Carry On Glamping

As promised prior to the Great Food Poisoning Of 2011, I thought I'd tell you about a thoroughly unexpected, yet rather spanking trip that we embarked on back in July.

Tizer was due to break up for her oh-so-long summer hols, and we thought it would be nice to take a little impromptu holiday. We only had a weekend to spare, so we looked at the usual array of options - a city break, a country pub, a seaside B&B, but nothing was really grabbing us. We wanted something that Tizer would get a kick out of for a change and, short of Disney, we were coming up blank.

So I started trawling the old interweb to try and find a break with a difference and, after a day or two, I came up with:

Camping.

I know. Not all that inspiring and certainly not the sort of thing I'd normally opt for. My experiences of camping were hitherto limited entirely to the 1980s, spent either on a rainswept campsite in a two-tone (brown and fawn) frame tent with my parents, or on a rainswept campsite in a sodden canvas Scout tent with five other, faintly smelly, pre-pubescent boys. Nylon sleeping bags, communal showers, grimy toilet blocks and farting competitions (the latter, blessedly, being limited to Scout camp).

But what I'd found looked a whole world away from this. After all, when camping means a pre-erected tent, hardwood floors, real beds, a wood-burning stove and - get this people! - a bona fide flushing loo, the whole affair starts to look mighty tempting. Oh, and before you ask, yes, they even throw in a kitchen sink. To paraphrase M&S - this isn't just camping; this is Feather Down Farm camping.

That's right - Feather Down Farms. Sounds kinda quaint, don't it? Their website is a masterpiece of marketing, selling the whole affair as 'Five-Go-Camping'-meets-Boden, sprinkled liberally with photos of rosy-cheeked children, roaring campfires and cosy, candlelit tent interiors. Feather Down have their luxury, pre-pitched tents - bursting with the afore mentioned facilities - at 20-odd farms across the UK. They supply the tents to the farms and promote them via the website. For their part, the farmers provide somewhere for the tents to be pitched (of course!), prepare and clean them prior to guests' arrival, provide wood for the stove, shower facilities and a little farm shop.

After much mulling, we chose a farm in North Wales called Glanmor Isaf which I was drawn to, I think, because it sounded like something out of 'Ivor the Engine'. With booking and payment all processed online, the deed was soon done and there would be no turning back.

Feather Down promised much, especially in the comfort department. Clearly, their approach is more 'glamping' (glamourous camping, apparently) than camping. That said, we've always been more about fluffy robes, room service and Molton Brown toiletries than wellies, woollens and wet-weather-gear so, despite the promise of at least some home comforts, it wasn't without a little trepidation that we loaded up the car and headed for the border.

Glanmor Isaf, it turns out, is a sheep and cattle farm set against the backdrop of the slopes of Snowdonia leading down to the Menai Straits, and it really is a lovely spot. Very Welsh, I'd say. We arrived late on Friday afternoon, and soon tracked down Owen, part of the Pritchard family who own the farm. He proved to be a truly warm and welcoming host, showing us where the wood was stored and where to chop it (oh yes, you have to chop your own wood here), the immaculately clean showers, well stocked farm shop, chicken coop (with real chickens!) and, finally, to our - quite frankly - magnificent tent. To be fair, the term tent doesn't do these glorious canvas residences justice. Really, I've lived in smaller flats. Wooden floors, a dining table and chairs for six, a great 'kitchen island' complete with sink and - in the centre of the tent - a wonderful, old-worldey, wood burning stove. There's even the ultimate middle-class accessory - a coffee grinder - fixed to the wall. I mean, god forbid we should have to go without our morning cup of java...

Our 'little' tent

There's a double bedroom, a room with a bunk bed and - much to Tizer's delight - a bed in a cupboard, complete with a little heart-shaped cut-out in the door for peeking out of. All very cleverly done and, to be just a teensy bit cynical for a second, all painstakingly well-planned (some, more cynical even than me, might say 'manufactured'). The dining chairs are all carefully mis-matched, faux 50s tins and nick-nacks are dotted around on shelves, and the loo lid appears to have been hewn by a passing backwoodsman from half a pine tree. Hell, there's even a battered old suitcase that's been discarded casually on top of one of the cupboards. But to criticise the place for this would be churlish; the tent, and everything in it, are just wonderful. Especially the flushing toilet, without the promise of which we wouldn't have found ourselves here in the first place.

Now, I'd read on a couple of blogs by past 'Feather Downers' that the stove can be a temperamental little bugger, and the best advice seems to be to get it going as soon as you can, especially if you tend to like your food hot. So, whilst Mrs V and Tizer used the specially provided wheelbarrows to fetch our luggage from the car, I set to with axe in hand at preparing kindling and hacking logs into variously sized chunks of wood. This was great; I was naught but a checked-shirt away from feeling manly.

We'd brought a homemade chilli con carne with us, so getting the stove lit, and doing it relatively quickly, was pretty important if we wanted to eat something other than digestive biscuits (or cold chilli con carne) for dinner. And, of course, there was the not-so-small question of male pride. Lighting fires - along with parallel parking, wiring a plug and carving the Christmas turkey - is one of those basic 'man-skills' that even the most metrosexual of blokes have to be able to perform with aplomb. I couldn't - mustn't - let the family down on this one.

So, just like Owen showed us: vent half open, small pile of kindling in the grate; firelighter on top of that, then a bit more kindling. Now the easy bit - light the firelighter. Kindling catches nicely, so add some bigger bits of wood. All going terribly well so far. There's a bit of heat going now, so let's go for a small log. It burns! Looking good...

And fifteen minutes later, what do you have? Well, as much as I know you're hoping I'll say "a whole lot of smoke and some unburnt wood", I can't. It was a roaring furnace in no time at all! I oozed manfulness. Only the lack of having a spear to hand stopped me from heading out there and then to hunt down a wild boar, burn it to a crisp on my mighty stove and serve it to my grateful and fawning family for supper.

Failing that, of course, chilli would do just fine. And the stove didn't only heat our dinner to perfection, it also warmed the tent to a very satisfying level of snug-comfiness. Tizer soon crawled into her bed-in-a-cupboard, and we were a little worried that the excitement of it all would mean that she'd struggle to get to sleep, but she was away with the fairies in no time. Left to our own devices, and with no TV, DAB or Wifi to speak of, Mrs V and I had a snifter of red wine or three and played Scrabble. Yes, it's that kind of holiday people, and you slip almost effortlessly into it.

Our bed was comfy, though we were glad we'd brought a second duvet. The farm provide duvets and bed linen (although you need to make your own bed folks) but we brought an extra along just in case, and it proved it's worth. After all, this was Britain in July and, despite the trimmings, there's still only a layer of canvas between you and the great outdoors, so it can get chilly.

Tizer was up first the following morning (as she always is when it's not a school day) and order of the day for her was to explore her surroundings and generally bother the neighbours. There are five tents at Glanmor Isaf, three set in the orchard, with a further two in the adjoining field. Only ours and two others were occupied, both by families, both of which had little girls of Tizer's age. She was, needless to say, elated. In no time at all they'd formed a formidable 'band of sisters', all dressed as is de rigueur for this time of the morning at Feather Down, in wellies and pyjamas. They were soon climbing trees, terrorising the chickens and taking turns on the large tyre swing in the centre of the orchard. Meanwhile, my attentions turned once more to my fire-lighting duties...

By repeating the routine of the previous evening we were quickly up to cooking temperature. Breakfast provisions, bought from the farm's little honesty shop, were soon sizzling away very nicely and, whether it was the wood smoke, the great outdoors, or just down to the farm's excellent bacon, sausage and eggs, it was one of the finest cooked breakfast I've ever had.

Owen came by, whilst I was wiping the last of the porky juices from my plate with a hunk of toast, to let us know that he was heading off to bottle-feed the lambs, and if that sounded like Tizer's sort of thing would she care to join him? Well, he didn't have to ask twice, and we - along with our new neighbours - followed him down to where the lambs were kept. Each of the girls was presented with a bottle which they deftly fed to the four hungry lambs who - judging by their size - probably weren't all that far away from a mint-sauce-related demise. Not that I mentioned this to the kids, you understand; thought it might have spoilt the moment just a tad.

The weekend continued in similar idyllic vein. We visited Caernarfon and toured the mightily impressive castle, took a train ride to the top of Snowdon (quite a long trek to see the inside of a cloud, but lovely views on the way up) and lunched in a couple of smashing local pubs whilst sampling the odd pint of Welsh ale. And, it must be said, it was always a delight to return to our little canvas 'des res' of an evening. My only regret was allowing Mrs V, after much pestering, to have a go at lighting the stove. Let's just say that whoever coined the phrase 'there's no smoke without fire', hasn't witnessed my wife trying to light one. The resulting smoke was so thick we could barely see from one side of the tent to the other, and yet the stove remained resolutely cool. She blamed it on a wet log. Read into that what you will.

On the Sunday, Owen offered us the chance to cook a joint of pork - from the farm's own pigs, of course - in the large, wood-burning oven (essentially a pizza oven) sited in the next field. It gets up to a really eyebrow singeing temperature, and cooked the pork in no time, producing some out-of-this-world crackling. The pork itself was stunningly tasty, way superior to your average supermarket fare and testament to why trying out your local farm shop - or farmers' market - is well worth the effort.

Later that evening one of our neighbours lit a campfire and invited Tizer over to toast some marshmallows. Well, I say 'toast'; 'incinerate' is probably closer to what your average five year old will do when they introduce a skewered marshmallow to a fire. Having said that, they happily wolfed down the resulting blackened and crunchy confection without complaint.

Packing up and heading back to civilisation on the Monday morning was a genuinely melancholy affair. Feather Down Farms have cleverly discovered the formula for the almost perfect family weekend away, helped massively in our case, of course, by the hugely hospitable Pritchard family and their beautiful farm. If camping in comfort, living on a gorgeous working farm, chopping wood, lighting fires, collecting eggs, hand-feeding lambs, eating great local food and hanging around in your PJs and wellies sounds like your kind of thing, then this is the holiday for you.