The Wellbeing Cabin, born of a collaboration between Unplugged and Healf, has been designed to help you slow down, reset, and recharge. Ahead, one editor’s honest staycation review.
Unplugged’s aesthetic cabins regularly decorate my FYP — ironic, as the premise is to switch out your smartphone for an early 2000s Nokia, fitted with Snake but free from all socials, allowing you to engage in a short-but-sweet digital detox.
If I’m honest, countless summers spent sleeping on a damp ground sheet at Girl Guide Camp almost put an end to my camping career. But it was easy with Unplugged – wellies and wheelbarrows on offer at the entrance, and pre-chopped wood available round the clock. The only thing on the agenda? Rest and reconnection.
I can’t say unplugging is something I do often – or at all – my screen time regularly exceeding seven hours. Yet, without endless demands to ‘spend the day with me’ from content creators I have more contact with than some members of my family, I had the time and space to mentally wander.
Top of mind? How rarely I sit in silence, my life admin performed alongside a soundtrack of reality TV or Greg James. And as I sat staring at the fire we’d built ourselves, I realised that I needed this escape for more than to break up with TikTok.
How it works: upon arriving at your wooden cabin fitted with a double bed, rainfall shower, fully-equipped kitchen, various board games and an outdoor fire pit, you’re asked to place your phone in a lockbox for the extent of your stay. In return, you’re supplied with an instant camera and a 10-pack of film to capture the highs. And for those concerned, the eco-composting toilet, aside from the fact that you don’t flush, is no different to yours at home.
Though the Wellbeing cabin, better known as Helix and located in the heart of the Five Hundred Acre Wood, has been designed in partnership with wellness retailer, Healf and kitted out with a few wellness extras to bring about holistic healing. Most extravagant? A five-seater sauna (despite the venue only sleeping two) and a Monk ice bath.
On arrival, I was reluctant to see what thoughts (and anxieties) came up. Of course, being in the woods with my best friend, whom I’d convinced to join me by selling it as the ultimate girls’ sleepover, I knew I’d be physically safe. But free from intrusive thoughts? Perhaps not.