Longash Bell Tent

Location: Merrivale, West Devon

Longash is a place like no other in the world. Fifteen acres of granite smallholding on Dartmoor, wrapped by one of England's last true temperate rainforests, ancient oak and sycamore, mossy stone, the Walkham running through it. It's the kind of landscape that makes you drop your voice without quite knowing why. Fitting, really, given the Bronze Age stone row sits within a stone's throw, put there by people who felt the same pull to this ground thousands of years before us.

We're Sam and Lisa (and our two kids, Aluna and Lyra), and we're building this place slowly and properly, because we live here and we mean to stay. You'll find two homes so far: Fyxen, a Lotus Belle bell tent available seasonally between April and October with a wood burner and a view that changes with every hour of light, and Trēowbur (not quite finished yet!), a tiny home tucked beneath an old sycamore. Both are named in Old English, because this land has been here far longer than we have, and it felt right to borrow the old tongue.

Arrive, and the moor does the rest. Nights here are properly serene, just stars and the odd owl. Mornings bring mist off the river and birdsong.

Sit outside Fyxen at dusk with the woodburner ticking and you'll understand why we only leave when we have to.

You're a short walk from the Dartmoor Inn, which cooks meat on a roaring open fire and does the best scallops we've ever tasted. Longash is close enough to Tavistock for its market and shops, and surrounded by walking straight off the pitch, moorland, ancient woodland, the stone row, the river. Bring boots. You'll use them.

What makes Longash different is scale and care. This isn't a big site, it's a handful of pitches on a smallholding we're building with our own hands, which means you get our full attention and a place that feels genuinely lived in, not manufactured for guests. Book a couple of nights, and you'll understand why people who visit tend to come back.