-
Mad Mad Summer.
Well, with the kids mostly heading off back in the direction of school, the Dome Garden suddenly returns to a much calmer pace. And not before time. We can at last draw breath. In August alone we were overwhelmed with a tidal wave of nearly 600 enquiries for late bookings. And that was for just…
-
Quick Start for the Lodge Rooms or the Domes
This website is full of details about everything that goes on at The Dome Garden and in The Lodge Rooms, as well as giving a flavour of what it’s actually like to be here. But its a big site and there are a lot of pages, so here’s a more straight-forward account of what to…
-
Glamping Wedding
Dome Garden Glamping Wedding. It would be so easy to say what a gorgeous glamping wedding celebration we had here last weekend. We could talk about how fabulous the bride looked, how wonderful the speeches were and how great the ceremony was… But actually last weekend it was all that and so much more. 96…
-
Forest Schools
Take your class from Forest school to Forest proper! Are you looking for an imaginative and exciting venue for your school camps week? Well, look no further ! With an increasing national shortage of Outdoor Education Centres, we have suddenly been besieged by a rash of schools wanting to use The Dome Garden to extend…
-
Hobbity Dome Prices
Ok… So, all this blather about the Hobbity Domes or hobbit holes and no-one knows the rates as we don’t yet have a dedicated page for them (too complicated to explain!!). So this will have to stand in for now. Costwise they are cheaper than our other domes and ideally suited to couples. If you…
-
Fed up & board ?!
Food at the Dome Garden is a feast. Not least because it means, with us at the helm, there are no more burnt fingers or smokey eyebrows for you – and that’s just the starter. So, cast off your puffa jacket and fireproof mitts and settle in. Sit by the fire, with a Cold Cadogan…
-
£19 a night! Explained
Glamping from £19 per night??? So says GoGlamping.net Can it be true? Well, almost. The figure is based on the price per head, per night, for 8 people taking the Superdome for a midweek break in low season. Phew! But, in fact, it’s not true!!! It’s actually £18.28! Whilst, the word ‘From’ implies that this…
-
The Whole Enchilada
We enjoy making food at the Dome Garden. And our range of meals works so well we’ve had to fire the dishwasher! (no, that’s not a non-sequitur) So, if you want a break from the cooking there’s our, wittily entitled, “Fed Up & Board” package which is a half board arrangement that provides most of…
-
What to bring??
Ok. We know. This is a big website – and the more we write the less clear it seems to become! You can be forgiven, therefore, for not knowing exactly what is included in your stay and what you need to bring. So, here is our handy guide to what to pack and what to…
-
It’s all Greek to me!!
We were asked over Xmas how we work out the prices for the domes – so we thought we’d explain a bit more about how we go about it. All our pricing assumes that you take your dome for the full number of days in each break and fill it with the number of people…
-
NO more building. Period.
The great thing about deciding not to do any more building for a year or so is that you, well, don’t have to do any more building. But no-one said anything about digging? This is the new firepit. Jim, who dug it, said it was much warmer down there. We all agreed that was probably…
-
Best Beef Ever
There’s one BIG problem with the ‘Best Beef Ever’ meal we cook here at the Dome Garden… Don’t get me wrong. It really does live up to its name. It is the Best Beef Ever. Amazing joints of sirloin cooked in a vacuum to precisely the exact temperature that we like for the best part…
-
Something wrong?
A little word about our complaints procedure… Two years ago we set in motion a specific procedure, so that any complaint made to us can be investigated fully and due consideration given to whether any discount, refund or compensation might be appropriate. Thankfully, it is not used very often but when it is we hope…
-
Perfect Pig! Pit Cue style…
Food at the Dome Garden is being taken increasingly seriously. And this year has been a bumper year. The improved cafe is finally starting to take shape, the new bar will be all ready for next season and we served some the best food we have ever cooked in larger volumes than ever before. And…
-
Mushrooms anyone? Sustainable Building Technology!
Sustainable building is really tricky. “Are they finished then?” asked one potential guest of the Hobbity domes, looking to book for half term. “Err… yes.” “Sure?” “Well, No. Err maybe. I’m not sure” The answer is, in fact, a question. What is finished? If you’ve read any of the other posts about the Hobbity Domes…
-
How to get here.
DON’T FOLLOW YOUR SAT NAV ! Whilst Google Maps and Apple maps location software will all show you exactly where we are, only a few sat navs will actually get you here, as they don’t recognise our short forestry track as a road. Instead they lead you to a dead end in the middle of…
-
Canapés and canopies
It’s amazing how difficult it is to say canopies when you mean canapés and even more confusing the other way round (and worse if what you really mean is a can o’ peas!) Such were the problems with our delightful corporate guests last week who on arrival from London wanted the full champagne reception with…
-
Half term glamping breaks
Now then. Half term. What fun we have over the half term breaks. Always busy and always a gang of kids racing around the footpaths in pursuit of some wonderful thing that we grown ups can’t possibly fathom. Half terms have always been terribly popular – ever since we opened in fact. We think the…
-
Autumn Glamping Treats
Normally by this stage in the year were all exhausted and have no more ideas left (ha!) But this year we’re still full of beans so we thought we might indulge in a bit of a treat. In fact three treats in one this Autumn. Treat one – Bushcraft weekend over the 10th October. Fire,…
-
Get it ?
A group of 50 and 60-something women came to stay with us this summer. Not children by any means but they were delightfully open minded and they hadn’t lost the desire to learn. This is how one of them summed it up… “From the moment we arrived we were pretty smug. We kept telling ourselves…
-
The Green Smoothie Generation
Last month my eldest son was told to prepare a debate for his classmates. He came home and we pondered the possible range of subjects; fox hunting, abortion, world peace, the middle east, school uniforms – you know the score… I came back a few days later. “What did you decide on?” I asked. ”…
-
Pt 8. The Reveal!
Every architecture show on TV has a final part. In the business, it’s called ‘The Reveal’. It’s the bit at the end of the show where my old mate George Clarke walks up the road saying it’s all “bin Amazin’” and how he wonders if they could possibly have finished it since he was last…
-
Pt 7. The Phoenix Rises..
Ken’s amazing enthusiasm to rescue the project must have triggered some sort of chain reaction in the Forest. And this spring he brought a gift. Amidst yet another depressing downpour the smiley face of Jim appeared. Now if you meet Jim you might have a little trouble understanding him – a broad accented Forrester if…
-
Pt 6. The Fall.
The end of one season turned into the beginning of another, and the end of the next, before we could get back to work on The Hobbity domes of The Pebbles. By that stage ‘The Amazing Sustainable Building Project’ had truly become ‘The Awful Thing In The Corner’ hidden from view behind a slowly deteriorating…
-
Pt 5. The rise of the Hobbits, er… Pebbles, er…
With the name thing firmly resolved (!) work was frantic to get them finished in time for the start of the season. And progress was fantastic. Inspirational. Liberating even. The domes and the central, circular yin and yang en-suite were all rising beautifully out of the ground. It was hard work, mind you, and there…
-
Soft toy squad!
In Burma, when the second world war ended it took a while – in a few cases, decades – for some of the soldiers, hidden deep in the jungles of Burma, to receive news that the war was over and to finally come out of hiding. Something similar has obviously occurred over the last few…
-
Hobbits versus Pebbles Pt 4 – Identity Crisis!
The more astute and eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a sudden shifting of ground in the last thee stories… an inconsistency of detail, an uneasiness that creeps through the undergrowth of news like the neighbour’s cat stalking our chickens. It centres around the names. What exactly are these new domes called? Are they ‘Stone…
-
Hobbity domes – Pt 3. Hegemony and sustainable building
Power and control has been one of the overriding human emotions since we absorbed our gills and our tails and emerged staggering from the primordial slime. Throughout the history of the civilised – and not so civilised – world, one part of society has struggled to exert its authority over the other – and the…
-
The Pebbles – pt 2. Elegant Solutions
Elegant Solutions? It’s an architectural phrase favoured by lecturers attempting to distill the essence of great architecture and force feed it to their inattentive and distracted undergraduates – who in turn dismiss it all with a derisive tut. Ivor Smith was my Head of Architecture and he dragged us up to the Cotswolds one weekend…
-
The Pebbles – a new glamping experience – Pt 1
So begins the end of a long tale that started way back in the mists of time and is now finally drawing to a close, or rather, a start. The start of a new glamping experience. For the last two years visitors to the Dome Garden can’t fail to have noticed what is happening on…
-
Rockers in The Cotswolds
It’s slightly odd to describe a bunch of predominantly 40-50 somethings as ‘Rockers’, but a couple of hundred of them did put up a brave attempt to hold their own last weekend at the first ‘Rock the Cotswolds’ event. 75 of the areas ‘coolest’ companies (yes, that includes us), the so called ‘Rockers’, met up…
-
Forest Schools Camps
Forest Schools Camps weeks at the Dome Garden For five years now the Dome Garden has been providing exceptional, eco holidays for environmentally conscious individuals, families and groups of friends. Three-quarters of our guests in 2014 came with school age children and many of those were on their second, third, fourth or even fifth visit.…
