Dial Post

Dial Post is too small to have hotels of its own in the conventional sense, but what it lacks in numbers it makes up for in character. The Crown Inn, a 16th-century pub with rooms set right on the village green, is the obvious choice for anyone wanting to stay in the village itself, offering individually styled bedrooms above the bar along with a couple of self-catering cottages for longer stays or larger groups. Its position, a ten-minute walk from the gates of the Knepp Estate, makes it a natural base for visitors who have come primarily for the rewilding safaris and want to fall straight into a good dinner afterwards.

For a wider choice of hotels, bed and breakfasts and larger country house properties, Horsham is the nearest town with real range, around eight miles to the north and well served by road and rail. Worthing and the coast are a similar distance south, useful for those wanting to combine a countryside stay with a day by the sea. Wherever you base yourself, Dial Post's location just off the A24 means it is rarely more than twenty or thirty minutes from any of these alternatives, so staying slightly further afield need not mean sacrificing easy access to Knepp and the surrounding Weald.

Dial Post is a base for exploring rather than a destination stuffed with attractions in its own right, but what surrounds it more than makes up for the village's modest size.

• Knepp Estate rewilding safaris — Guided walking safaris and vehicle safaris take visitors deep into the Knepp Wildland to spot free-roaming cattle, ponies, deer, pigs and increasingly rare birds such as turtle doves and nightingales, on a landscape that has been left to find its own way since 2001.
• Knepp Wilding Kitchen — The estate's café and barbecue at Knepp, serving food sourced largely from the wild-grazed herds and the surrounding land, makes a good stop before or after a walk.
• The Repton Park and gardens at Knepp Castle — Landscaped in part by Humphry Repton around the castellated mansion designed by John Nash, with restored walled gardens open on selected days.
• Local walking routes — Public footpaths and bridleways link Dial Post to neighbouring villages such as West Grinstead, Shipley and Ashington, crossing the flat, hedged farmland of the Weald.
• Old Barn Garden Centre — A well-stocked garden centre on the A24 at Dial Post with a plant nursery and café, popular with locals well beyond the village itself.
• Shipley Windmill — A short drive away, the King's Mill at Shipley is a restored smock mill once owned by the writer Hilaire Belloc, open to the public on selected Sundays in summer.
• South Downs National Park — Cissbury Ring and the open chalk downland above Findon and Washington are around a twenty-minute drive south, giving Dial Post easy access to some of Sussex's best long-distance views.

The Crown Inn is the heart of the village and its main reason to visit for food, an award-winning pub with rooms serving a daily-changing menu of pub classics and seasonal dishes cooked by owner and head chef James Middleton Burn, who sources heavily from local Sussex breweries, farmers and foragers. Just up the road, the Knepp Wilding Kitchen serves café food and barbecue built around meat from the estate's own free-roaming herds. Beyond those two, options are limited within Dial Post itself, though Horsham and the surrounding villages offer a broader spread of pubs, cafés and restaurants a short drive away.

There is no legal wild camping in England without the landowner's permission, and Dial Post is no exception, but the surrounding Sussex Weald and the Knepp Estate itself have made this one of the more interesting parts of the county for anyone who wants to sleep close to nature properly. Knepp runs its own safari tents and glamping accommodation within the rewilded estate, allowing guests to wake up inside the landscape that its cattle, ponies and deer roam through rather than simply visiting for the day, and it remains one of the best-known examples of low-impact, nature-focused camping anywhere in the South East.

Beyond the estate, the flat, heavily hedged farmland of the Weald around Dial Post is not naturally suited to informal camping in the way that the open chalk downland further south is, so most campers head either to Knepp's own pitches or to small independent campsites and glamping sites scattered across the wider Horsham district, many of them on working farms diversifying into tourism. The terrain here is gentle rather than dramatic: expect oak woodland, scrubby thickets and small pasture fields rather than big views, with the chalk ridge of the South Downs visible on the horizon to the south as a reminder of what lies within easy reach for a day trip.

The best camping season around Dial Post runs from late spring to early autumn, broadly April to September, when the ground is drier, the days are long enough for a proper walk before pitching up, and the Weald's wildlife, from nightingales to butterflies, is at its most active. Midsummer weekends near Knepp can book up quickly given the estate's reputation, so early planning pays off. Glamping rather than traditional tent camping tends to suit this landscape best, given the area's clay-heavy soil, which can turn heavy after rain even outside the depths of winter.