Rushay
Sleeps 14-20
Dorset
Garden and grounds
How’s your kick serve? Bring your Nikes because the all-weather tennis court stands ready for all-year-round action. Bring up to three dogs, too, for the fully enclosed, three-acre garden laid to lawn with apple orchard and paddocks. And bring your wellies for many a wander.
Pour a G and T for a convivial game on the sunken croquet lawn, awash with wild orchids in springtime. Walk from the garden to the sea in just 20 minutes. Wrap things up with a barbecue on the terrace, an evening staring at stars and maybe another gin or two. Why ever not?
Living spaces
Beneath the huge, swooping tiled roofs, the bright, light reception rooms face south and west for your daily sunshine fix. This is a world of high ceilings and waxed wooden floors with bay windows that suck in the garden and the unspoilt views beyond. Cosy up around the drawing-room fire with good reads from the bookcase.
Escape to the cottage for a quieter sitting room and a social detox. Get together in the study for movies over Netflix and Amazon Prime Video streamed over the Plusnet Unlimited fibre broadband. Play table football in the games room. Rushay gives you special spaces in which to reunite or spaces to recharge.
Cooking and dining
There’s a toasty-warm Aga keeping the place cosy but if you just see it as a radiator, maybe it’s time to book in our chef. Chat to Connie Hawker about her party-friendly menus. Or keep the service coming with takeaways from Cinnamon’s in Axminster, Charmouth Fish Bar, or Red Panda for an Asian-inspired food fix.
Stock up the American-style fridge-freezer with hearty goodies from Felicity’s Farm Shop, Lyme Regis’ Town Mill bakery, and Lyme Bay Butchers. Wash it all down with fizz from Morrish and Banham Wines. Eat around the 20-seat dining table or out on the terrace with kebabs and burgers searing and sizzling on the coal barbecue.
Eat out at The Anchor Inn in Seatown, an award-winning gastropub with outdoor seating and sea views, or The Royal Oak, Charmouth for a ‘dirty bird’, spicy sausage pasta or slow-roasted pork belly. Or try The Pilot Boat in Lyme Regis for grilled seabass fillet, plant burger or ribeye steak.
Get your fish fix from Mark Hix’s Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis, with super-fresh menus that change according to the daily catch. Head to Lilac Restaurant and Wine Bar in Lyme Regis for pan-fried hake or chalkstream trout. Or will it be spaghetti, mussels and brown shrimp or violet aubergine at Brassica in Beaminster?
Bedrooms
Close to the Jurassic Coast, on the edge of the chalk downlands peppered with mysterious hill forts and wrapped in three acres of grounds, Rushay delivers a great night’s sleep. Pick from nine bedrooms across two properties sleeping up to 20.
Bedrooms one and two on the first floor give you kingsize beds and south-facing aspects, while bedrooms three, four and five are first-floor doubles. Kids at the ready for bedroom six, an attic room with four singles, an en-suite shower and toilet. In the cottage, pick from three double bedrooms, one easy to access on the ground floor, with en suite shower and toilet.
What people say
Jurassic fantastic
Shoot clay at Wyld Court or brave the high ropes and zip wires at Tunnel Treetops. Recover with a tour and a pint of Dorset Gold at Palmer’s Brewery. Play the clifftop course at Lyme Regis Golf Club. Paddle at Seatown, hunt for fossils at Charmouth beach, or ride the narrow-gauge Seaton Tramway along the River Axe through two nature reserves.
