Lodges with private hot tubs in Nottinghamshire
Hot tub lodges in Nottinghamshire come two ways. There are the big holiday parks in the forest, and there are single stays on farms and smallholdings between Sherwood Forest and the Trent. Everything on this page is the second kind, where the owner has the hot tub steaming for a late arrival and checks it every day. If the tub is the point of the break, that difference is worth booking on.
Owner-run, every one
Luxury cottages, cabins and a few good huts
Sleeps
Features
The Gatehouse
Mansfield
Silver Birch Lodge
Misterton
Limetree Luxury Glamping Portland
Grove
Rose Cottage
Kirkby-In-Ashfield
The Old Pump House
Annesley
Sweet Caroline Shepherd’s Hut
Low Marnham
Limetree Luxury Glamping Southdown
Grove
4 Rockcliffe Grange
Mansfield
Buttercup Lodge
Misterton
Cotton Mill Cottage
Cuckney
Woodpit Cottage
Watnall
Mill View Duplex
Cuckney
Sunflower Lodge
Misterton
Coach Lodge
Retford
Herdwick Luxury Glamping
Grove
No lodges match those filters.
Two counties in one
Where Sherwood ends and the Trent takes over
Nottinghamshire's quiet country starts north of the city. On the western side, it is Sherwood, oak and birch heath around Edwinstowe, and the walled parkland the old ducal estates left behind. Clumber, Welbeck, Thoresby and Worksop Manor sit close enough together that the area is still called the Dukeries.
Drive east and the forest gives out. Beyond Retford the land flattens into river country, big-sky farmland all the way down to the Trent, with the Chesterfield Canal threading through Misterton to meet it. The lanes out here are unlit, and the night skies are properly dark.
Arrival is simple on either side. The forest side sits just off the M1, the river side just off the A1, and Retford has East Coast Main Line trains from London in around an hour and a half. If Sherwood Forest is the point of the trip, stay west, where Edwinstowe is a short drive from the Mansfield villages. If you want towpaths and open water, stay east.
The stays follow the same split. West means cottages and bigger village houses with gardens built for families. Out east, the hot tub lodges and huts are mostly built for two, several with wood-fired tubs facing open fields.
Bringing the dog
Several of these stays take dogs, and there is good walking close by. Clumber's estate paths give you miles without a stile, and the canal towpath runs flat from village to village. The old colliery railways around Teversal are trail-walking now, and the Idle Valley reserve north of Retford gives a wilder hour on the lead.
The dog-friendly accommodation here varies in setup, so it is worth matching the stay to your dog. Some have properly enclosed gardens; others open onto fields or sit beside the old mill ponds, which suits a dog that is happy off the lead better than one that needs a fence.
What owner-kept luxury looks like
Hot tub breaks live or die on the state of the water. At a holiday park, that is a maintenance rota. Here, it is the owner's morning round. Hot tubs are heated for your arrival and checked daily, and the person doing the checking is the one whose name is on the welcome note.
Where the eastern tubs are wood-fired, they ask a little more of you and give more back. You stack the firebox, light it, and let the water come up to heat at its own pace. Owners walk you through the first burn, and by the second evening it is the best ritual of the stay. On a clear night, the dark farmland does the rest, with skies sharp enough to pick out satellites from the water.
In winter the effort pays twice. A hot tub holiday up here is best when it is cold out: the wood-fired tubs come into their own, and Sherwood looks its best with the bracken down and the crowds gone. The air-conditioned huts are the lower-effort winter option, warm inside whatever the month, if you would rather not tend a fire.
The luxury sits in the finish rather than a facilities list. The bigger houses run to games rooms and proper gardens, and several of the glamping huts add outdoor kitchens and decking built around the hot tub.
Stocking the fridge
Every stay here is self-catering, and north Nottinghamshire makes that easy. The farm shop on the Welbeck estate, a few minutes from Cuckney, sells meat raised on the estate and Stichelton, the raw-milk blue cheese made at its dairy. If you are arriving on the forest side, it is worth the detour before you unpack.
Out east, Retford does the same job in market-town form. The square still trades on market days, and the town covers the practical shopping the huts and cabins lack. For the nights you do not cook, most villages on either side keep a pub that does food. The good ones fill at weekends, so book ahead.
The Major Oak is only the start
Sherwood pulls the day trips, and rightly, but the good days out spread wider than the legend. Nothing below is much past an hour from either side of the county, and most of it is closer.
Sherwood Forest and the Major Oak
The old forest at Edwinstowe is free to walk, with a parking charge at the visitor centre. The Major Oak is an easy twenty-minute stroll on level paths, propped and fenced these days, and still enormous. Go on a weekday morning for quiet. The Robin Hood Festival in August is great with children and hopeless for peace.
Clumber Park
The grandest survivor of the Dukeries, now National Trust, with a lake, a walled kitchen garden and a lime avenue that runs for two miles. The flat estate roads make the easiest family cycling in the county, and there is bike hire on site. Non-members pay for parking, so treat it as a day rather than an hour.
Creswell Crags
A limestone gorge on the Derbyshire border, minutes from Cuckney, holding Britain's only known Ice Age cave art. The caves are tour-only and the tours sell out, so book before you travel rather than on the morning.
Newstead Abbey
Byron's ancestral home south of Mansfield, half romantic ruin, half stately house. The gardens carry the visit and open far more reliably than the rooms, so check the house hours before promising anyone the interiors. D. H. Lawrence's birthplace museum at Eastwood is twenty minutes further down the M1 side if the literary mood holds.
Rufford Abbey Country Park
Just south of Sherwood near Ollerton, with abbey ruins, a lake and buggy-flat paths, and parking the only charge. It is the low-effort afternoon of the list.
Southwell Minster
Half an hour from the Mansfield side, longer from the river stays, and worth the drive. The chapter house holds the Leaves of Southwell, stone carvings fine enough to have a Pevsner book to themselves, and the original Bramley apple tree still grows in a garden nearby.
Sundown Adventureland
A theme park built squarely for under-10s, at Rampton on the river side, around twenty minutes from most of the eastern stays. There are no big coasters and few queues outside school holidays, and small children leave happy. Older ones will want Clumber's bikes instead.
Newark
Straight down the A1 from the eastern stays. The castle on the Trent is where King John died, and the showground hosts antiques fairs that rank among the largest in Europe. Check the fair dates if you like a rummage, since they take over the town.
Nottingham itself
The city earns one day of a week up here. Nottingham Castle, the City of Caves and Wollaton Hall, the Elizabethan house that stood in as Wayne Manor in The Dark Knight Rises, fill it between them. From the forest side, count on forty minutes by car from the Mansfield villages, or skip the city parking and ride the tram in from Hucknall.
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