed down to me and I’ve made up a few of my own and they work really well.
“She has a very famous coffee cake and her Victoria sponge. Then I have my own recipes.
“The chocolate brownie is becoming quite famous. I do a carrot, orange and pistachio cake and that’s really popular, a lemon drizzle that my mum has given me – I get the recipes in these books where the spine has fallen off and all the pages are loose but the recipes work so well that I can’t get rid of them.”
Although it can get very chilly in the horsebox in the winter, Lucy loves the view from her “office window”, where she can watch the seasons change.
“It does get bitterly cold but the coffee machine is powered by gas so if I shut the rear hatch on the horsebox I can keep toasty warm. I have hand-warmers that go in my pockets, three pairs of socks, leggings under jeans, I’ve been known to wear ski wear. Alpaca wool socks, and hand-warmers are essential,” she says.
“It has got really cold, but it’s worth it. The view is stunning. Summer is just gorgeous. I have a little chair that I put on the grass next to the horsebox when I’m not in the trailer.
“The seasons are just beautiful. Not just where I am but the whole Beacon changes so much over the year. I don’t think I’d really appreciated it until I’d been stood in it every day for the last year.
“To be in those woods, there’s no better place, even when it is raining. I’ve had everything up there, snow, rain – it’s relentless some days but I don’t mind; I’ll take it all. It doesn’t really faze me,” she says.
“There can’t be anything better than having so much time with my little one and doing something I’m really so passionate about.
“Life is pretty full to the brim but it’s fun that way. The days fly.”
One of Lucy’s favourite sights from the horsebox hatch is the carpet of pale purple and white orchids that grow in the grass.
“It’s a sight to behold,” Lucy says. “It’s just a wonderful place. All I hear is the sound of the birds and the trees. There’s no place I’d rather be.”
■ Find The Box @the.box.coffee on Instagram. The horsebox’s location in the walkers’ car park on Golf Course Road, Painswick, Gloucestershire, can be found under ///melon.rising. buns on the What3words app.