The Art of Escape is our way of exploring the stories behind the places that stay with you – and the people who bring them to life.
In this chapter, we spent time with Yolanda, who, alongside her partner, has spent the last few years rewilding a steep stretch of Devon hillside – re-introducing native species to shape the land and building three cabins into its contours.
We were sat up on the hill one day, listening to the storks clattering, and we could see the boar grazing with the deer. You could just hear the valley was alive, and we thought, wow, actually yeah – this is pretty amazing.
I’m originally from Devon and grew up round here, so this has always been a very special place to me. I’ve always had a deep connection with nature and knew that I wanted to work within it somehow.
You’ll see the landscape here is quite steep, so it’s hard to farm. We gave the land a couple of years’ rest to allow it to recover and restore, and watched to see what it would do on its own.
A few years after doing this we decided to introduce certain animals. They’re the domesticated versions of wild ancestors, so they maintain and keep on top of the more dominant vegetation species – they’re the ones that really help to shape the landscape and create this mosaic of biodiversity which nature loves.
We built these cabins after Covid, and I think there was a big shift in what people wanted to do in their spare time, realising how important it is to be in nature. So that was good timing as well. It’s nice to bring people here, to reconnect with nature and remember that we’re all part of nature, so we need to learn to live alongside it.
I think people are probably more familiar with the deer than any of the others because they see them in the wild – but you very rarely get a close encounter with these animals, because they’re very flighty.
We actually hand-reared a couple of the hinds here, so they’re really friendly. They’ll come and interact with you and with guests, so you get that personal interaction with them which you’d never experience in the wild.
And the boar – I think a lot of people are maybe a little bit frightened of boar if they’ve ever encountered them or seen them on TV. When people come and spend time, especially with these two pigs – they’re very friendly – I get photos from guests with a pig at their feet saying are they OK? And I’m like, they’re absolutely fine, they just want you to stroke their belly.
A lot of people don’t realise they were native to this country, and for us, we feel like they do have a place here and they should be a little bit more accepted in areas where they once were. It’s nice for people to maybe get that emotional connection back with those animals.
We were very conscious about having the cabins as an extension of the landscape. We didn’t want them to stand out, we wanted them to blend in with everything, with all the surroundings.
We’re very lucky that a good friend of ours is Tom from HAM Interiors. We gave Tom a lot of creative control over the interiors, and he wanted to explore his new cabin range – so this was the perfect scenario for him to come and work his magic. He definitely did that.
We wanted the interiors to tell part of the story. So we’ve got lots of things like the boar artwork, which is obviously something that we use here as part of the re-wilding. We wanted it to be personal and reflect us and our personality.
I think the wood-fired tubs are quite a cool thing to do. They’re amazing to just sit and bathe in nature – especially Ukai, it has its own one on its own platform, so you feel like you really are forest bathing. That’s a cool experience.
Life is just so busy that I think everyone craves that stillness and that quiet. A lot of the feedback we get from people is oh, I haven’t slept that deeply in a long time. It’s quite difficult to find somewhere that is so quiet now.
Although we feel very remote here, and it’s all quite private – you don’t see another cabin or another person – it’s still quite accessible. You’re not too far away, but you feel like you are. So it’s a nice mix.
What the whole place stands for, ultimately, is reconnection. Allowing ourselves time to breathe. We purposely didn’t put TVs in these cabins – we wanted people to come, be with each other, talk, listen, and fully immerse themselves in the landscape. We wanted it to be something that was comfortable, with that luxury side, but also to just be in the wilderness, and really remember what that looks like and feels like – because it’s not really available for everyone.
Escape to the wilderness…
The cabins are part of the project, not separate from it. Stay in one and you’re sleeping inside a working re-wilding scheme – boar in the woods, deer on the hill, the valley doing its thing around you.
