Stoke By Nayland Apple Tree Lodges: An Eco Resort For All Seasons
The beauty of this golf-centred resort just wriggling across the Essex border into Suffolk is that if you’ve not the slightest interest in picking up a club, it really doesn’t matter. Naturally, golfers come to Stoke by Nayland Resort for the two 18-hole championship golf courses Gainsborough and Constable, referring to the scenic region’s best-known landscape painters, but among acres of grounds cloaked in velvety lawns swooping down to a lake rich with perch and carp, there are lovely views from pretty much all angles.
Neither I nor my teenage daughter Maya are fans of golf but arriving for a spa break, the bucolic scenery is soothing from the off. Down in the Peake Spa, one of the few of this scale in the area, we smother ourselves in mud as part of their Rasul Mud Therapy, selecting from a palette of different types for face and body. It’s a bonding experience before Maya departs for uni as we check each other’s mud coverage, and then sit in a warm-tiled scented steam room before showering, steaming and wrapping up in robes to graze on neat sandwiches, mint tea and scones in the poolside cafe.
The spa is named after the owners, the Peake family, who began their empire with the Copella fruit business, created from pressing fallen apples from the surrounding orchards. Some of the orchards were planted in the arable land bought at the end of the Second World War when it was a Women's Land Army farm. Ever industrious, the family then created one of the few golf courses in the area in the early 70s. The combination of entrepreneurial family and location was a winner - the humble Copella fruit juice brand was bought by fruit juice giant Tropicana in 1997, but it still presses apples from the family’s orchards.
Until 2012, golfing, spa-loving and wedding guests slept in the 80 comfortable but slightly dated rooms all with lake and green views, which have since been refurbished. They’d eat and drink classic burgers in the sultry-clubby bar with an open fire, which leads to a showstopper of a restaurant with views framed by floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s a smart yet easy going spot for fresh salmon and butternut squash with pumpkin seeds or artichoke risotto. Since then, ten cutely named Apple Tree Lodges built on the site of a WW2 Women’s Land Army hostel, allow a more remote type of stay (albeit with the facilities a short walk or golf buggy ride away), built on the site of the original Leavenheath women's land army hostel, part of which has been preserved as a small museum housed in the original red-brick water tower.
If we weren’t already relaxed from our spa session, the dreamy setting would have more than done the trick. Each light-filled lodge space is designed to maximise gazing at woodland (or the golf course, in some cases), listening to the sound of silence or bird song, and generally enjoying the lavish seclusion. Open plan design means glossy high-spec kitchens - naturally offering a bottle of Copella apple juice - blend into smart dining and living areas under vaulted beamed ceilings. Vintage-style Women’s Land Army posters add historic charm. Each lodge takes its name from a traditional variety of English apples grown locally by the family.
Decked balconies and terraces encourage you to spend time outside in protected nature that’s part of the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It certainly earns its title, alive with owls, osprey, Canada geese, nightingales, badgers and deer among the ponds, lakes and hedgerows and fallen trees piled to allow insects and reptiles to thrive.
As fully self-sufficient as the entire resort, 100% of the heat and power for the lodges built from sustainable hardwood comes from green energy sources on site, including solar panels and air-source heat pumps. Once secreted among all this eco loveliness, you see, it’s really hard to leave and with a well-stocked shop full of locally-made treats, you could almost stay forever.
*Two nights' self-catering at Apple Tree Lodges (minimum two night stay) costs from £209in a one-bedroom penthouse lodge (based on two sharing), and from £304 in a four-bedroom lodge (based on four sharing).