Built for saws, now mostly for sitting
The cabin was put up in the 1950s to store tools for the foresters working Greywood. When the estate stopped using it, Mara asked if she could rent it. They said yes, mostly to get it off their list.
It took a winter to fix the roof and a spring to run water up from the spring. The floor is the original larch, the stove came from a scrapyard in Ashcombe, and the long table was a door. There are twenty-two seats inside, a few more on the porch, and no plans to add any.
There is no wifi because the signal does not reach and we found we liked that. People talk, read, draw the dog, or just look out at the trees for a while. It is allowed.
Looked after by people who were here first
Greywood is a working wood, owned by the estate and managed for timber, deer and the people who walk in it. We rent a corner of it and try to be good tenants. The logs for the stove come from the thinning work. The nettles, mint and pine tips for the tea come from within a mile, picked a little at a time and never from the same patch twice. Food waste goes to the estate pigs, and the oat husks go on the path.
Leave no trace. Take home what you carried in, keep to the path, keep dogs away from the deer fence, and leave the mushrooms where they are. We will do the same.
- Slow Water Roasters
- Coffee, roasted in small batches in the old mill at Ashcombe and carried up the path on Tuesdays.
- Hollow Lane herbs
- Nettle, mint, elderflower and pine tips, picked within a mile of the cabin and dried in the loft.
- Greywood Estate
- Our landlords and the people who look after the wood. Logs for the stove come from their thinning work.
- Fallow Farm dairy
- Milk, butter and the cheese in the hampers, from the farm at the bottom of the lane.
Mara Lindqvist
Owner, cook
Grew up in a forestry house two valleys over. Took on the cabin lease in 2019 when it was a tool store with a leaking roof. Makes the soup and most of the decisions.
Owen Price
Baker, trail keeper
Bakes the buns and the seed loaf before dawn, then walks the path with a rake and a saw. If the waymarkers are straight, that was Owen.
Weekend help is sometimes needed in summer. Say hello on the find us page.