Ee-aye ee-aye oh
Fresh eggs, cosy duvets and servings of home made stew on a working farm – this is camping, but not as you know it. Katy McGuinness goes happy glamping
A Featherdown tent is a canvas cabin with two bedrooms, wooden floors, running water and proper beds with cosy duvets
The stove in Featherdown tents are for cooking as well as providing heat
Teapot Lane Luxury Camp
Yurt Holidays Ireland
Featherdown Farms
Ecovallee, Dordogne, France
Eco Luxury Yurt Suite, Lanzarote
We could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as an outdoorsy family. So until the day that we packed the car and headed north to the first Irish Featherdown Farm – located near Dungiven in Co Derry – we had never been camping before. I know, I know, shame on us, what kind of parents are we not to have equipped our offspring with this most basic of skills, given the times in which we live?
Not that any of our four children had been agitating for such a trip, it has to be said. In fact, when the expedition was first proposed, their reaction had been lukewarm at best. And the only thing that persuaded Esme (17) and Talulla (15) to come along was the promise that we would make them spend only one night in the tent and that they could abscond for the second to visit friends in nearby Portstewart. Milo (13) and Ellie (10) were marginally more enthusiastic.
In Britain, Featherdown is something of a phenomenon – voted the best camping experience in that country by the influential Mumsnet. There are over 20 Featherdown Farms located in scenic spots all over the UK. The idea is to offer a more-than-comfortable camping experience on a working farm – so that campers get to enjoy all the good things about life under canvas whilst avoiding the grotty bits.
At Ash Park, the farmers are James and Fiona Stevenson – utterly charming and terribly posh, they live near London (James works in insurance in the city) during term-time and spend the school holidays at Ash Park. Fiona used to work in hotel marketing and is the one behind the link-up with Featherdown. James employs a full-time farm manager and explains that the income from the farm – Ash Park has beef cattle and sheep and a few decorative pigs – is not enough to support two families. All revenues are ploughed (sorry) back into an ambitious programme of tree-planting, conservation and restoration about which he tells Milo and I during a 4x4 tour of the farm. The farm has been in the Stevenson family for generations, although those prone to high blood pressure are probably better off glossing over some of the historical details. (James and Fiona are, we note, careful to refer to 'Derry' when talking to us but 'Londonderry' slips out when they talk to neighbouring campers, from Birmingham.)
There are five tents at Ash Park, pitched on the upper slopes of two fields looking out over the stunning Sperrin Mountains. (If you took them all you could fit about 25 adults. Just saying. For those who happen to be in the market for a group weekend away with a difference – children aren't essential!) Featherdown tents are the same at every location. At Ash Park, they arrived during the summer on the back of enormous lorries to be assembled by teams of Polish labourers in the space of less than a week. The tents are taken down during the winter (the Featherdown season runs from April to the end of October) and kept in dry storage until the following year.
A Featherdown tent is a tent unlike any other you may have experienced. It's a canvas cabin with two bedrooms, wooden floors, running water and proper beds with cosy duvets. There's even a loo. (Some fairly basic showers occupy an old cow byre in the farmyard a couple of hundred metres away.) The stove is for cooking as well as heat, and there's also a barbecue outside. We arrived in the early evening and unloaded the contents of the car into wheelbarrows which we used to transport everything up the field to the tent. Not fancying the prospect of cooking a meal from scratch on the stove, we had pre-ordered beef stew (made by James to a tweaked Featherdown recipe), cabbage and potatoes. Just as well; cooking is a slow process. Even heating up the stew and boiling the potatoes took about an hour, but it tasted mighty fine.
Each cabin has a cool chest in which you keep the temperature down with iced hot water bottles from the honesty shop, which also stocks homemade jams and chocolate biscuit cake, fabulous Kettyle bacon and essentials such as bin bags, washing-up liquid and wine. The tents are lit by oil lamps, which make reading a challenge. We slept well, toasty in our beds as we listened to the rain lashing down outside and, on our second night, the sound of helicopters circling overhead. Ahem.
Part of the Featherdown shtick is that campers get to collect freshly laid eggs for breakfast. No one seems to have told the Ash Park hens about their obligation to fulfil their part of the deal, though, and their output fell short of requirements. James took pity on us and gave us a few eggs from his own hens, meaning that we didn't have to buy any from the honesty shop. (Just as well, because those were date-stamped and came in a Centra box from the petrol station down the road.)
We went into Derry for a wander on the Saturday and took in lunch at Harry's, just over the border into Donegal (see Eating Out, page 36). If the weather had been better we might have visited the beach at either Benone or Castlerock. The Giant's Causeway and Bushmills distillery are other day trips within easy reach.
Back at Ash Park, James had fired up the wood-burning oven for pizza night. It was an idyllic scene – children chasing around the field, adults drinking wine, marshmallows toasting over an open fire, midges biting.
The pizzas weren't the best (Milo thought he spotted an Asda box) but it didn't seem to matter.
The details
www.featherdown.co.uk
Mid-week breaks at Ash Park cost from £195. Compulsory linen rental is £5.90 per person
Glamp it up in style
TEAPOT LANE
Sleep in a designer yurt in lovely Leitrim at the Teapot Lane eco-retreat. Holistic treatments and surfing and yoga breaks are available.
www.teapotlaneluxurycamp.com
(087 934 0341)
CAPE CLEAR
Choose between staying in a yurt and the more back-to-nature option of a teepee, both pitched on beautiful Cape Clear Island, off the coast of Co Cork, www.yurt-
holidays-ireland.com (086 197 1956)
FEATHERDOWN ABROAD
Featherdown Farms has branched out into France. Its first farm there is near Calvados in Normandy (www.unlitaupre.com). Other Featherdown locations include the Netherlands (www.boerenbed.com), Germany (www.wiesenbett.com) and the US (www.featherdown.com)
ECOVALLEE, DORDOGNE, FRANCE
Family-friendly eco-camping with chickens, pigs and a dedicated play yurt, located near Lalinde and within reach of some wonderful markets. www.ecovallee.com
(00 33 553 579 441)
ECO LUXURY YURT SUITE, LANZAROTE
Just 200 metres from the beach and a short walk to the village of Arrieta, the yurt suite here is über-luxurious, with a king-size bed, marble floors and an outdoor kitchen.
www.lanzaroteretreats.com
(00 34 928 826 720)
October 3, 2010
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