Featherdown Farms

We’ve just had a Featherdown Farm experience! We stayed at Knaveswell Farm in Corfe Castle, Dorset (an area I am very familiar with after having spent a lot of time there in my younger days).

I saw Featherdown Farms in Country Living – it’s basically, very posh camping. It started in Holland, spread to France and there are now over a dozen farms in the UK. The farms that want to become a Featherdown holiday have to fulfill strict criteria (including being a working farm), and all the tents are identical: 3 bedrooms (although the 3rd ‘bedroom’ is like a cubby hole that fits either one adult or two children), toilet, running water, wood burning stove, proper beds and an Honesty Shop where you can buy bread, eggs, milk, meat, candles, etc., etc. All of which has to be as local as possible. So as I said, we chose Knaveswell because I really wanted to take my wife there and show her what a beautiful part of the world it is. I’m also a massive Famous Five fan and Corfe and the Purbecks are known as Blyton country with the castle allegedly providing inspiration for Kirrin Castle.

The farm is a dairy farm and you’re welcome to go and watch the cows being milked which further adds to the experience, and on one of the days we were there, you could hand feed young calves. There were also pigs and chickens and you could help yourselves to eggs.

Our stay was Monday to Friday and by chance, we had lovely weather. A little rain but lots of hot sunshine as well! The tent was fantastic, but we were particularly taken with the wood stove as we plan to buy one before next winter. The beds were really comfy and having a toilet in the tent is fantastic! (There are showers available but these are shared, just like a traditional campsite). To get to our tent we had to walk through a small woodland of bluebells. We were surrounded by trees and hills and the birdsong, including owls at night, was amazing. After milking, the cows would amble up to the top field next to our tent and would low to each other until they all settled down for the night. At night we would light the oil lamps and candles and read or play gin rummy (I wasn’t very good!). And because there were no artificial distractions like TV we ended up going to bed early, sleeping really, really well and then getting up early, too.

By day two we already felt like we’d been there for a week which was glorious because we relaxed so quickly; the dogs, too. They loved being out and about with us all day and curled up by the fire all night.

We visited Studland beach, the Monkey Sanctuary, the Tank museum, the Swanage Steam Railway, Lulworth Cove and Kimmeridge. We found the best place to have breakfast in the whole of the Purbecks and ate cream teas and lots of icecream. The farmer lit the bread oven on the Wednesday and we bought pizzas which literally cooked in 2-3 minutes because of the heat of the oven. And they were so delicious that I ate mine too fast and got hiccups!

It really was a lovely holiday and because you pay in advance for the whole thing, you didn’t get a nasty bill at the end of the holiday! (Although you do have to settle up your Honesty Shop bill). We would thoroughly recommend choosing a Featherdown holiday. And as much as we would love to return to Knaveswell, we will probably choose another farm next time and go to a part of the country we’ve never been to before.

We’re still really relaxed and have even got a bit of a tan! I’m not back till work until Thursday and my partner is off all week. It was lovely to come home again, and the weather is fantastic here, too. Today we’re off to the beach and having lunch out.

The next two weekends we have friends and family staying!

Travel notes: sheep on a beach

(Top photo: House for an Art Lover. Bottom photo: Oban - from the ferry to Mull- taken by my partner)


We left an hour later than planned on the Saturday both secretly wondering whether it was going to be a problem that the boot and the back seat were full of luggage, camping gear and other equipment but both really excited...

First stop, Carlisle, our jumping off point to Scotland if you like. We were going to be staying with a friend I hadn’t seen in 8 years. We had a great time catching up and finding out what was new with our lives (quite a lot as you can imagine!) We went into the Carlisle that evening but I was so tired from the drive (and also lack of sleep from the night before) that we headed back after one drink. We’ve invited them down to London, hopefully they’ll come, and hopefully I won’t be so tired…!

We drove via Gretna Green (not the most inspiring place to get married in my opinion) and then up through Dumfries to our final destination for that day, Glasgow. We drove through the most spectacularly valley on the way to a village called Elvanfoot (the most magical place name ever!). Because we were the only car, I was safe to pull to a stop and just gaze up and around me. It was fantastic and a portent of the kind of scenery that would become an everyday fixture in our holiday lives.

We met a friend of my partner’s – unofficially her godmother – and she took us down to two festivals; one a street party, the other a Mela (big Asian festival). The atmosphere was terrific. Time was catching up though and we jumped back in the car to drive to the other side of Glasgow to stay with another friend and her partner. We ended a long and busy day with beer, gossip and good food.

By the time we had down some shopping in the city the next morning (we never meant to go shopping, honest…) we only had time for a gorgeous lunch and one of the two museums we had planned to visit. So we decided to take in House for an Art Lover that afternoon and Kelvingrove the next day. HfaAL was built in ’96 to the exact specifications of designs drawn up by Charles Rennie Mackintosh before his death (obviously before his death because that would be quite weird and black, we think, would have featured more heavily…)

It’s not that big a place (three rooms and a corridor full of information) but I suppose the upkeep of the house and grounds warrants the cost of entry. Anyway, it was quite interesting and I got some good photos (though I was cursing my lack of technical knowledge as I struggled with deep shadows and piercing shards of sunlight. Some photos did come out though.)

The next day was Kelvingrove a sort of Scottish equivalent of the British Museum and really worth a visit. It’s free to get in and the displays are fantastic; interesting, varied and very innovative. Where else would you get a full sized stuffed elephant called Sir Roger and an exhibition about violence against women rubbing shoulders?

We were on the road again afterwards, to Oban, where we would be camping for three days and as it turned out, where the most wonderful thing would happen…

The campsite was great! Small, picturesque and with fantastic and very clean facilities, it was 12 miles outside Oban and there was a bar serving food on site. I polished off steak and chips quite easily that night, not to mention three pints of Guiness...

The first day we drove into Oban, had a nice big breakfast, bought ferry tickets for a trip to Iona the next day and then pottered around the shops, buying a few presents for people. We found a lovely beach and sat in the sun for half an hour, marvelling at the beautiful islands and scenery visible off shore. Later we bought the ingredients for our dinner and then had one of the best meals ever back at the campsite (more impressive is that this gourmet feast - pumpkin ravioli, asparagus and cherry tomatoes – was made using only a camping stove and saucepan!)

It was up early the next day to get the ferry across to Iona, a beautiful and mysterious island where Columba (which is Latin for dove) arrived from Ireland, supposedly exiled after a terrible war in Ulster which its said he caused by plagiarising a book in a time when the ownership of books indicated power and wealth. Christianity had already arrived in Scotland but he was instrumental in spreading it still further and setting up the Celtic Church. To this day there still exists a religious community on Iona. The Reverend of which has recently argued in a very important meeting of the Church of Scotland that gay people enrich the church and the community and are as welcome to her church as any other member of society. Go lady vicar!

Anyway, back to our holiday! It’s a bit of a trek to get to the island: we drove to Oban, took a ferry to Mull, caught a coach through Mull, and then another ferry to Iona. But it was worth it! It was a blazing hot day and we walked through the island (a tiny place) with me snapping happily at the various cows and sheep we passed until eventually arriving at a beach of white sand and blue clear water. Sheep wondered past on the beach as if it was the most natural thing in the world and as we sat down, my partner got something out of her bag, went down on one knee and asked me to marry her. I said yes….

Waiting for chemo (as opposed to Godot)

I’m panicking about getting everything done before I go on leave, so what do I decide to do? Blog. Because that makes sense…

Anyway, it will all get done because that’s what I do. I get things done but it’s going to be a hard couple of days and I may need to buy some emergency chocolate to have on stand-by.

Yesterday was pretty harsh. Guy’s have a new chemo unit on the 10th floor. Fantastic views over the city, but somehow it felt a little more impersonal because it was bigger and much busier. But I’m sure it’s much more efficient getting lot’s of people in for their treatment at the same time, because the thing with chemo is that once you have the drip in, you just sit there. A couple of people are very ill and so need more attention but really, most people just sat back and read or snoozed – a very undemanding bunch.

We spent time talking to a woman who has terminal cancer and it tore my heart out. She was supposed to die last September but sheer bloody mindedness means she’s still fighting. She’s going to do a college course because she’s bored waiting to die. Afterwards I felt claustrophobic and angry and so I went for a long walk and pulled myself together.

They gave my mum massive doses of herceptin and chemo. Normally herceptin takes about half an hour, yesterday it took an hour and a half, and I think chemo is about an hour but it took two hours. We were going out of our minds by the end of it. Sometimes I watched the bags drip whatever it was (different things for different cancers) through the long tubes and into the back of people’s hands and each time I said, that’s it, that’s the drop that will make the difference; that will turn the tide. That’s the one right there. I hope I was right.

I had a pizza and a cry when I got home and then we sorted out laundry and packed our bags for Scotland. I didn’t sleep very well last night and at 4:16 this morning I was wide awake listening to the racket the birds were making…