unplugged

offline

We drive two hours north of London on a Sunday. Past Stansted Airport and into the countryside, the roads start to narrow, pubs crop up increasingly, and it starts to feel very different from the city life we’ve become used to.

We park a little away from our final destination, directly outside a little wood hut named the Egg Shed on Rockell’s Farm. One peek inside, and there’s a vending machine with several dozen eggs, freshly bottled apple juice and runny honey. Behind the shed are plump, free-range chickens clucking about. The notice on the board says there are 28,000 chickens across thirty acres of land. We grab our wheelbarrow and haul our bags out of the car, making it up the 350-yard hill to our hidden cabin at the top.

I’m not sure when these fantasies started creeping in: of forests, quietness, and nobody to answer to. We booked this place two years ago (a series of unplanned events had us delaying it over and over again until I finally said enough! and rebooked it for Autumn this year). And the timing has been just right, we’re here just as I’m feeling the burnout from my job and as B starts a new one the following week. The perfect escape from the city, and quite frankly, people.

I am, very guiltily, a mindless scroller. I’ll procrastinate scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, a bit of Substack and then back to Instagram: whatever I’ve not grown bored of in the last few seconds of browsing. The eco-cabin serves as an offline experience, a place to get off the grid and lock your phone away (literally). While I didn’t exactly do that, I did tell everyone I wasn’t going to be contactable for three days, which served me a nice piece of solitude.

In theory, I intended to brainstorm and write a lot, even if it was by hand and on padded paper. Reality, instead, found me reading and walking and fiddling with the antennas on the radio.

Removing yourself from the city reawakens your senses. The isolation of hearing nothing but the crickets in the grass or the steady patter of rain against the window is delightful, but it’s also the indulgence of lying in a bed to gaze as the clouds go by; the playfulness of watching hares chase each other in the long grass or even a bouquet of pheasants (that’s what they’re called) as they tottle after each other, seemingly confused about the direction they’re supposed to go in. There is no noise, no demands or chores on an unplugged holiday.

I woke in the night to the sound of heavy rain hitting the top of the cabin and when I peered out into the darkness, I could see only a sliver of light on the horizon. Dawn was going to break soon. I pulled the covers closer, reached for B’s hand in bed, and listened to the sound of the branches rustling against each other.

I start reading from the moment I wake up, followed by a pour-over coffee and then more reading. We break for lunch and board games, and I fiddle with the provided cassette tapes — winding back ABBA’s Greatest Hits and singing along to S.O.S and Hasta Manana. Weather permitting, we ventured out for a walk through public pathways that cut through farmland. B insists on using a physical map, and we somehow walk three kilometres more than we needed to, but that’s just what you do with no schedule to keep to.

Though I usually avoid the rain, bundling up in my raincoat and yellow bumblebee wellies to hike five kilometres to a micro-bakery was worth the trek. There was nothing but the squelch of our feet through muddy grass and the running of water along the ditches on either side of the path. We play a movie guessing game. You describe three words for the film, and the other has to name the movie. B says Bicycle, and I shout E.T. I say Fruit, Boy, Bugs and B declares James and the Giant Peach. This goes on for ages and is surprisingly entertaining.

It’s a privilege to afford the responsibility-free existence, to do nothing but savour my solitude, and maybe because of it, I’m more keen to schedule it. Because I need it — need that distance from the city, from people, from all that umming and ahhing that requires a little bit of attention to complete.

I’m usually quite restless after a holiday, the urge to get away from the desk comes back to me rather quickly. B said it’s because I plan my holidays like military boot camp — lots of walking, early mornings, activity-filled days — that by the time I return home, my body and mind haven’t experienced any rest. I never really thought about it. Sometimes it takes an unplugged holiday and a bit of rainy weather to realise the impact of a truly do-nothing vacation.

---