I’ve slept rough in a public park in Budapest, got eaten alive in a hammock in Honduras, have camped wild in Canada and I once woke up behind a chair in my sitting room; so I think I’ve done my fair share of roughing it.
So, when we were offered the chance, once I had a quick look at the website, to spend a weekend at Feather Down Farms we jumped at the chance.
For those ‘Camping Purists’ out there you may object to me calling this camping in any form as there was not a wet sock to be found and we didn’t have to sleep on the ground. Some would prefer if I called it glamping.
We received a very warm welcome at Lipley Farm in Shropshire, by Stephen the farmer. Who took time out of his busy schedule; they have 140 dairy cows he has to milk twice a day, to show us around. He can recognize each cow without even looking at their numbers.
We were absolutely stunned at the tents which sleep up to six comfortably and they were fully kitted out. The only thing we were missing was electricity and an oven glove.
Shortly after we settled in, the Farmer asked if we’d like to see a newborn calf. I was thinking a couple of days old, but in fact, it had been born about 5 minutes before. We got to watch it try and find its feet for the first time.
Every morning our daughter got to feed the baby lambs in the enclosure near the tents and we collected our own eggs, some of which were blue, from the chicken coup.
One of our highlights was the tour of the Dairy parlour; I was clever enough not to go down as I could see the danger of standing at the back end of 14 well fed cows. However, hubby was not and ended getting a bit closer to nature than he would have liked.
As I mentioned, there was no electricity (but I did find a sneaky plug socket in the Larder to charge the iphone and ipad) the only source of heat was the wood burning stove, and I would be lying to you if I said it wasn’t cold. In fact, it was freezing, we could see our breath when going to bed at night, but it was April. They do supply bedding but we had brought our own Duvet, which is heavy enough to smother a small child and were pleased we brought it.
All our cooking was done on the wood burning stove. The thought of this at first was daunting, but we quickly adapted and cooked everything from a full English breakfast to Sausage and Smash to a Sunday Roast. My only suggestion would be too take something with you, that only needs heating on the first night, as you can’t check in till 4pm and you may not be able to get the stove up to temperature quick enough. We brought a Chilli from home.
The weather wasn’t brilliant, but it didn’t put a damper on it. We were happy to sit back, relax and enjoy the farm. We really didn’t feel the need to go beyond the farm. But there was a lovely wood down the road that we went for an umbrella covered stroll in and we also found a pub near a canal for a sneaky half which would be amazing in the sunshine.
Overall, we would thoroughly recommend a weekend at Feather Down Farms and a huge thank you to Stephen, Tracey and the boys for a wonderful weekend. We will be back.
Disclosure: The weekend was compliments of Feather Down Farms.
