‘We went from banking to building a shepherd’s hut’
Laura Fowler meets the glamping entrepreneurs who gave up their day jobs to create original stays with the wow factor
No sooner had Britain’s first offices opened than we started dreaming of escaping them. In his 1889 book Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome wrote of the restorative effect a jaunt up the Thames could have on the sickly city clerks.
Travel is often the cure for the malaise of the daily grind, whether it is a weekend in Wales or a midlife gap year. Yet sometimes, a taste of liberty prompts the question: what if we left – permanently? Ditched the 9 to 5 to move to the country or the coast and live a simpler, more sustainable, Good Life sort of life? But few actually do it. Too many ties. There’s comfort in the old routine.
When Covid blew apart life as we knew it, it enforced changes that we might not have chosen, but which some saw as freedom. And so they spent lockdown building their own great escapes as a new way of living – away from cities and offices.
As the pandemic fuelled our desire to break free, yurts popped up in practically every field in
Britain. What started as a few festival bell tents ballooned into one of the fastest growing sectors of travel, and not just in Britain – the global glamping market was reportedly worth £1.86bn last year, a figure set to more than double by 2028.
Now it’s gone way beyond glamping. Wilderness retreats get increasingly imaginative and luxurious, and there is something for everyone.
“Uniqueness, design and setting matter more than destination,” says Alex Wilson, founder of
Host Unusual. “People are searching for something experiential, away from the mainstream.”
For those who liberated themselves from the rat race and went back to the land, the fruits of their lockdown labours are being revealed. “If there’s one thing the pandemic taught Brits about tourism,” says Wilson, “it’s that you can unearth some real treasures on home soil.”