Willow hares

The Willow Hares gallery sits just outside Amersham, a proper working studio space where you can actually watch artists creating rather than just gawping at finished pieces behind glass. It's the kind of place where you'll stumble across someone mid-sketch or mid-sculpture and suddenly understand what they were after. The gallery focuses on contemporary work, with rotating exhibitions that lean toward figurative and animal subjects - hence the name. You'll see proper craftsmanship here, the sort that takes years to develop, not the Instagram-friendly stuff churned out for hotel lobbies.

This is absolutely for people who care about art enough to seek it out. Not somewhere you'd drag reluctant teenagers on a rainy Tuesday. Artists, serious collectors, and anyone genuinely interested in seeing how creative work develops will get genuine value from a visit. Families with young kids might find an hour enough unless they're already gallery-wise.

Admission details aren't published widely online, so ring ahead before you make the drive from Amersham. Opening hours vary, which is typical for artist-run spaces - they work around studio time. If you're based at one of the nearby camping spots like Penn Meadow Farm or Lights Camera Glamping, it's an easy half-hour potter to visit and you could easily combine it with a walk around Amersham's old town centre afterwards. Worth the trip if contemporary art genuinely interests you. Not worth the detour purely for a rainy-day activity.