1 place
Quiz on Thursday, need a fourth
The Bell, Ramsbury
1.2 miles
The Countryside Club
Congratulations
You've been invited to become a founding member of The Countryside Club.
An invitation-only membership for all the good eggs who love the countryside lifestyle. Somebody thought you were one of them, which is the only way anybody arrives here.
The club is built. The map is live. The doors are not open yet, and that is rather the point of this page. We are building the club around the first people in it, and we would like you to be one of them.
No payment today. No account to make. Your name goes on the founding list, and we take it from there.
Founding members
We are building the club around you.
A members' club is only ever as good as the first people in it. So rather than a waiting list, we are keeping a founding list. Put your name on it and you are a founding member: numbered in the order you arrived, first to hear when the doors open, and one of the people whose taste the club is shaped around before anybody else sees it.
Membership proper still works by introduction. When the doors open, an existing member is asked one question about you: is this person a good sort? If the answer is yes, in you come. The founding list is where we start, and before long the people on it will be the ones answering that question.
What we ask of a founding member
- 01Bring good folk like you. Your own invitation link credits you for everyone who comes through it.
- 02Tell the places you love. Your pub, your farm shop, the place you always stay. Most of them are on our map already. Claiming their spot puts them in front of members near enough to turn up.
- 03Say yes to one short note a week. We will introduce the club one piece at a time, and we would rather hear from you if we have got a piece wrong.
What you are joining
A map, a gamekeeper, and a great many invitations.
Nothing here is a sketch of something we mean to build. Every screen is one you will use.
Around here
It starts with a map, and rather a good one.
Over eight thousand real countryside places, found rather than advertised. Pubs, walks, shoots, farm shops, places to stay. Ask for what you want in plain English and the answers land as pins. Open a place and it is discovered. Stand within five miles of it and it is visited. Like it, give it a nod and say why. Press and hold an empty patch to mark somewhere of your own.
Norris
Your concierge
A dog-friendly walk with a pub at the end
Your concierge
And then there is Norris.
Norris is a gamekeeper. Well read, faintly amused by most things, and he knows the ground. Ask him for a dog-friendly walk with a pub at the end and off he goes to find one, then builds the rest of your day into a running list of stops while you are still deciding on socks.
Invites
Nearest first
Two spare seats at supper
Coombe Farm Kitchen
3.8 miles
Walking the ridge on Sunday
Kennet & Avon
6.4 miles
Shepherd's hut going spare midweek
Barrow Hill
9.1 miles
Invites
Every Invite is somebody asking you along.
A quiz that needs a fourth. Two spare seats at supper. A walk on Sunday. Members post Invites, and places post Local Offers, and they arrive nearest first and filtered to the things you follow. A person looks at every one before it goes out. Putting one up, and turning up to one, is what makes the club work.
Widgets
What are you up to?
Selling something
Putting something on
A bed going spare
A job wants doing
Needing a hand
Somewhere brilliant
The clubhouse toolbox
Say what you are up to. Somebody will bite.
Selling something. Putting something on. A bed going spare. A job wants doing. Needing a hand. Somewhere brilliant. Each one has two doors: put yours up, or see what is there.
Crimson Fox
Base member
Waiting for scan…
Your membership
There is nothing to lose in a drawer.
Your membership lives on your phone, with a code that quietly changes itself every thirty seconds. You hold it up, somebody scans it, and that is the entire ceremony.
L
Pay
Your pass pays too.
Here is the bit we are rather pleased about. Save a card once, in Transactions. At places set up for it, the same little code you show at the door settles the bill as well, and the receipt lands in your pocket. Where a place is not set up for it yet, you pay as you always did and nobody minds.
Your card
···· ···· 4242
The bar
One
Save a card, once.
You do this once, in Transactions, and then you genuinely never think about it again. Keep several if you are the sort of person who likes options.
1
Open your Hub
2
Tap Transactions
3
Save a card, once
My QR code
Two
Show your pass, exactly as you already do.
It is the same code you show for everything else. Hold up your phone, someone scans it, and that is the whole of your involvement.
1
Open your Hub
2
Tap My QR code
3
Hold your phone up
The Bell
£12.40
That's paid.
Nothing else to get out.
Three
Wander off. The club settles up.
Your card pays the bill and the receipt turns up in your pocket. No wallet, no fumbling, no card machine held out at arm's length.
1
Show your pass
2
Walk away
3
Receipt in your pocket
The founding list
Take your place.
A name and an email address is all we need. The rest helps us decide where to open first.
Only so we know which corner of the country to open first.
So we can give them the credit.
No payment today. No account to make. We will also write when your invitation is ready.
The club is built and the map is live. Every screen on this page is one members use today. Paying with your pass works at places set up for it, and where it does not yet, you pay as you always did.
Putting your name down takes no payment and makes no account. It puts you on the founding list, and when the doors open that is the first place we go.
Tick the box and once a week we will introduce one part of the club. One tap stops the notes. Your address goes to nobody else, ever.
The Countryside Club