Call this a tent? Then bring on camping! Real beds, a wood stove and a chandelier... Jeremy Seal uncovers a delightfully different kind of campsite Sunday Telegraph, 6/5/2007
‘Panda!’ hissed Lizzie, aged five, which was asking a lot of the Hampshire countryside. We were sitting out on an August evening, watching for bats, when a black and white creature emerged from a blackberry hedge and lumbered across the stubbly wheat field in front of us. Awestruck Anna, who only knew real-life badgers as sorry roadside bundles, put her younger sister straight as one passed within ten yards of our tent.
I say tent. I mean the cottage-sized marquee, which frankly left even the badger sighting for dead in the excitement stakes. My wife doesn’t much care for sleeping bags, guy ropes, outdoor cooking and squatting in the gorse. But even she hollered ‘Bring on Camping!’when she discovered what this weekend pitch came with; space for living and storage plus standing room galore, not to mention a flushing loo, cold tap and sink, fully stocked kitchen unit with cooking stove, table and chairs, a cool chest ‘fridge’, and three separate areas sleeping up to six in proper beds or bunks. There were even dazzling white duvets and pillows, and a candelabra hanging from the tent ceiling above the table.
These enormously appealing combinations of canvas and timber – shelved interior walls for the bedrooms and loo, a raised plank floor and even a traditional Dutch bedstee (or cupboard bed) – are the brainchild of the Dutchman who brought Centerparcs to the UK. Luite Moraal, quick to appreciate British camping’s sudden and stratospheric shift upmarket, has just opened his first luxury tent site here (after three years operating them in Holland) at Manor Farm near Alton. The idea is to take much of the hassle – and none of the enchantment - out of the family camping experience by locating the tents on small traditional farms where ‘agro-industrial’ remains a dirty word. Ten so-called ‘Feather Down Farms’, touting the restorative rural rhythms of yesteryear, are planned across the UK by spring 2007.
We arrived to be met by Will and Anna Brock, the young owners of Manor Farm, who showed us to the shower block (no timers or 50p slots), the store of properly seasoned firewood for the stoves and the fleet of wheelbarrows for carting luggage about. There was also the farm shop which was stocked with basic essentials but also serious goodies including locally produced cheeses and pates and Anna’s award-winning ready meals – casseroles, stroganoffs, tagines and a wicked selection of puddings - largely created from the farm’s own produce.
Our tent, one of just five, stood beneath an oak tree on the edge of a grassy meadow, with views over the fields towards distant Alton. Anna Brock gave us a brief run-down on the tents - mainly stove husbandry and hurricane-lamp management – before providing us with a hot-water bottle, inventively frozen, for chilling the cool box. I set about stoking the stove to cook up a proper camping meal – a pan of fried potatoes and sausages – while the girls explored. Anna, eight, quickly laid claim to the bedstee before going off to explore the adjacent meadow with Lizzie. Here was a wood oven, a swing hanging from an apple tree, and a tiny paddock of friendly sheep and hens. There was also a suitably rickety coop which proved a major draw all weekend, especially when it came to collecting eggs for breakfast, and some exotic llamas which the Brocks have introduced as an effective fox deterrent.
We might have stayed close to the farm if the surrounding area, which I had dismissed as M3 corridor country, had not proved such a revelation. This part of Hampshire is notable for the writers of some extremely famous books – Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Gilbert White (A Natural History of Selborne), Fergie (Budgie the Helicopter) – though only the homes of the first two are open to visitors. They were selling 50p raffle tickets for Selborne’s church roof when we visited the home of the great eighteenth-century naturalist. We wandered the beautiful gardens, where White’s ground-breaking interest in the local flora and fauna were nurtured, and visited the in-house museum to the Oates family. This memorial to, among others, the Antarctic explorer Captain Lawrence Oates (no book, but perhaps the most famous of all exit lines) might have seemed an out of context oddity. But watching some early cine footage of Scott and his team erecting a bamboo tent frame in sub-zero conditions was an apt reminder, particularly to my wife, of just how far camping had come at nearby Manor Farm.
We went blackberry picking along the local ‘hangars’. These steep, thickly wooded escarpments were blizzarded with butterflies and offered inspiring views towards the South Downs. We took bikes, available for hire from the farm, down the deep sunken lanes which criss-cross the area. There was even time for a ride on a steam train along the much-loved Watercress Line – the area has long been known for its watercress beds – which hooted and pumped out coal smuts on its way to Alresford.
Back at the farm, the Brocks were firing up the wood oven to cook up whole chickens, sausages and baked potatoes - £20 per tent – while the visitors socialized over beakers of wine in the gloaming. A surprisingly rich mix of mature couples, groups of single professionals and young families all seemed enchanted by the tents’ home-spun interiors and watertight exteriors. Listening to last night’s rain confident that they would remain dry had been a camping first for many. The stoves drew the odd grumble - the tents’ smoke alarms did put up a morning chorus to rival even the local rooster – though most conceded metropolitan ineptitude might have been to blame.
It was not until our last evening that I finally realized what the experience had reminded me of. Put aside the self-catered Little House on the Prairie interiors and you were left, amazingly enough, with resonances from quite another world; the tented camps of the superior African safari. Bats and badgers (if not pandas), then, in the heart of the Selbornegeti.
Tents at Featherdown Farms (01420 80804; www.featherdown.co.uk) from £185 for a four-night midweek break, and weekly rates from £315, plus £15 reservation fee, linen rental of £5.75 pp, and small extras for bike hire, towels and dogs where permitted. For food orders, visit www.annaskitche.co.uk).
Gilbert White’s House (www.gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk; 01420 511275) open Tue-Sun most of the year, £6.00 admission, children free.
The Watercress Line (www.watercressline.co.uk; 01962 733810) runs year-round return services between Alton and Alresford, price £10.00 for adults and discounts for children.
ENDS
‘Panda!’ hissed Lizzie, aged five, which was asking a lot of the Hampshire countryside. We were sitting out on an August evening, watching for bats, when a black and white creature emerged from a blackberry hedge and lumbered across the stubbly wheat field in front of us. Awestruck Anna, who only knew real-life badgers as sorry roadside bundles, put her younger sister straight as one passed within ten yards of our tent.
I say tent. I mean the cottage-sized marquee, which frankly left even the badger sighting for dead in the excitement stakes. My wife doesn’t much care for sleeping bags, guy ropes, outdoor cooking and squatting in the gorse. But even she hollered ‘Bring on Camping!’when she discovered what this weekend pitch came with; space for living and storage plus standing room galore, not to mention a flushing loo, cold tap and sink, fully stocked kitchen unit with cooking stove, table and chairs, a cool chest ‘fridge’, and three separate areas sleeping up to six in proper beds or bunks. There were even dazzling white duvets and pillows, and a candelabra hanging from the tent ceiling above the table.
These enormously appealing combinations of canvas and timber – shelved interior walls for the bedrooms and loo, a raised plank floor and even a traditional Dutch bedstee (or cupboard bed) – are the brainchild of the Dutchman who brought Centerparcs to the UK. Luite Moraal, quick to appreciate British camping’s sudden and stratospheric shift upmarket, has just opened his first luxury tent site here (after three years operating them in Holland) at Manor Farm near Alton. The idea is to take much of the hassle – and none of the enchantment - out of the family camping experience by locating the tents on small traditional farms where ‘agro-industrial’ remains a dirty word. Ten so-called ‘Feather Down Farms’, touting the restorative rural rhythms of yesteryear, are planned across the UK by spring 2007.
We arrived to be met by Will and Anna Brock, the young owners of Manor Farm, who showed us to the shower block (no timers or 50p slots), the store of properly seasoned firewood for the stoves and the fleet of wheelbarrows for carting luggage about. There was also the farm shop which was stocked with basic essentials but also serious goodies including locally produced cheeses and pates and Anna’s award-winning ready meals – casseroles, stroganoffs, tagines and a wicked selection of puddings - largely created from the farm’s own produce.
Our tent, one of just five, stood beneath an oak tree on the edge of a grassy meadow, with views over the fields towards distant Alton. Anna Brock gave us a brief run-down on the tents - mainly stove husbandry and hurricane-lamp management – before providing us with a hot-water bottle, inventively frozen, for chilling the cool box. I set about stoking the stove to cook up a proper camping meal – a pan of fried potatoes and sausages – while the girls explored. Anna, eight, quickly laid claim to the bedstee before going off to explore the adjacent meadow with Lizzie. Here was a wood oven, a swing hanging from an apple tree, and a tiny paddock of friendly sheep and hens. There was also a suitably rickety coop which proved a major draw all weekend, especially when it came to collecting eggs for breakfast, and some exotic llamas which the Brocks have introduced as an effective fox deterrent.
We might have stayed close to the farm if the surrounding area, which I had dismissed as M3 corridor country, had not proved such a revelation. This part of Hampshire is notable for the writers of some extremely famous books – Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Gilbert White (A Natural History of Selborne), Fergie (Budgie the Helicopter) – though only the homes of the first two are open to visitors. They were selling 50p raffle tickets for Selborne’s church roof when we visited the home of the great eighteenth-century naturalist. We wandered the beautiful gardens, where White’s ground-breaking interest in the local flora and fauna were nurtured, and visited the in-house museum to the Oates family. This memorial to, among others, the Antarctic explorer Captain Lawrence Oates (no book, but perhaps the most famous of all exit lines) might have seemed an out of context oddity. But watching some early cine footage of Scott and his team erecting a bamboo tent frame in sub-zero conditions was an apt reminder, particularly to my wife, of just how far camping had come at nearby Manor Farm.
We went blackberry picking along the local ‘hangars’. These steep, thickly wooded escarpments were blizzarded with butterflies and offered inspiring views towards the South Downs. We took bikes, available for hire from the farm, down the deep sunken lanes which criss-cross the area. There was even time for a ride on a steam train along the much-loved Watercress Line – the area has long been known for its watercress beds – which hooted and pumped out coal smuts on its way to Alresford.
Back at the farm, the Brocks were firing up the wood oven to cook up whole chickens, sausages and baked potatoes - £20 per tent – while the visitors socialized over beakers of wine in the gloaming. A surprisingly rich mix of mature couples, groups of single professionals and young families all seemed enchanted by the tents’ home-spun interiors and watertight exteriors. Listening to last night’s rain confident that they would remain dry had been a camping first for many. The stoves drew the odd grumble - the tents’ smoke alarms did put up a morning chorus to rival even the local rooster – though most conceded metropolitan ineptitude might have been to blame.
It was not until our last evening that I finally realized what the experience had reminded me of. Put aside the self-catered Little House on the Prairie interiors and you were left, amazingly enough, with resonances from quite another world; the tented camps of the superior African safari. Bats and badgers (if not pandas), then, in the heart of the Selbornegeti.
Tents at Featherdown Farms (01420 80804; www.featherdown.co.uk) from £185 for a four-night midweek break, and weekly rates from £315, plus £15 reservation fee, linen rental of £5.75 pp, and small extras for bike hire, towels and dogs where permitted. For food orders, visit www.annaskitche.co.uk).
Gilbert White’s House (www.gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk; 01420 511275) open Tue-Sun most of the year, £6.00 admission, children free.
The Watercress Line (www.watercressline.co.uk; 01962 733810) runs year-round return services between Alton and Alresford, price £10.00 for adults and discounts for children.
ENDS
