Head to the market town of Ashbourne, Derbyshire; weave your way along the narrow streets lined with Tudor and Georgian buildings along the A515; under the arch for the ‘Green Man and Black’s Head Royal Hotel’; hang a left towards Buxton up the hill; turn left at the ‘George and Dragon’; wind your way up the narrow street; and take the road on the left to Mapleton. 

You’ll be squeezed through a narrow tube of high stone walls and towering mature trees and pop out into this landscape. And you really will feel like you’ve left all the bustle and noise behind you and been miraculously transported to another world. I couldn’t believe the instant change – so close to town but so far away from the chaos of life.  

A little further on you’ll bounce over a hump backed bridge, turn right up an old drive way through another tunnel of trees (a broad one this time, with fantastic old lime trees) that directs you up the sweeping drive to a marvellous grey stone Victorian mansion that is now the home to Wildhive, Callow Hall.  

One of the reasons the owners chose this place for their destination hotel, was the journey from bustle to calm that we’ve just travelled along, and for its sweeping views over this beautiful landscape. Just a joy to hear that the location, the journey, the setting, the entrance, the atmosphere, the outside, was, and is, such an important part of the business plan here. They’ve been so careful to keep this foremost in the design of their tree houses in the ancient woodland behind the hotel and it does feel like they’ve grown out of the ground where nature let them in. 

Thank you to Ed Burrows for showing me around such a stunning location and venue.