Farm life has become aspirational. Not in a TV-presenter-with-a-smallholding sort of way, but in the deeper sense that many of us seem to be craving contact with things that are real, seasonal and tangible.
Gathering eggs for breakfast. The beauty of huge skies and open space. The sound of sheep baa-ing across a field. A glass of wine made from grapes grown just metres from where you’re staying.
These are simple pleasures, but increasingly they’re the things people are travelling for; an antidote, perhaps, to lives spent largely behind screens.
Across the UK, working farms are opening their gates in new ways. Partly as a means of diversification, partly because more of us want to understand where our food comes from and are interested in how the land is cared for. Old barns have become beautiful places to stay, shepherd’s huts sit among wildflower meadows, and family farms are inviting guests into the rhythms of everyday rural life. The best farm stays aren’t about pretending to be a farmer for the weekend. They’re about feeling part of a place.
Whether it’s a regenerative farm in the Devon hills, a smallholding tucked into the folds of Wales, a working vineyard, or a cider orchard heavy with fruit, these stays offer a chance to immerse yourself in landscapes shaped by the people who know them best. Here are our favourite farm stays in the UK for a taste of the good life (and hopefully, an epic farm shop). Don’t worry though – nobody’s going to hand you a spade and put you to work.
Titch Hill, Sussex.
The vines start where the garden ends. Titch Hill is a small-batch organic winery and working farm on the chalky slopes above Worthing, where rows of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir ripen in the coastal air and you can book a tour and tasting of the wine growing outside your door. Stay in the barn or one of two woodland yurts, walk straight onto footpaths climbing to Cissbury Ring and the South Downs Way, then bring a bottle back for firepit evenings under some of the darkest skies in the South Downs. A rare farm stay where the harvest ends up in your glass.
From £160 / night. Dog friendly. Each sleeps 2 + a baby.
Bonington Farm, Nottinghamshire.
Hidden inside one of the old grain stores is a tiny private cinema, swathed in mustard curtains, open to whoever’s staying. That’s typical of Bonington, a derelict Leicestershire farm that Sonya and Raffaele, a husband-and-wife pair from design and photography, transformed into 4 wildly different stays across 15 acres: a converted hay barn, a circular grain silo, a design-led space and a farmhouse. Each building keeps its own personality rather than becoming 4 versions of the same rental. Book it for 2, bring a few favourite people, or take the whole farm for up to 20, with massages, yoga, pizza kits and wine tastings on request if you’d rather never leave. Though the village pub is just a 10-minute walk for when you do.
From £160 / night. Dog friendly. Sleeping 2 or 8 – or a super-cool site takeover for 20
Glebe Cabins, Devon.
There’s a bakery on site, and a temperature-controlled room where the meats are cured; breakfast comes with your stay, and the good stuff is barely 100 metres from your door. Glebe Cabins are 3 cedar hideaways in the gardens of Glebe House, near Honiton and 4 miles from the Jurassic Coast, each with bright panelling, hand-painted murals and a woodburner that earns its keep when the Devon rain drums on the roof. Owner Hugo grew up here, back when his parents ran the house as a generous, food-loving B&B, and that spirit runs through the 15 acres of vegetable and cuttings gardens, the pool, the sauna and the tennis court.
From £264 / night. Dog friendly. Each sleeps 2.
Westgate Farm, Norfolk.
A miniature steam train runs right through the farm, part of the Wells and Walsingham Light Railway, which is not a sentence you get to write about many places to stay. Westgate Farm sits in the Stiffkey Valley, 10 minutes from the north Norfolk coast, where Sophie and Michael took on his father’s 350-acre farm and added two safari-style lodges: roll-up canvas gables, west-facing decks and open-air baths that fill to the sound of owls. Come in August and you can pick your own sunflowers; come any time and ask Sophie to stock the fridge with home-cooked meals so you barely have to leave.
From £200 / night. Dog friendly. Sleeping 2 or 6.
Paradise Farm, Suffolk.
The main house is enormous and pink, and it’s where owners Gemma and Thom live: she’s a former content director at Soho House, with the eye you’d expect. Paradise Farm is their 10-acre smallholding near the Suffolk coast, its ancient outbuildings turned into earthy, design-led lets you can book for two, four or six, or take over entirely for sixteen. Days go slowly here. Swim in the heated pool at daybreak, meet the chickens and kune kune pigs with the kids, walk the paths cut through the wildflowers, then carry a glass of wine into the woodland at dusk to look for muntjac deer.
From £196 / night. Dog friendly. 6 hideaways for 2, 4 or 6 guests (or a group of 16)
But wait, there’s more!
The full collection has every farm stay we’ve gathered, for a taste of the good life.
