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Nightlife Isn't Dead

The Rise of the Rural Sesh

Airbnb has birthed a new party tradition.
All photos by Bruno Bayley

Matt and his friends leave London every New Year's Eve. His last trip was to the Welsh coast with 21 others at the end of 2017. They were staying in an old manor house full of cobwebs, swords and paintings of fox hunts. Locals had warned them the place was haunted.

"The house had been owned by some sort of Lord, and the family line died with him," Matt remembers. "We stayed in his bedroom and there was a massive framed picture of him above the bed. In fact, there were pictures of him everywhere." The weekend went well, until Matt, 27, got too high on New Year's Eve and removed an antique golf club from the wall. An attempt to swing it ended in the head being smashed off and landing somewhere in the darkness of the garden.

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"I think it angered the ghost of the lord," says Matt, who began to see the lord of the manor in his comedown dreams, asking questions about the golf club. "I woke up in a cold sweat freak-out and demanded everyone come into the garden and hunt for the head. He'd been in some of their dreams too." The group took phone torches into the garden and spent the rest of their final night searching for the golf club's head, which they eventually located, haphazardly repaired and returned to the wall. "If they ever move it, it will absolutely fall off. We left the next day."

With nightclubs dying but drugs more readily available than ever before, it's no wonder people are searching for alternative spaces in which to do them. Put it down to an uptick in escapism, or simply the arrival of property rental websites like Airbnb offering cheap stays in amazing locations, but getting away has become the new going out. As the cities have turned their backs on us, hedonists have returned to the wilderness. A curiosity of the post-nightlife age, this is the rise of the rural sesh.

The rural sesh is a simple proposition: you book a big house for two or three nights – one buried far away in the countryside, somewhere none of you have been, somewhere nobody has heard of. Then you throw a massive party in it. The sort of party that starts out properly, with expensive beers and good music, but quickly derails into an existential crisis. The appeal is obvious: there's the dusty magic of arriving in a creaking house for the first time, and all that clean air for when you’re ready to walk off your comedown. You can make as much noise as you want and consume all the illegal powders you like without having to worry about neighbours, bouncers or police interfering.

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There is a specific type this appeals to: the older party-goer who can no longer be bothered with the rigmarole of nightclubs or festivals, but still wants that drug-fuelled release. The rural sesh is organised like a holiday – well in advance – making them ideal for large friendship groups to book time off work and reunite after long absences. Rural seshing often happens under the guise of stag-dos and hen parties, or New Year’s Eve celebrations for the nearly-thirties. These bucolic benders are parties for people who want a huge night followed by a group-cooked lasagne. Two pills and a bottle of Sancerre.

This isn't a completely new idea, of course. Slow cooking in a country manor is a fantasy as indebted to Withnail and I as it is the unlikely friendship between Oliver Reed and Keith Moon, who would lose their minds on wild binges in Reed’s country manor. Yet, as both of those examples show, where the rural sesh leads, madness often follows.

David, 24, went on a stag-do last summer to a 20-person house in rural Wales. The group he was with was 30-strong, and while the surrounding open spaces meant sport was originally on the agenda, it quickly turned into a massive tear-up. "It was one of the greatest weekends of my adult life, but it was very extreme," he explains. "A lot of steam was let off and the hedonism was intense."

The cabin fever element of the rural sesh is a recurring theme. Despite the open air, it seems the seclusion encourages the heads to furrow further into unending after-party. David remembers stretching himself too far, being so exhausted and emotionally drained that he nearly cried once the weekend was over and he was back in his own bed. The countryside can be a dark and unforgiving place, after all.

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And it's not just an unforgiving place for the party guests. The rural sesh presents a heap of challenges for Airbnb, whose hosts can now find themselves with unexpected problems. As the short-term rental site has boomed in popularity, horror stories of trashed properties have made headlines all over the world, calling into question who has ultimately responsibility for the behaviour of guests.

In 2015, renters in Calgary did upwards of $150,000 (£84,500) worth of damage to a property after booking in with fake credit cards and throwing a house party which left mayonnaise smeared over furniture and floorboards buckling under pools of booze. In 2016, Airbnb user Christina McQuillian discovered her one-bed London flat had been used for a massive rager, rather than "somewhere to stay after a party", as the tenant had promised. She'd been called by neighbours who'd heard grime blasting from her apartment, accompanied by the smell of weed. When she got there, the sesh was still in full swing. She even walked in on a couple having sex in her bedroom, while a third man watched. When she tried to break up the party she was punched by one of the guests.

Obviously this is an extreme case, but it's a vivid example of the potential violation that rural or remote partying can involve. By throwing a party in someone’s house, however good the clean-up, you cross some figurative and literal red lines. People who’ve been burgled often say the strangest, most disquieting after-effect is knowing a stranger has been in their home and violated their space; the same must apply for knowing someone’s been doing blow off your dresser.

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In response to this article, Airbnb said the following: "Inappropriate, illegal or disruptive behaviour has no place on our platform, and we permanently ban bad actors from our community. Each and every Airbnb reservation is scored ahead of time for risk to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. Over two million guest arrivals stay in a listing on any given night and negative experiences are incredibly rare."

Of the historic cases – Calgary and London – featured in this article, the company was clear that the guests in question were removed and hosts supported under their "Host Guarantee Programme". They added that hosts are able to specify house rules in advance – including a "no parties" clause – and are covered by their Host Protection Insurance, which offers protection against third party claims of property damage or bodily injury up to $1,000,000 USD.

That said, the onus doesn’t entirely lay on Airbnb; hosts have come up with responses to the threat of parties. Party Squasher is a smart sensor, attached to an app, which provides a remote count of how many mobile devices are in your house at any time. This gives the homeowner a live headcount, warning them if it crosses a certain limit. Many rental sites – Airbnb excluded – feature properties that welcome stag parties and everything that comes with them, provided guests are prepared to pay a much bigger security deposit at the start of the trip.

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Outside of that, most rural sesh-heads are happy to do the clear-up themselves. Matt says his friends normally hire a cleaner. "Between 20-plus people it's a no-brainer."

There is everything of the tragic millennial about the rural sesh – so untethered from place and property, we've resorted to renting the homes of others to throw house parties in. What could be a better representation of short-term wealth and arrested development than renting a country retreat only to turn it into an after-party? It's a party style that articulates the fevered aspirations of a work-wracked generation dreaming of countryside retirements they’ll never know. Twenty-four hour party searching for the freedom to do a load of gear and go for a nice walk.

It might sound boujie or claustrophobic, but the rural sesh offers a rare balance: the prangs of a party offset by the serenity of the great outdoors. A Friday night where you can see the stars. The air is cold but clean, so you don’t mind it running loops through your lungs like dental floss. All in front of you is calm; heather, trees, the indiscriminate outlines of neatly trimmed hedges. Hard mud, gravel and snail shells roll and crunch beneath your feet. As David puts it: "Perhaps there’s a wholesomeness inherent to being surrounded by trees and hills – it felt elevated."

Then again: no shops in the countryside.

@a_n_g_u_s

The names of the people interviewed for this article have been changed.