Park Hall Pods

Five luxurious glamping pods on stilts, perched on the edge of the Nottinghamshire village of Mapperley with whopping country views, Park Hall Pods offer home comforts and modern conveniences in an edge-of-countryside East Midlands location. It's no exaggeration to say that pretty much everyone who lays eyes on these swish pods wants to stay in them, and no wonder – Park Hall Pods is less like a traditional glamping site and more like a cluster of detached, quirky hotel rooms or cute holiday homes, fashioned cleverly around a former railway embankment. There's a solid, homely feel to the place that's only enhanced when you meet Gill and Julian, the couple who built it.

There are no shared facilities at Park Hall and there’s no reception desk either. There’s also certainly no need to put on wellies and traipse across a field. Instead you can just drive right up and park underneath your pod in your very own car port and climb the wooden staircase to your holiday accommodation, revealing a set of country views that you’ll never get tired of – either viewed through the pod's floor-to-ceiling windows or from the comfort of your private deck and hot tub.

Inside there is a high-spec living space with a great quality finish. There are Scandinavian-style, whitewashed-wood-cladding walls with a muted mustard and grey trim, a shower room, complete with robes and towels, and a kitchen equipped with everything you might need right down to coffee capsules for the Nespresso machine. When the living is this good, it’s likely that you’ll be content to stay local, taking advantage of the walks into nearby Shipley Country Park or down to the Old Black Horse where you might bump into some of the locals. But it's a great location by any standards, midway between Nottingham and Derby, with loads to explore if you have the time, from Nottingham itself to the delights of Chatsworth House, Haddon Hall and the Peak District.