Peasmarsh

Peasmarsh has a small but appealing choice of places to stay, built around country house comfort rather than volume. Flackley Ash is the village's best-known hotel, a Georgian country house set in five acres of gardens and woodland with an indoor pool, spa and restaurant, and a genuinely rural feel despite being only a few minutes from Rye. Beyond this, options directly in the village are limited, with a scatter of farmhouse bed and breakfasts and self-catering cottages tucked among the lanes.

Most visitors wanting a broader choice of hotels, inns and guesthouses base themselves in Rye itself, a short drive or taxi ride away, where historic coaching inns sit alongside boutique townhouse hotels within the old town walls. This arrangement suits Peasmarsh well as a destination: it offers a genuinely quiet, rural stay for those who want it, with the fuller range of Rye's accommodation, restaurants and shops never more than ten minutes away by car. Booking ahead is worthwhile in summer and around half-term periods, when both Peasmarsh's own hotel and nearby Rye fill up with visitors drawn to Camber Sands, Bodiam Castle and the surrounding gardens.

Peasmarsh itself is understated, but it makes an excellent base for exploring some of the best-loved corners of East Sussex and the Kent border.

• Church of St Peter and St Paul — a part-Norman parish church around a mile from the village centre, with notably good carving around its chancel arch; local tradition holds that the village itself shifted location after the Black Death.
• Great Dixter — the celebrated house and garden at nearby Northiam, shaped by the plantsman and writer Christopher Lloyd and still one of the most influential gardens in England, with its half-timbered Lutyens-restored house and exuberant, experimental planting.
• Rye — the cobbled, timber-framed hilltop town just down the road, with Mermaid Street, the fourteenth-century Ypres Tower, and the Landgate all worth a slow wander.
• Rye Golf Club — a highly regarded traditional links course founded in 1894 to a design by the young Harry Colt, set among the dunes towards Camber.
• Bodiam Castle — the beautifully preserved moated fourteenth-century castle a short drive north, one of the most photographed ruins in the South East and a National Trust property.
• Camber Sands — East Sussex's only proper sandy beach and dune system, a short drive from Peasmarsh and popular for walking, kite-flying and swimming.
• Romney Marsh churches and villages — the flat, atmospheric marshland stretching east towards Kent, scattered with isolated medieval churches, sheep pasture and quiet lanes ideal for cycling.

The Cock Inn on the Rye road is Peasmarsh's traditional village pub, serving classic pub food and real ale to locals and visiting walkers alike. Flackley Ash, the village's well-known country house hotel, has its own restaurant serving a modern English menu with Mediterranean touches, built around seasonal Sussex produce. For a wider choice, Rye itself is only a few minutes away and has a strong food scene, from the historic Mermaid Inn to independent bakeries, seafood restaurants making the most of the day's catch, and cafes tucked into its cobbled streets.

Peasmarsh sits within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a landscape of small fields, ancient woodland and sunken lanes that rewards a slower pace than the coast a few miles south. There is no legal right to wild camp in England without the landowner's permission, and this applies as much to the farmland around Peasmarsh as anywhere else, so campers should always book an established site or arrange stays directly with a farm offering pitches, rather than pitching on private land unannounced.

The terrain here is gently undulating rather than dramatic, with heavy Wealden clay that can turn soft after rain, so a spring or summer visit tends to make for a more comfortable pitch than the wetter shoulder seasons. Several working farms in the parish and the surrounding villages offer camping and glamping pitches, often alongside orchards, hop gardens or the choose-and-cut Christmas tree fields the area is known for in late autumn, giving visitors a genuine flavour of Wealden farm life alongside their stay.

Glamping has grown steadily around Peasmarsh in recent years, with shepherd's huts, safari tents and converted farm buildings offering a more comfortable alternative to canvas for those keen on the location without the full camping kit. Given its position between Rye, Romney Marsh and the Kent Weald, a site here suits visitors wanting to split their time between coastal walks at Camber Sands, garden visits at Great Dixter, and exploring Rye's cobbled streets, all within a short drive of camp. As with anywhere in this part of Sussex, booking ahead for summer weekends and school holidays is strongly advised, since the best-located small sites fill quickly.