The Gaggle of Geese at Buckland

Ice cream, golf and goats

What do you do if you fancy uprooting from a city for a lifestyle change? Well, if you’re anything like Sarah and Simon Colquhoon then it might involve saving a rural pub from the clutches of private residency and creating a holiday playground.

Six years ago, The Gaggle of Geese at Buckland Newton in rural Dorset was closed and crumbling; and Simon and Sally were running a leasehold pub in Brighton and looking for a change of life for themselves and their young son. After a few failed incarnations and an all-too-familiar attempt by a previous owner to convert it into private housing – mercifully thwarted by residents and the local parish council – The Gaggle lay empty amid its five acres of land… until the Colquhoons got wind of it. “We could see there was real potential there,” Simon told us.

But it wasn’t just the potential of the pub itself that attracted the family. They had one eye (or three) firmly on the adjacent land.

“The pub took us about 10 months to refurb, but we saw that the land and garden could be something really special that might be the key to making the pub viable,” says Simon.

This potential had gone largely overlooked by previous operators and, aside from occasional use by the Caravan Club, had been unused as a source of revenue, but the couple wasted no time in unlocking the income potential of the two-hectare space. “It was a great opportunity to create something that really complemented the pub.”

Whilst the pub was undergoing its initial £150,000 refurb, they applied for planning permission to bring five shepherd huts to the land, gradually adding them in as cashflow allowed.

But there was no way that the shepherd huts were going to be the end of the creation. More playful ideas sprang to mind and became reality as Sally and Simon continued to create a destination to attract all-comers: “We have a double-decker play bus; an air stream with a wood-fired oven; we’ve created an ice-cream parlour in the garden, a crazy golf course and a ping-pong shack.”

All this imagination and application led The Gaggle of Geese to be awarded the Best Pub Garden award at this year’s Great British Pub Awards. Alongside the shepherd huts, there are now furnished bell tents, and space for tents and camper vans, with dedicated toilet and shower facilities.

So does the pub complement the outside space, or is it the other way round? “There’s a bit of synergy there really. Some people will book because there are things to do and there’s a pub on site, but also, for the pub, it’s vital. During the summertime we’ll have 80 or 90 people staying on site every night,” says Simon. “They’re a captive audience as we’re the only pub in the village and there’s nothing around for about 10 miles or so.”

The accommodation sector has been subject to many changes in recent years and Simon reckons current holiday trends, especially in the camping and glamping sector, are partly driven by economic winds: “Camping is relatively cheap, isn’t it? And so it’s quite budget-friendly. All our activities are free of charge, so it means that people don’t feel as though they turn up here and we squeeze them for every pound.”

So what’s next for the ever-evolving Gaggle Garden? “We never say never, but our business development is really the wedding market. We’ve invested in a couple of giant teepee marquees that can seat around 120 people in them. Next year we have around 12 weddings booked in so we’re kind of fully booked for weddings next year.”

The direction of the business has been “an organic development,” explains Simon. “We never set out saying we want a double-decker playbus, pygmy goats…” Hang on there, Simon. Goats? Tell me about the goats!

“There’s four of them. They were an impulse purchase! We get a lot of kids from cities come to stay with us and, being a rural countryside pub within a farming community, we just felt it was important to have that kind of vibe going on. We have lots of kids who want to come and visit the pub goats.”

Not just kids, Simon. Not just kids.