A quick hello

[Justin]

Hello all,

my girlfriend and I live in West London and have recently started looking for a small piece of woodland of our own. We live in a flat so have no garden and, for the next few years at least, don't see much option to move where we'd have more space without landing ourselves a much bigger mortgage.

We're both outdoorsy people and so came up with the idea to buy a piece of woodland within a couple of hours drive of our home so that we could get away at weekends and spend time in the countryside.

Initially we'd camp, but I'm looking at building a tiny house on a trailer that we could leave in the woodland for visits. If you've not seen anything like this before, I suggest a quick look at http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ I actually started building one a few years ago, but the project stalled when it turned out the trailer I'd bought wasn't up to the job. You can see how far I got with the project at http://jaystinyhouse.com/ If I were doing it again I'd get a trailer made up for it to my own specifcations.

As far as I can tell, this would be treated the same way as parking a caravan on the site, which I understand you can do. The tiny house would just be a nicer, more fitting little place to park in the woods. I think I also understand that if I'm working the woods, ie coppicing etc then the nights I stay over during that work isn't counted as part of the 28 nights a year you're usually allowed to stay.

We looked into putting a small yurt in, but that seems to not be allowed from what I could discover.

Anyway, we're off to look at a wood near Guildford tomorrow, so who knows, we might be woodland owners soon :)

Cheers,

Justin.

[happybonzo]

I think that there have been a few posts on living in your own woods.

It depends on how many people tramp through but I've found that by keeping out of their way and the use of Camo nets no one even knew we were there - Good luck and have fun

[Justin]

Well, we went and looked at a wood today. Quite surprised at how small 3.5 acres is. The one we looked at was lovely, but there's very little undergrowth so it's not a very private wood and it seems like the parcels around it are regularly used so it wouldn't be particularly secluded from other people.

Still, a very good bit of experience about what we would or wouldn't want to look for in the future when checking out adverts.

[bat]

Hello, its none of my business but out of pure nosiness, I'd be interested in whereabouts you had a look near Guildford. Was it near Holmbury St Mary? I saw some woods advertised around there for some time now and that's a very pretty area. Good luck.