harness your creativity Join the travel trend of improving or enhancing your skills while on holiday in the beautiful surroundings of a PoB hotel. Experts in their fields are bursting with know-how on everything from horticulture to cider making, storm chasing to pickleball Words | Jane Anderson
CIDER AND SLOE-GIN MAKING Imagine the scene. An old-fashioned log barn deep in the Devonshire countryside, candles flickering in old wine bottles, a log burner in the corner. We’re at Bovey Castle, where
40 THE HANDLE • pobhotels.com
Activities Manager Hannah is ready and waiting for guests to learn all about cider and sloe-gin making – happily accompanied by a decent amount of tipples along the way. It's best experienced from
September onwards, as guests are led down from the hotel reception in the soft midafternoon sunlight, through the orchard where they gather apples. Once in the barn they set to work around a retro apple press. There are many jobs – holding the mulcher, feeding in the apples, turning the wheel, and holding the jug to collect the juice. Everyone gets a taste while listening to fascinating apple facts and participating in the process of turning this elixir into cider. There are many local ciders to sample before attention turns to the sloe-gin session. Guests experiment with the gin, sugar and homegrown sloe berries fresh from the estate and other natural flavourings, such as strawberry or raspberry. Gins from past sessions line the rustic barn shelves for guests to sample while listening to sloe-gin folklore and history.
