Nomadic camping
Best for self-contained campers. There are no toilets, showers, or potable water at this Hipcamp.
We are a group of people who feel passionately about creating a kinder, brighter, less-divisive society. We opened The Cross Keys in June 2023 as a space where we could bring our vision into a reality. Most of our team are volunteers who are offering their time for free for many reasons. Please ask one of our team why the pub is helping them as well as them helping the pub. Many people are finding that by volunteering they are able to tackle some of their mental health issues. All of us are thriving by being together, working as a team and supporting each other.
We're not your average pub and never set out to be so please come with no expectations apart from connecting with some lovely people. We are also passionate about supporting local businesses so you won't see mainstream brands like Coca-Cola, Sprite or Carlsberg here. Instead you'll find brands you know we've researched and feel happy to serve. We also support local farmers so all our food comes from as small an area as possible. We'd love to serve everything organic and local but currently that's not possible so we try and serve mostly local, mostly organic products but all are 100% sourced with love. We hope you like it here. The pub has given us all a lot of faith in people and every day it shows us how kind the majority of people are.
There are various activities running through the week but most stop during the school holidays. We have a home education group, pilates, meditation, acoustic musicians, our own darts team, disco nights, open mic nights, bands and Sunday brunch. The pub is open as a pub from Thursday lunch to Saturday 12-2.30pm and 5-10.30pm (ish) and for our Sunday brunch 10am-12pm.
We serve authentic Ghanian food, pizzas, nachos, our own chips and a couple of specials each week. Everything is made with a lot of love.The Cross Keys was purchased by Tina and Dan who along with their friend Kazia wanted to save the building from redevelopment. The locals had fought eight years to keep their pub from being turned into houses as it had been an essential part of their community. They had always envisioned creating a community space for all ages and abilities to enjoy and the pub suited this vision perfectly. The Cross Keys is not just a pub - we host meditation groups, support groups, pilates, home education groups and from Thursday to Saturday it's a traditional pub. We have acoustic music nights, fortnightly quizzes, open mic nights, live music, discos and family games afternoons. Camping here is a great addition to the pub because it allows people to come and experience the pub and everything it offers. Most of our team are volunteering. We hope to make it a sustainable business but for the time being people are happy to give their time for free because they feel as passionately as us about saving community spaces from redevelopment. We are very careful about where we source our food from and only buy in meat that has come from farmers who genuinely care about their animals. You won't find mainstream brands here as we like to support the local businesses instead. If they aren't local then they maybe organic and if they aren't local or organic (we offer local wine but also sell cheaper wine from countries such as New Zealand) we are buying them in from a local supplier such as Adnams. Everything we do is sourced with love and we all love working at the pub because it brings us such a huge amount of joy. Our locals are very friendly too so please come in, meet us and our locals and have a lovely break away from home. We have a lovely meadow that has wild cowslips in April and Self-heal in May. We like to look after the butterflies and bees so keep parts of the meadow quite wild. We are next to a road so please be aware that rush hour times can be busy but during the day it is fairly quiet. Ipswich is about a ten minute drive, Woodbridge about 20 minute and seaside places such as Felixstowe, Aldeburgh, Southwold and Walberswick are all under an hour. It's a beautiful part of the country with lots to do. Please come and ask the staff for recommendations of where to go - if you do want to leave us! We aren't your average pub but we hope you love what you see.
