The Dispatch - Field Notes from Somerset
Issue 003
What makes something worth driving four hours for?
I asked myself this somewhere along the M4, in between service station flat whites and hedgerow detours. London slipped away and Somerset came into view: rolling hills, villages with names that feel lifted from English folklore, and the green scent of countryside air.
We went for Osip.
Now relocated just beyond Bruton’s centre, Osip isn’t a restaurant you simply visit, it’s one you stay in. We checked into one of its new bedrooms above the dining room: pale limewashed walls, warm timber, Classic FM humming softly on a Roberts radio, homemade cider and canelés waiting for us. A welcome that makes you exhale immediately.
The dinner was extraordinary. There’s no menu, just a slow sequence of farm-to-table dishes, beginning with canapés served in the garden before moving indoors to a dining room oriented towards the open kitchen. Sixteen plates in total, each one a small study in precision: the best cucumber I’ve ever tasted, tomatoes so delicious my mouth watered. Dessert carried us into the lounge for a final nightcap, before the luxury of rolling upstairs to bed. Breakfast was served Michelin-style: still-warm cinnamon bun, house-made granola, perfect fruit. Everything thoughtful, nothing overstated. You eat, you sleep, you wake up already folded into its rhythm.
From there, we went to Hauser & Wirth Somerset for Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths and Machines. The exhibition was electric: playful mechanical sculptures paired with fearless colour, a testament to two artists who lived and worked together, constantly feeding off each other’s ideas. It felt current and reflective of how creativity works now, with its blurred edges and crossovers: fashion aligning with hospitality, music folding into art, design running through it all.
The surrounding meadow, designed by Piet Oudolf, might be my favourite part of Hauser & Wirth. I’d seen his gardens in their Menorca site a couple of year but here, in Somerset, it feels singular. The hum of bees, grasses moving in layers, flowers that seem almost wild in their orchestration. It captures everything that makes an English summer feel alive: unmanicured beauty, light that lingers, and the quiet hum of a landscape in full bloom.
Later, at The Newt, that same interplay of disciplines surfaced again. Burberry’s takeover threaded itself through the estate - checked blankets draped over chairs, sun umbrellas and buggies flashing their signature plaid. It was Burberry absorbed into its context: checks, gardens, and a season they seem made for. I booked a yin yoga class in a skylit studio that felt closer to an art pavilion than a gym, then wandered through orchards and wildflower meadows for hours.
Lunch was at The Three Horseshoes, Margot Henderson’s pub. Pints, sausages, food to die for served without fuss. Everything about it felt intentional yet effortless, its the kind of place where even the Peugeot salt and pepper grinders seem purposefully sourced. It’s what I love about Somerset: places that feel considered but never pretentious, a countryside that’s both nostalgic and surprisingly contemporary.
We ended with pilgrimages to Glastonbury Tor and Stonehenge, staying at the nearby Manor House Inn. Both familiar from photographs, but changed when you’re standing there, wind in your hair, feeling the weight of how long people have been drawn to these exact points on the map.
By the time we drove home, I’d answered my question. What makes something worth travelling for isn’t novelty or scale. It’s specificity. Osip could only exist there, with its offering. Hauser & Wirth’s barn gallery feels inseparable from its meadow. The Newt’s yoga studio wouldn’t be itself without that skylight and surrounding grounds.
This is what the British summer does best: pub gardens buzzing, fields humming, stone walls in low sun. Its a reminder that sometimes the best trips don’t take you away but so much as pull you in.
Until next time!
K x
interiahysteria
sounds like such a lovely trip. Adding The Manor House Inn to my list <3