I found Farmstead Glamping entirely by chance. I was out on a walk, the muddiest walk I’ve ever done, and the lane that led home (well, to the car) passed by the entrance of a small campsite and from the hedge, I spied a shepherd’s hut. I got home and did my research and discovered there were two shepherd’s huts and they came with hot tubs and one of them had availability for two nights in June and long story short, there I was in June.
It was hot. I’d gloated over the upcoming hot tub for months but it was far too hot to light it until well into the evening. I arrived on Monday afternoon, at the hut I’d seen from the hedge, the Pleasant Pheasant, unpacked and made myself at home and then settled down on the big bed for a few hours to read in the cool shade of the hut’s interior until it was cool enough to go outside. It was all very pretty, a delightful place to relax, to take a few days off work and off Brownie admin and off keeping a blog up to date, to just enjoy the peace and the countryside and a herd of dairy cows, do some reading and lie in the hot water. I’ll do a full tour and review of the hut itself in my next post, which will be on Monday.
The part of Monday I didn’t spend reading and relaxing I spent exploring my little home, appreciating the view, investigating cupboards, working out how the hot tub worked and ending the day with a tiny campfire – and campfire singing. If I’m sitting in front of a fire outside of an evening and I’m not singing Campfire’s burning quietly to myself (or indeed, out loud to the group) then you’d better check my pulse to make sure I’m still alive.
On Tuesday I went out for a walk. Pleasant as the Pleasant Pheasant is – the clue’s in the name – you can’t stay there all day every day. I decided to recreate the walk I’d done the day I’d found it. After all, I could start and end it right there on the campsite without needing to take my car out anywhere. I actually vlogged it. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt kind of comfortable talking to a camera and I made the most of it. I think the chances are extremely low that I’ll have finished editing it by the time this post goes live but I’ll slot it in later when it’s done.
It was about 8km (10km if you park in the middle of Stur and have to walk a kilometre to the bridge and then back again at the end), down to the river at Sturminster Newton then follow it north to Cutt Mill, cross the little bridges there and back down the long lane from Bagber Farm. It had been muddy that first time but now it was overgrown. The fields were mostly ok but there are gates and short boardwalks dividing the fields and those were almost buried in six or seven feet of nettles and cow parsley, or possibly cow parsley’s evil cousins. I was glad I’d opted for long trousers and boots rather than shorts and sandals but I wished I’d brought something long sleeved for those difficult bits. I’d coated myself with sun cream before I left but an hour in, I was sweating it off in rivers and needed to stop and put on a second coat.
The walk on Wikiloc, only starting from the car park in the middle of Sturminster Newton.
While bits of it were difficult, the walk itself is pretty flat and although you do sometimes need to consult the map, you don’t actually need to navigate. Without the winter mud or the summer nettles, it’s a very pleasant walk; long enough to be worth doing but not so long it’s tiring, and I didn’t see another living soul. Correction: I didn’t see another human soul. I met plenty of sheep, a few horses and I saw cows. Perfect for a plague, a nice socially distanced country walk.
That evening I decided to cook over my campfire. I’m becoming quite brilliant at lighting hot tubs but the campfire was another matter. Sure, it only took one match and I did great at burning the kindling but it took well over an hour for the first small log to catch and when my flatbread was still raw at 8pm, I decided to give up on the campfire and just cook it on the pizza stone over the gas barbecue. I love the barbecue! It’s a little round one that sits on a table but my favourite thing was the cupboard that goes with it. It’s a reclaimed miniature bookcase with a tiled top for food prep, hooks on the side for barbecue tools and on its shelves are various cooking pots and pans and the aforementioned pizza stone. My dad has always just thrown the tools down on the grass when he’s finished cooking, doesn’t pick them up when he’s finished eating and has to cut them out of the grass next time he wants to use them so I really want to recreate this little cupboard in my own garden.
By now I was getting impatient. I’d lit the hot tub and it was pleasantly warm and I didn’t want to wait another half an hour for the bread to cook properly before I could jump in. So I ate the bread half-cooked. Should have just made another couple of cheese rolls as I had some left over from the packed lunch I’d taken on my walk.
I’ve seen hundreds of people enjoying hot tubs and drinking champagne or prosecco or rose. But I don’t like alcohol and Coca-Cola just doesn’t have the same effect. So when I was shopping for my trip, I bought some sparkling raspberry presse in a green glass bottle and chilled it in the little coolbox fridge in my hut. Take a champagne flute out to the hot tub and ta-dah, you’ve got the effect without having to drink something that kind of tastes like petrol to me. Cold bubbly in a tall glass, sunset across the field, hot tub quietly roaring away with too many logs in it. Tastes like being on holiday.
Breakfast that last day was like breakfast on the first morning just 24 hours earlier. I took my enamel mug out, my apple juice, my cereal and Nutella and I sat out in the fresh air, in the shade of my cooking shelter, with the company of bees buzzing in the herb garden and the cows down at the end of the field. I’d never experienced anything so utterly peaceful. Other than the tractor in the cow field the previous evening, I hadn’t heard any traffic from my hut, I hadn’t heard human voices, I’d heard and seen nothing but nature and cows and a peacock in the farmhouse next door. Now I had to pack up and go home. Not back to normal life entirely – it was Wednesday morning and I wouldn’t be back to work and Brownies until Monday but sitting at home isn’t like sitting outside your own shepherd’s hut with raspberry fizz or apple juice and a hot tub or campfire and a field of contented cows.
