Combining a hotel stay with learning a new craft gives a short staycation in a pretty village in East Sussex an added dimension

Sitting at a wooden table with my own black ink pot, nib, pen and paper feels a bit like the first day of school. Except that all eight of us have chosen to be here for a calligraphy course. We introduce ourselves – two friends have come together for fun, someone is taking the course for the second time, another admits shyly she’d like to be more creative, and another just says, ‘I’m a mother of three boys...’ I’d like to improve my increasingly illegible handwriting.

My only good habit (I’m sure I have others, I just can’t think of them right now) is writing thank you cards, but what’s the point of a billet-doux if the words are just squiggly lines? The course is one of many run by Curious House, founded by Philippa King. Its strapline – courtesy of writer Dorothy Parker – is, ‘The only cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.’ Philippa says her courses are for people who’d ‘like to explore their creativity in a caring and nurturing place’. Most take place here at The Bell, a 16th-century former coaching inn, smack bang in the middle of Ticehurst village.

I arrived the afternoon before and checked in for the night. Ticehurst sits on the Kent-East Sussex border in an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is chock-a-block with cosy cottages, independent shops and galleries and this great pub. My huge room has wonky wooden floors, a silver birch trunk that touches the ceiling, a roll-top copper bath, and – how’s this for cosy – chocolate-brown jumbo cord curtains.

Over dinner of the crispiest fried chicken burger (for once an appetising size rather than the usual tower) and a chilled glass of rosé, I watch a young couple feeding snacks to their dogs from their plates, an older couple planning their sightseeing for the next morning, and locals putting the world to rights over a pint at the bar. It’s as relaxed as being in someone’s sitting room. My breakfast the next morning of fresh coffee and scrambled eggs with ribbons of smoked salmon sets me up beautifully for the day.

Beneath chandeliers and enveloped by the hand-painted woodland fresco on the walls (thanks to local artist Melissa White), we crowd the desk of Lucy Berridge, our teacher. We’re learning a modern informal script rather than the curly-wurly copperplate of wedding invitations. She shows us the basics, using pleasing phrases like ‘put your clipboard on the wonk’. Lesson one: applying pressure for the down stroke and light pressure for the up is the basis of all modern calligraphy. So simple!

Back at our desks, it’s surprisingly absorbing from the first ‘shonky’ straight line onwards, and requires total concentration. When we’ve completed one page, tracing the shapes at first then copying them, we’re back to watch the next stage – capitals, lowercase, then numbers. Lucy walks around and finds something encouraging to say to each of us. When one woman looks up and wails ‘Oh, mine is rubbish!’, Lucy says briskly, ‘We’re not doing that.’ We all know exactly what she means by ‘that’ and no one does it again.

We break for a lunch of vibrant watercress and Stilton soup with warm bread rolls followed by cake. On an opposite wall is a neon sign, ‘I will always love you my friend’ in messy handwriting (they could do with taking this course!). We don’t linger longer, as we’re all itching to get back to our workstations.

Through the afternoon we take baby steps, but steps they are, and by the end of the day we are all delightedly writing whole words, and even phrases. None of us wants to leave, thrilled and grateful at how far we’ve come in just one day. I think Lucy might be in line for my first legible thank you note.