Kingdom, Penshurst: The Woodland Café Built From a Storm, With Views to Match

Just outside Penshurst, a wood-and-glass café with 360-degree views across the Kent countryside sits on land that was, until 1987, a stretch of ordinary woodland - until the Great Storm flattened it, and someone decided to build something out of the wreckage.

On the night of 15 October 1987, the Great Storm tore through south-east England with gusts of 70 knots or more, and Penshurst sat near its epicentre. The woodland that now surrounds Kingdom was flattened. Rather than clear the site, the landowner used the fallen timber to build a clubhouse - originally for a cycling club - which was bought in 2015 and rebuilt into the glass-and-wood Clubhouse that now houses Kingdom Café on its lower ground floor. The woodland also holds the Seven Sisters, reputed to be the largest living tree in the British Isles, now used as a backdrop for weddings.

The café serves an all-day menu alongside home-made pastries and cakes, using locally sourced ingredients and coffee from the Tunbridge Wells Coffee Roastery - with separate drinks, kids' and kombucha menus. It's open daily, 9am to 4pm, kitchen closing at 3pm, walk-ins only. Kent lifestyle guide Muddy Stilettos called it "far more than a café with a view... a woodland sanctuary designed around movement, wellbeing and time spent outdoors" - a fair description of a site that's built around a lot more than lunch.

There are three waymarked walking routes of varying length through the woodland, a Saturday-morning parkrun, and a cycling trail suited to mountain and gravel bikes - a nod to the site's origins as a cycling clubhouse. Beyond that, Kingdom runs a forest spa with sauna, cold plunge and hot tub for private group bookings, a Nature Gym offering personal training and bootcamp classes, and yoga and Pilates through its Flourish studio. The Happy Tractor, a young pop-up business selling produce sourced within ten miles, also holds regular markets on site, and dogs are welcomed throughout with water bowls and treats.

Sources: Kingdom, Muddy Stilettos