Fforest, Cardigan, Wales
Best for: dome glamping at its most evolved
Glamping has its yea-sayers and its detractors, who reckon that the more home comforts are added the further away from twig-snapping, nature-immersed camping you stray. But have they ever stretched out in a Japanese-style onsen beneath oak trees, keeping quiet as a field mouse and watching sparrows flit from branch to branch above? Forest bathing, quite literally. Set on farmland just outside Cardigan, Fforest is another favourite getaway, far enough away from London to feel like a different time zone, with a carefree, go-slow sensibility but enough hands-on activities – den-building, foraging, tree-climbing, whittling – to keep young folk entertained. It’s the project of Sian Tucker and James Lynch, two former art students with a very clear idea of how to evolve their campsite, adding a low-key summer festival a couple of years ago and a book, Fforest: Being, Doing & Making in Nature, that should inspire any outdoor adventure. As for those onsen baths, they’re attached (along with a private loo and shower) to four of the campsite’s solar-powered domes – white geodesic canvas bubbles set on wooden platforms, with proper beds, wood-burning stoves and views of empty fields.
Camping Unplugged, South-east England
Best for: back-to-basics woodland escapes
There’s something special about camping in the trees. The way the leaves and forest floor muffle sound so it feels like you have the greenwood to yourself; the light falling between branches; the exhilaration of exploring, losing and finding the way again. Some will have vivid memories of Forgewood, an East Sussex encampment on the Eridge Estate (which now hosts the Black Deer music festival). I went for a birthday gathering some years back, and remember pumpkin-bright faces around the fire, ember wisps spiralling upwards, fallen timber being brought back with hunter-gatherer pride – all the atmosphere of a festival without a single music stage. Sadly, Forgewood is no more, but the Camping Unplugged founders have hammered in tent pegs on various other aristocratic estates around South-east England over the years. The ethos is the same: stripped-back camping with the chance to build a campfire (safely) where you see fit, rather than in a designated firepit, and no fancy-pants glamping. In fact, they’ve set up the True Camping Club as a rootsy antidote to glamping, celebrating the freedom of pitching your own canvas world amid the trees, with bags of space for running around and ditching the smartphone. It’s a great leveller – co-founder John Allison says he gets many banking types here, keen to switch off, while half of London’s top schools decamp here. Take a look at his sites at Inwood at Farleigh Wallop near Basingstoke, and the more established Abbotstone, near Winchester. As Allison says: ‘When you’re in the trees, you wouldn’t know you’re anywhere near civilisation.’
Hobby Farm, Dorset
Best for: horse-lovers and fossil hunters
This place opened in 2019 and is another example of a small campsite run by an enthusiastic, multi-tasking young couple. The farm has been in Tom Ray’s family for four decades, but he and his horse-riding wife Gaby recently transformed the land into a stables and livery before opening up a tree-ringed meadow for campers. There are two green-painted, boutique-style shepherd’s huts sleeping two, and nine pitches for tents and campervans – no children allowed – near a willow-fringed pond that can be fished or simply rowed across. The farm is rooted in the peaceful Marshwood Vale, a classic Dorset landscape of hedgerow oaks and winding lanes, one of which leads to The Five Bells Inn for pints of local Copper pale ale. Further afield are walking routes around Stonebarrow Hill, the fossil beach at Charmouth and Lyme Regis, which is a 20-minute drive away – or just a little more if you ride there on your own horse, which can be stabled with the Rays’ own.
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