Forest of Dean Cabin: fab views, own garden, cosy

A rustic cabin on the edge of a wood above the river Wye, with lovely views from all windows. This sunny, south-facing cabin is welcoming all year round. It includes a powerful heater, warm cork flooring & rugs, double bed, fridge-freezer, hotplate, microwave & nearby s/c shower, loo & 2nd bedroom. You can cook simple meals or BBQ, & we offer delicious organic meals. Private garden, gym, sunbeds, fairy lights. Ideal for couple, solo traveller or artist on retreat. The space Our little country cabin isn't hotel-style posh but is cosy, serene and tasteful, with real English china, hand-thrown art glass, fresh flowers, pure down duvets and 100% cotton bedding, with a High Thread Count. You will wake to wake beneath a luxurious, warm Victoria and Albert bedspread to birdsong and wonderful views of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We provide basic self-catering facilities and a back-to-nature experience; it's like camping without the discomfort, and twice the beauty, but still on a budget. We love hand-crafted and vintage furnishings,preferably made in Britain, and only use natural materials - pure cotton, wool, silk, woods, bone china and real crystal glasses - and we garden and clean without chemicals. Our gardens are lush: our valley is a sheltered valley micro-climate and we have greenery, forest ferns and flowers all year round, many wild and unusual. The cabin's secluded garden includes fruit trees, grape vines, and wild flowers, herbs for your food, and you can BBQ on forest stone. It backs onto a wood with a magical clearing, perfect for picnics, writing or drawing, foraging wild garlic in spring and mushrooms in autumn, or just relishing the beauty of the trees and ferns. You are also welcome to use our garden gym, small and basic but adequate for a decent work-out, and in your private garden you will enjoy teak sunbeds with thick, comfy cushions, a hammock, Victorian wrought iron garden furniture and sun shades. You can dine indoors, on the cabin balcony or al fresco, beneath party lights. We provide local maps and guides, bright torches for night-time trips to the loo, pure wool blankets & hot water bottles for evenings outside, & board & garden games, puzzles & books for good old-fashioned rest and fun. Your shower room and wc are in a little self-contained annexe 20 yards away, in the main cottage, along a level, well lit path. Its door is low- 4.6" high - so some flexibility is needed. It opens onto a useful, cosy extra single bedroom. It and the cabin both have tea and coffee making facilities. We are on the slopes of the Wye river valley so our gardens are gently tiered. We have hand rails by all garden steps but unfortunately the terrain is not suitable for a wheelchair-user or someone with severely limited mobility. The cabin's garden enjoys sunshine till late in the evening, & backs onto a wood. You will see and hear many birds, including owls, and numerous butterflies, bees and sometimes deer. We also grow raspberries, plums, cherries, wineberries and elderberries, and make jam, juices, crumbles & ice cream from them. We use no chemical weedkillers or artificial fertilisers & they look, smell and taste wonderful! Here is a link to a sweet, funny 2 minute film made by Hand in Hand Visuals, two young film-makers who recently stayed with us. It shows our chickens happily free-ranging for all they are worth in the wood behind your cabin. We hope you will enjoy walking there - or 'forest bathing', as some now call it - as much as they do! They really are bathing here in the dust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DopcaUgIgnE Guest access Guests are welcome to explore our gardens and the woods behind us. The cabin is on the top garden tier behind our house, backs onto secluded, magical woodland, is not overlooked and feels wonderfully private. The garden gym includes a running machine, air walker, abs cruncher, exercise bike etc. The gym has great natural light and has also been used as a studio by visiting artists. The cabin's bathroom and 2nd (single) bedroom are in an annexe to the main house and completely self-contained, with their own front door and a private path to them. They cannot be accessed from the house and guests are free to come and go as they please. Other things to note We are off a road so there is some traffic noise, although it is a country B road and traffic is usually minimal in the evenings. There are no pavements on this typical English country road but, within five minutes walk, you can be off road and enjoying quiet, lovely paths by the river or through forest or fields. The cabin does not have running water but you can fill kettle & jugs from your private s/c bathroom in the main house, which supplies mains water. The cabin and bedroom access wi-fi but our countryside signal sometimes drops for a while. It is fine for e mails but probably not for watching long films. Most people coming here seem though to enjoy a digital detox, and end up switching off their phones and just enjoying the birdsong...