Staying at Lilypod
Whether you’re thinking about booking a stay or already counting down the days until you arrive, we hope you’ll find everything you need here.
Some of these are questions we’re asked regularly. Others are things we’ve learned over the years that help guests make the most of their time on the lake. Together, they paint a picture of what staying at Lilypod is really like.
If you don’t find the answer you’re looking for, we’re always happy to help. Just get in touch and we’ll do our best to answer your question.
We can’t wait to welcome you to the lake.
Getting here & Arrival
The easiest way is to pop the postcode into your satnav: Lilypod, Lewdown EX20 4PJ.
For the final stretch we’d recommend What3Words, which brings you right to us: ///hazelnuts.plank.assure. (It saves that classic moment of driving up and down a Devon lane wondering if you’ve missed the turning.)
We do self check-in at Lilypod, so there’s no one to meet and no waiting around. Before you arrive we’ll send you a WhatsApp with everything you need, including your pod key code and a short welcome video that gets you oriented the moment you step out of the car.
It means you can arrive in your own time and settle straight in.
Check-in is 3pm
Check-out is 10am
That gives us the time we need between stays to get your pod spotless and everything ready for you.
Arriving after dark is absolutely fine.
Just one thing worth knowing: there’s a short walk from the car park down to the pods, so if you’re coming in after dark, have a torch or your phone light ready. It makes finding your way down simple.
We do ask everyone to arrive by 10pm. Not for the sake of a rule, but to protect the quiet and privacy of the other guests staying with us, who won’t thank us for cars pulling in during the small hours. If for any reason you need to arrive later than that, please contact us first and we’ll sort it out between us. WhatsApp is the best way to reach us.
Each pod has its own dedicated parking spot, just a short walk from the pod itself.
If you’re arriving separately, in two cars, there’s an additional parking spot available too. Just let us know in advance and we’ll have it ready for you.
You can, though a car does make exploring Dartmoor easier.
The nearest train station is Okehampton, less than twenty minutes away. From there, your digital guide has numbers for local taxi drivers who can bring you to us.
There’s also a bus service that runs right past the farm, which you can pick up just outside our gate. It’s charmingly old-school: a wave-down service, so you stick your hand out and it pulls over for you.
Choosing Your Pod
All three pods offer exactly the same comfort and the same luxury. Each has a king-size bed, a wood burner, a walk-in shower, a fully equipped kitchenette, its own canoe, a fire pit and complete privacy. What sets them apart is where they sit, and the mood that comes with it.
Heron is our original floating sanctuary, and the closest to the waterfall. If you love the constant sound of moving water, this is the one. It also has the longest pontoon of the three, with a fire pit suspended out over the lake, so it feels wonderfully in the middle of everything.
Kingfisher gives you the same floating experience with a little more room on land. Alongside the pod is your own secluded lakeside garden with its own fire pit, ideal if you like to spread out, relax outdoors between swims or settle in for a long evening by the fire.
Lapwing is our newest, and the sunniest of the three. It catches the light for more hours of the day than the others, so if you like to chase the sun, this is your pod. Its standout feature is a floating fire lounge, a spot to sit around the fire completely surrounded by water, which comes into its own once the sun finally dips.
Can’t decide?
Honestly, there’s no wrong choice. Every pod is positioned for privacy, every one has the same luxury inside, and every stay is built around the same feeling: slowing down, reconnecting and leaving lighter than you arrived.
Lilypod is an adults-only experience.
It’s a deliberate choice. The whole place is designed around quiet, space and the chance to properly switch off, so we keep it exclusively for grown-ups.
What's supplied with your stay?
Quite a lot, actually. You’ll find all bed linen and towels, tea and ground coffee, sugar, cooking oil, mixed herbs including chilli, salt and pepper, washing up liquid, cleaning items and tea towels, shampoo, conditioner, and hand and body wash. We also supply firewood, firelighters and matches for your fire pit, though we don’t provide barbecue charcoal, so bring your own if you’re planning to grill.
Yes. Each pod is connected to mains drinking water, drawn from Meldon reservoir, so you can drink straight from the tap.
Because the reservoir sits on Dartmoor’s granite landscape, the water is naturally soft and free from the heavy agricultural or industrial pollutants you sometimes get elsewhere. It’s rather nice water, as it happens.
The lake itself is a different matter, so please don’t drink from the lake.
Neither, and that’s entirely by design. Lilypod is a true digital detox, so once you arrive, you’re properly unplugged.
If you do need to get online or make a call, the Vineyard café is just five minutes’ walk from your pod and has Wi-Fi.
Booking & Planning
Online, straight through our website, using the live availability calendar. You’ll see exactly what’s free across all three pods and book directly.
We ask for a 50% deposit to secure your booking, with the remaining balance due one month before your stay. Full details are set out in our terms and conditions.
If your plans change, let us know in writing as soon as possible. We’ll do our best to re-let those dates, and if we’re successful, we’ll refund what we recoup, less a £50 admin fee to cover our time. If we’re not able to re-let the dates, the balance of the stay remains payable. Full details are in our terms and conditions.
Yes, two nights minimum, with a maximum of three. In summer we can sometimes go longer than that by arrangement, so if you’re dreaming of a longer escape, just ask
Yes. Every voucher is made to order, and each one is valid for a year, giving you plenty of time to choose the right dates.
Everything you need for a comfortable stay is already provided (you can see the full list above), and anything else specific to your visit is covered in your digital guidebook once you’ve booked.
Yes, and we love it when guests tell us. Anniversaries, mini-moons and proposals are all things we help with regularly.
It can be as simple as flowers, chocolates and a bottle of good champagne waiting in the pod, or something a little more involved, tailored to what you and your special someone need. Just get in touch and talk to us. We’re here to help make it happen.
Life on the Lake
Yes, and it’s one of the best things about being here.
Each pod has its own lake ladders, so getting in and out of the water is easy, and there are life buoys close at hand.
An early morning dip, a cool-off on a warm afternoon, or just sitting on the edge with your feet in the water, the lake is yours to enjoy. Your digital guide has a whole wild swim section with more on making the most of it.
A few sensible things, for your safety as much as anything: there are no lifeguards, so swimming is at your own risk. Please don’t swim after drinking alcohol, and never swim at night.
Always use the lake ladders for entry, it’s temping to dive in but it is a wild environment so please don’t.
Beyond that, use your good judgement and enjoy it.
Yes. The lake is spring-fed, filling an old nineteenth-century lime quarry, so there’s a constant supply of fresh water moving through it.
We test it ourselves every month for bacteria, using proper testing kits from Simplex, who we’ve always found excellent for this kind of thing. Algae gets watched year-round too, but it’s not just a case of waiting to see something and reacting. Understanding the lake’s ecology and water chemistry means we know which times of the season carry a higher risk of algal blooms, so we can test specifically for blue-green algae, the one that matters for safety, when it’s actually likely rather than at random.
Like any natural body of water it shifts a little with the seasons, clearer on some days than others, but that’s simply a healthy, living lake doing its thing.
At certain points during summer you might notice the lake take on a green tinge. It’s completely natural, and nothing to worry about.
That colour comes from phytoplankton, tiny organisms that live throughout the lake and contain chlorophyll, the same pigment that makes leaves green. When conditions are right, warmth, sunlight, they multiply a little, and the lake shows it. It’s simply a sign of a living, functioning ecosystem doing what lakes do.
This is different from blue-green algae, which is the one we specifically test for and watch closely. The everyday green tinge you might see is harmless.
Yes. Each pod has its own canoe, moored right beside your suspended hammock, so you can head out onto the water whenever the mood takes you.
Paddles and buoyancy aids are supplied, and we ask that the buoyancy aids are worn whenever you’re out on the water.
Half the fun is never quite knowing what will turn up, but the birds and fish are the real stars for me.
Herons, kingfishers and lapwings are all here. They’re shy sorts, so early morning is your best chance of catching them. The cormorant is the opposite: a proper show-off, out and about all day and quite happy to be watched. We’ve grown rather fond of him.
Look up in summer and you’ll often spot buzzards and kites circling overhead. The hills around us seem to throw off good thermals, because these big, powerful birds love it here, and they’re a wonderful sight riding the air above the lake.
No, we don’t allow fishing.
The fish are part of the lake’s ecosystem and we treat them as protected, so they’re left in peace along with everything else that lives here.
No, we don’t allow drones at Lilypod.
They’d disturb both the peace and the wildlife, and both are rather the point of this place.
We’d rather you didn’t, thank you.
Letting the wildlife find its own food keeps the whole lake healthy and behaving naturally, which is exactly how we like it.
We’re sorry, but we can’t welcome dogs at Lilypod.
We have a family of beavers living close to the lake, a recently reintroduced and protected species in the UK, along with a lot of other sensitive wildlife that has made its home here. Keeping the site dog-free is a big part of protecting them, and of keeping the whole place as calm as it is.
The Build
Every pod was designed and hand built by me at the farm.
From the start we designed both the base and the pod to be modular, and that was a deliberate choice. It means we can build a pod weighing nearly five tons and get it onto the water without heavy cranes churning up the lake and the land around it.
We start, naturally, with the base. It’s made of eight sections, assembled right there on the water. Once that’s in place, we bring the pod panels down, all 192 of them, and then the fun really begins.
Each pod is a geodesic dome, one large open space with no internal walls or supports holding it up. The curious part is how it behaves as you build it. For most of the assembly the whole structure stays loose and fluid, almost like a jelly, with nothing yet holding it firm. Then you lock in the final few panels and it suddenly becomes immensely rigid and incredibly strong. It’s rather like closing an archway: every single piece has to be in place before the structure finds its strength. That moment never gets old.
None of this happens quickly. Between making all 192 panels, the base sections, the steelwork and everything else that has to be ready before it reaches the water, a single pod takes around a year, from the first cut of timber to being able to add the cushions to bed. It’s been a proper labour of love (and occasionally a labour of “why did I make this so complicated”). But we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Beneath each pod sit fourteen individual flotation units, each able to support up to a ton on its own.
We chose fourteen separate units rather than one large hull on purpose. Because they work independently, the pods don’t rely on any single sealed structure to stay up, which makes them about as close to unsinkable as a floating building gets.
To get the balance right, every piece of the pod was weighed as it was built, section by section, so we knew exactly what it all added up to. A finished pod weighs 4,700 kg (4.7 tons), and with more than ten tonnes of buoyancy underneath it, there’s a very generous margin to spare. It’s part of why they feel so reassuringly solid the moment you step aboard.
To make Lilypod, I’ve actually made two geodesic domes and placed them inside each other.
It isn’t just for looks. The double skin lets us build in proper waterproofing and insulation while keeping that beautiful timber-frame feel on the inside. It’s the reason the pods stay warm and dry through a Dartmoor winter without losing any of the warmth and character of the wood around you.
The timber is finished using Shou Sugi Ban, a traditional Japanese technique that preserves wood by charring its surface. The clue is in that one word: char.
Burning the outside of the timber does something quietly clever. The heat changes the cells in the surface layer, tightening the structure and turning that charred skin into a tough, natural barrier against rot and the weather. Timber that would normally need treating and re-treating instead protects itself.
It even keeps the insects at bay. They don’t much like the taste of char, so they leave it well alone.
So while we do think it looks striking, and we love how the black lets the pods settle quietly into the landscape, the charring earns its place for reasons that run far deeper than looks.
This is one we get asked a lot, and the answer usually surprises people. We didn’t buy them at all. They weren’t shipped in from a factory in Sweden or Norway, and you won’t find them in any catalogue. Every pod was designed by me and hand built by me, here on the farm. The one you’re staying in started life as an idea and a pile of Devon larch, and not much else.
We get asked this one too, usually by someone who has absolutely loved their stay.
The gentle answer is no. I only build them for Lilypod, and that’s a deliberate choice. I want them to stay unique, something you won’t find anywhere else. There are just three of them in the world, and all three live here on our lake. If you want to spend a night in a Lilypod, this is the only place you can.
Sustainability
Yes. Genuinely off-grid, not just off-grid-ish.
Each pod is powered entirely by the sun. The solar panels feed a large lithium battery in every pod, and that’s what keeps your lights on, your fridge cool and your devices charged. The system is deliberately oversized, too, big enough to keep everything running comfortably right through the darker winter months, not just on bright summer days.
Being off-grid doesn’t mean going without. It just means we’ve thought carefully about where our energy comes from. You’ll still turn on the tap to clean running water, which is rather a nice bonus this far off the beaten track.
Closer than you might think, about ten miles away.
The pods are built almost entirely (over 90%) from European Larch grown right here in Devon. We take it from tree to pod ourselves, keeping the whole chain in our own hands, which means we know exactly where every plank came from.
It’s one of the things we’re quietly proud of. There’s something rather lovely about staying in a building that grew up just down the road.
This is one of our favourite answers, mostly because nobody ever sees it.
Every drop of wastewater from the pods is collected and properly treated before it’s returned safely to the environment. Nothing at all goes into the lake.
The whole system is contained within the base of the pod itself, so you’ll never know it’s there. But it’s one of the most important parts of keeping the lake as clean and healthy as it is.
Because our location is unique, and being properly off-grid, a flushing system simply isn’t an option here.
Composting toilets are the answer, and a very good one. They’re remarkably energy efficient and use far less water than a conventional flush, which matters a great deal somewhere like this. And if you’ve never used one before, don’t worry. They’re clean, simple and completely odour free, thanks to a near-silent extractor fan built into the toilet. We’ll show you how everything works when you arrive.
Most guests are pleasantly surprised. A few even go home converted.
The Wider Farm & Local Area
Yes, Alder Vineyard’s café, a short walk from the lake.
It’s an independent business, run separately from us, and it’s genuinely excellent, it won Gold for Best Café at the Devon Tourism Awards. Expect breakfast, lunch, coffee and homemade cakes, with wine tours also on offer if you fancy exploring the vines. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm. If you’d like a table or a tour, book ahead, it does get busy.
Westloaf, run by the wonderful Penny, right here on the farm. Her granola won Gold at the Taste of Devon Awards, and her gluten-free chocolate brownies are frankly, dangerous.
There isn’t a shop to wander into, everything is ordered online in advance rather than sold on site. But if you’d like to start your stay with something special, Penny puts together a Lilypod hamper you can pre-order before you arrive, so it’s waiting for you the moment you get here.
www.westloaf.co.uk
Yes but it will involve some road walking on country lanes. Personally I would suggest going by bike or take a short drive to reach some of Dartmoor’s iconic tors, rivers and open moorland.
Some of our favourite days at Lilypod have been rainy ones, honestly. The sound of rain on the lake, the warmth of the wood burner, watching the weather roll across the water, it all becomes part of the experience rather than something to work around.
And if you fancy getting out anyway, there’s plenty nearby: cosy cafés, historic villages, galleries and other indoor spots within easy reach.
Our Explore section on the website is the best place to start, it’s full of our own favourite walks, places to visit, pubs, cafés and quieter corners of Dartmoor and West Devon that we’ve come to love ourselves.
www.lilypod.uk/explore
Genuinely, yes. It’s one of the things guests mention most.
There’s a country lane nearby, but the lake sits well below it and is sheltered by the landscape around it, so what you actually notice is birdsong, the waterfall, wind through the trees, or the crackle of your own fire. For a lot of guests, that’s exactly what they came for.
Accessibility
We do our best to accommodate as many guests as we can, but given the natural, off-grid setting, not every part of the site will suit every wheelchair user, so it’s worth talking it through with us before you book.
Here’s what to expect: the car park has a large turning circle for bigger vehicles, and the pod itself is entered through double doors 1.2m wide, opening onto a single, open living space all on one level. The ensuite bathroom door is 70cm wide. Access to the pod from the car park is step-free, though the path does have some soft inclines and dips along the way.
If it would help, we’re happy to send you a video walk-through of the route from the car park right into the pod, just get in touch and we’ll send you the link.
We hope so. Many disabilities aren’t visible, and we know that.
Lilypod is secluded, quiet and deeply immersed in nature, which a lot of guests find genuinely restorative, including those managing things like autism, anxiety or depression. If there’s anything specific that would help make your stay easier, we’d love to hear from you before you arrive.
Yes. We can host officially registered support and assistance animals (we’re not able to host pets more generally). If you’re travelling with one, just let us know before booking so we can help you choose the pod that suits you best.
Yes. All the major supermarkets in the area will deliver straight to the Lilypod car park, which can be a real help if getting out to shop isn’t easy, or you’d simply rather not.
Full list of supermarkets in your digital guide.
More than you might expect, mostly because it’s simply how we run things. Almost everything about your stay comes to you in writing, your booking confirmation, your check-in details and key code, and your full digital guidebook, so you’re never relying on a phone call or a face-to-face briefing to get the information you need. Check-in itself is self check-in, so there’s no verbal handover required either.
For safety, the alarms fitted in every pod are visual as well as audible, so you’re covered there too.
If there’s anything else that would make your stay easier, just let us know before you arrive and we’ll do what we can.
Yes, it’s designed to work just like an ordinary toilet at home. There’s nothing unusual about the seat, height or how you use it, it simply looks like the one you already know, so it shouldn’t present any extra difficulty during your stay.
We’ve tried to make it so. That includes streamlined, less cluttered content, a choice of text colour and size, avoiding photos with text laid over them, and checking the site works well with screen readers. If you’d like anything in large print, just ask and we’ll sort it for you.